Interview with President & Mrs. Bush, part 3: And having read through that, all I can conclude is ... a totally and completely incoherent man was selected to be president. It may be that it sounded better -- one hopes considerably better -- than it reads. But in places, he simply makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
That aside, his statements about military tribunals and about John Walker are ... illustrative.
But in times of war the president ought to have at his disposal extraordinary measures to deal, means to deal with extraordinary circumstances.… First of all, we have never had a military tribunal in my administration.… I'd like the tool just in case we need to use it. Secondly, no U.S. citizen will be brought before a military tribunal… Let me finish… [...] Well, we think — we're not sure — we're just trying to learn the facts about this poor fellow. Obviously he has been misled. It appears to me he thought he was going to fight for a great cause; and in fact, he was going to support a government that was one of the most repressive governments in the history of mankind. Surely he was raised better than to know that a government that suppresses women and women's rights, that doesn't educate young girls, is not the kind of government worth dying for.
Well, yes. Surely he was. And surely most of the Pakistani and Saudi and other "poor fellows" and other people fighting for the Taliban thought they were fighting for a great cause as well. And yet we still intend to put them through military tribunals; that they were young and misled -- as surely a great many of them were -- is not considered a reason or excuse. What Walker was raised to believe and what he thought he was fighting for is surely completely irrelevant to what it is that you decide to do with the man.
As an American who did not renounce his citizenship as such (curious, that), Walker is ineligible for His Fraudulency's military tribunals. Fair enough, I suppose, in that no American citizen is eligible. But there should be no sympathy for him. If anything, there should be less. He DID know better. And yet he chose to go and fight that war. He chose to be a part of that repressive regime, if only as a footsoldier.
You wonder sometimes if Bush realizes the moment that has arrived. He didn't want it, certainly; what man would want this at all, let alone as a defining point in his presidency only a few months in. And yet, here it is. If he goes easy on Walker, it will undo much of his coalition; the militants and terrorists will easily be able to frame it as a war on Islam, as a war made purely because we could, and the governments will have no defense. And inside these United States, minorities will look at that result, and if they had any doubt about what the man is, any sense that they should wait to give him a fair shake, those doubts would be gone.
And purely as an aside: of course we haven't had a military tribunal in your administration, Shrub. We haven't had one since World War 2. Do catch up on your history.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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