By Andy Worthington
Just when you think that there can be
no more outrageous proposals from the current Lame Duck government,
and that it’s down to a straight race between Barack Obama, a man
with profound respect for the rule of law, and John McCain, who, I fear,
may allow the malign spirits of Dick Cheney and David Addington to maintain
a presence in the corridors of power, George W. Bush, the Least Popular
President in History, has made a last-ditch attempt to secure his bellicose
legacy by slipping an extraordinary passage into proposed legislation
dealing with legal appeals filed by Guantánamo prisoners in the wake
of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Boumediene v. Bush.
As Eric Lichtblau described it in the New York Times,
the President’s advisers, believing that “many Americans may have
forgotten” that “the United States is still at war with al-Qaeda”
– which is an easy mistake to make, given that it is both dangerous
and deceitful to describe resistance to small bands of terrorist criminals
as a “war” – “want Congress to say so” and to “acknowledge
again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict
with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already
proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter
of Americans.”
I must admit that I can’t actually
understand why the President’s advisers should regard this commitment
as particularly important, as legislation passed by Congress in the
wake of the 9/11 attacks – the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed on September 14, 2001 – has never
been repealed, and states, unequivocally, that “the President is authorized
to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations,
or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such
organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international
terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or
persons.”
Notoriously, this is the legislation
that launched the power-grab that is the main legacy of the “War on
Terror” for the executive branch of the United States: the open-ended
declaration of war that enabled the President and his advisers to start
two wars, undermine the US Constitution, shred the Geneva Conventions,
spurn habeas corpus, tear up the Bill of Rights, discard the Army Field
Manual, create a system of show trials for terrorists out of thin air,
spy on American citizens with impunity, and pour scorn on the UN Convention
Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
I can only presume, therefore, that,
like some sort of grotesque power couple ostentatiously renewing their
wedding vows, Bush, Cheney and Addington have put forward this legislation
in an attempt to renew their own deathly vows of unending horror with
Congress and the American people. Myopic and arrogant to the last, they
will presumably play this as an attempt to support John McCain and the
Republican Party in the face of an assault on national security by backsliding
liberals, whereas all clear-sighted Americans should see it for what
it really is: another cynical attempt to absolve the administration
of its vast catalog of war crimes by yet again attempting to fool the
American public that they are America’s saviors rather than a dictatorial
executive branch, serving only their lust for power and the coffers
of their blood-stained corporate allies, and that as a result they require
the American people to live in a permanent state of paranoid and xenophobic
fear.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press).