I find myself dangerously knee-jerk in my defence of Obama. Sunday night’s CTV coverage of his interview with George Stephanopoulos failed to use the exact soundbite that would have justified Sandi Renaldo’s intro to the piece, in which she announced Obama was now waffling on the promise to prosecute torturers no matter how high up they were in the Bush administration. “See the naysayers doubting him before he even begins? CTV’s chosen snippet confirms nothing about waffling,” I immediately concluded, believing CTV was being unnecessarily critical.

Upon further research, there was indeed a quote that justified their intro. It should have been the soundbite: “My orientation’s going to be to moved forward,” Obama said. He will put the issue in the hands of his attorney general. The attorney general has to stay above politics and “uphold the Constitution,” Obama added, but his administration will focus on “getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.” Will Obama turn a tolerant eye towards violations of human rights committed by Bush? Is Obama, in fact, a Canadian?

Will there be a Nuremburg for Bush? The question topped the list of citizen concerns on Change.gov last week, out of over 70,000 submissions. Outrage echoed throughout the world almost from the day Bush authorized waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay. A video of Bush’s admission to having personally chosen waterboarding from a proffered menu of torture techniques was shown Sunday night in television coverage around the world. The video was anathema to apologists of the practice who continue to defend Bush on the grounds that it was Dick Cheney who owned up to the authorization back in ’04, which put America on the list of 82 countries who practise torture.

Any number of protestations around the world can be reviewed on the internet from coverage over the past few years. Legal sanctions have been initiated for four years against Bush from countries appalled by his unilateral repeal of the UN and Geneva Convention sanctions against torture.

Among these charges for prosecution were those from Canada’s Lawyers Against the War (LAW) who laid charges on the occasion of George W. Bush’s controversial visit to Canada in November 2004.  In a piece dated October 19, 2005, GlobalReseach.ca said: “The charges were laid under sections of the Canadian Criminal Code enacted pursuant to the United Nations Torture Convention which requires extra-territorial jurisdiction to be exercised against officials, even Heads of State, who authorize or are otherwise responsible for torture.”

The next thing that happened was cause for concern to Canadians, if only because it seemed to fall into a dangerous pattern which has been happening in Canada for a decade now. “The Supreme Court of BC quashed an order banning publication of everything having to do with the charges imposed when they were first laid. In a secret hearing, held December 6th 2004 in B.C. Provincial Court, the charges against Bush were rejected on the basis of arguments by the Attorney General of British Columbia that the visiting president was shielded from prosecution by diplomatic immunity. A ban on publication of anything to do with the proceedings was also imposed. The secrecy, the immunity claim and the ban are vigorously opposed by LAW, who appealed all aspects of the decision.”

Luckily “Justice Satanove of the Supreme Court of British Columbia quashed the ban on publication after government lawyers failed to come up with any argument to defend it. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association had intervened on the side of LAW against the ban.”

Despite the success of LAW’s appeal, Canada’s been developing a knee-jerk response herself, of the kind that protects heads of state from prosecution for transgressions against their citizens’ right to protest torture. Those of us who recall how easily Jean Chretien escaped prosecution of his illegal order to the RCMP, at the Vancouver APEC conference a little over ten years ago, to violently suppress legal protesters against the visiting state-torturer, Suharto, are skeptical of Canadian state conscience in the form of task forces investigating state leaders. Even John Thompson of the right wing McKenzie Institute told me he was concerned by Chretien’s move. ”The Canadian protesters of Suharto were perfectly within their rights.”

In discussing the failure to prosecute Chretien, Garth Mullins, in an August, 2000 blog wrote, “To the surprise of no-one, such tactics (investigative commissions) were not used against Jean Chretien. The Prime Minister, who clearly has testimony relevant to the APEC matter never faced jail time and was politely, if bureaucratically, excused by a stunningly narrow interpretation of the inquiry’s scope. “ Mullins notes “it was not until he left office that Chretien was called before the Sponsorship Scandal inquiry, where tax dollars were at issue rather than civil rights and state sanctioned police violence.”

Mullins goes on to say “if an inquiry is not serving its correct propaganda function the plug can always be pulled. The Somalia Inquiry was called to investigate the violent, racist behaviour of Canadian Airborn soldiers towards Somali youths. Evidence of a cover up led the inquiry all the way up to then Minister of Defence, Kim Campbell. The government immediately intervened, removing all funds from the Inquiry, bringing an abrupt end to its work.”

On September 24th, 2008, Harper seemed to have forgotten Chretien’s scandalous executive interference when he ordered the RCMP to prevent reporters from covering his appearance in Surrey, B.C. while on the election trail: “Mounties protecting Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a campaign event in Surrey, B.C., were used Tuesday evening to stop reporters from approaching a high-profile Tory candidate. “Keep them out,” Harper aide Ray Novak shouted at the RCMP security detail as journalists approached Dona Cadman. CTV’s Rosemary Thompson was literally yanked aside by one Mountie as she approached the retreating group – which did not include the prime minister.”

Last year Australia seized back the moral high ground against the use of torture by ratifying an international treaty snubbed by the previous Howard government whose government, like Harper’s, feared Bush to the extent they followed him in almost all his foreign policy initiatives. The Rudd Government also introduced laws making torture an offence for the first time under the Commonwealth Criminal Code. Is Canada strong enough to join this Australian initiative? Can we once, at least, stand up as a world leader calling for justice? We would certainly earn respect at the UN.

On 10 December the UN General Assembly at its plenary meeting unanimously adopted an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In it, individuals, instead of states, may make complaints. “The Protocol is undoubtedly a milestone in the history of the universal human rights system. It aims to achieve progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the Covenant.” Obama also mentioned on Sunday night this universal push of America into correcting its war crimes. Which way will he go?

Which body will prosecute Bush? The UN? The Commonwealth? America? We tend to forget that Americans, even those within the Bush Administration, are concerned about Bush’s repeal of human rights: According to Ari Melber of The Huffington Post, “a senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration’s legal position on torture in 2004 became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News. Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.

“After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn’t die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning. Levin, who refused to comment for this story, concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.” Christopher Hitchens, in Vanity Fair, also underwent the practice. He found it as terrifying and traumatic as did Levin. He found it not nearly in the class of sleep deprivation and other normal interrogative methods.

Melber, on Monday, went on to say, of Obama’s backtracking on the importance of prosecution of Bush, “People are more likely to follow the law when they see that breaking it carries consequences. This is such a basic foundation of our criminal system, justified by the elemental rationales of deterrence and retribution, it is quite hard to imagine that so many seasoned attorneys and Washington journalists honestly believe that the best way “forward” is to undermine deterrence and the rule of law.”

The move from Bush’s war time administration to Obama’s peace time government, is the opposite of what happens in the film, The Godfather. In the film, instead of seeking revenge for his son’s killing, Don Corleone meets with the heads of the Five Families to arrange an end to the war, but has to concede his donship to Michael, his warrior son, who throws away the processes his father set up. In contrast, Americans are blessed with a moment where they can seize the high road. A government with the chance to engage in due process.

These dying days of the Bush administration mark the bloodiest attacks on the civilians of Gaza that Bush-supported Israel has ever made. On Friday, the Red Cross condemned Israel for killing civilians, a Red Cross worker, women and children, and for preventing the press from documenting it all. In these last days of the War Administration of George W. Bush it seems every move against human rights has to be accomplished in a hurry.

Bush flies in the face of world opinion. On Monday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. “In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,” Olmert said. “I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone’. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me. “I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour.”

That an Israeli leader could order Bush to stand down his lieutenant and then tell everyone about her humiliation is right out of The Godfather: “You were fine in peace time, but what we need now is a war time lawyer,” the Godfather’s Michael Corleone tells Robert Duvall’s Tom Hagen. Mafia-style, Bush and Olmert flaunt this process-free attack on Gaza with no consideration at all for the opinion of lawmakers or press anywhere.

The cover story of December 2008’s Harper’s magazine is “Prosecuting Bush: Bringing an Outlaw Administration to Justice.” In it, Scott Horton says that “in 1983, an east Texas sheriff named James Parker was convicted of waterboarding six men in order to coerce confessions. He was sentenced ten years in federal prison. And when American prosecutors convicted Japanese officials at the end of World War II of war crimes that included water boarding, the sentence obtained . . . was death.” Horton goes on “not to say that administration officials will or should face similarly dire sanction. But such consequences are a measure of the gravity of the crime.”

Historically, those who win wars go free from war crimes prosecution. Perhaps Bush was counting on wins when he so boldly discarded due process in both Guantanamo Bay and now in Gaza, by pre-approving Israel’s attack, and by not allowing Rice to do her job in asking for a cease fire. However, he did not win in Iraq. Israel will not win against Hamas. Guerilla wars are negotiated (Belfast) not won. You can’t win over guerilla fighters by using traditional military options. The fact Bush bet the house on winning in Iraq shows he felt he couldn’t be prosecuted. The point is: he can be brought to account. He didn’t win.

Obama’s first state visit later this month will be to Canada. Will Canadians be out with picket signs showing support for the prosecution of Bush? Looking back at our history you might ask yourself, before showing up at the airport, if you don’t mind being pepper-sprayed.

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Tags: bush, inauguration, obama, torture, waterboarding

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