Colin Powell has broken his silence in the classic Washington way, with a leaked memo. He’s also broken ranks by being the first member of the Bush administration to suggest that the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters held at Guantanamo Bay be treated as prisoners of war.
The secretary of state was shocked, shocked I tell you, to see his pro-POW position revealed in the Washington Times. Since the Bush administration seems to be constitutionally incapable of plainly stating its position, we’ll have to try to interpret this development the way the Romans used to augur the future by reading the entrails of birds.
In all likelihood, the memo was deliberately leaked to give Secretary Powell some wiggle room when he visits our allies. The international community has been unanimous in condemning the conditions in which the Guantanamo prisoners are being held. Now Mr. Powell can tell foreign heads of state, “Look, I agree with you on the Geneva Convention thing, but I was overruled, too.” This is foreign policy in the Bush II era – we turn a deaf ear to common-sense protests by our strongest allies, then we compensate for it by publicly humiliating our secretary of state.
It’s appalling to watch Colin Powell, who has spent his life in service to his nation, getting jerked around like a puppet by a couple of draft dodgers who are his mental and moral inferiors. Historians will see this as a travesty; why more journalists don’t is a mystery.
The Bush administration is right about one thing: Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are not prisoners of war in the traditional sense. The groups to which they belong are not recognized as legitimate governments; if these prisoners are released at the end of hostilities, there is no reason to believe they will return to their homes and families and every reason to believe they will commit further acts of violence against civilians.
So we’re on new ground. This is a 21st century war with 21st century prisoners who do not easily fit into Geneva Convention categories. The Bush administration sees this as a loophole and treats it the way it treats all loopholes, by ruthlessly exploiting it for short-term gain, with no thought given to the possibility that today’s actions will come back to cause the United States grief in the near future.
No one in American politics has made so bold as to propose that since we are confronted with a new, 21st century situation, that we conduct ourselves in a way that will set a precedent to be followed when these situations arise in the future.
For instance, one reason the U.S. does not want to classify the Guantanamo prisoners as POWs is because the Geneva Convention does not allow the interrogation of prisoners of war and the U.S. wants to know what these men can tell us about their groups. That’s fair enough, but I wonder how many of these fanatics will spill the beans just because we ask them nicely. So how do we encourage their cooperation? Isolation cells? Sensory deprivation? Sleep deprivation? At what point does aggressive interrogation become torture?
If the Bush administration wants to argue that the Guantanamo prisoners do not fall under Geneva categories, there is some merit to that, but then the administration must clearly and thoroughly articulate a civilized code of treatment for these prisoners, and it has failed to do so.
I suspect Colin Powell is thinking all these thoughts, late at night when he cannot sleep. Secretary Powell was once a general and before that, a soldier. He knows there is a price to be paid for the recklessness of George Bush and he knows American soldiers will be the ones to pay that price.
The Silence of Colin Powell
Colin Powell has broken his silence in the classic Washington way, with a leaked memo. He’s also broken ranks by being the first member of the Bush administration to suggest that the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters held at Guantanamo Bay be treated as prisoners of war.
The secretary of state was shocked, shocked I tell you, to see his pro-POW position revealed in the Washington Times. Since the Bush administration seems to be constitutionally incapable of plainly stating its position, we’ll have to try to interpret this development the way the Romans used to augur the future by reading the entrails of birds.
In all likelihood, the memo was deliberately leaked to give Secretary Powell some wiggle room when he visits our allies. The international community has been unanimous in condemning the conditions in which the Guantanamo prisoners are being held. Now Mr. Powell can tell foreign heads of state, “Look, I agree with you on the Geneva Convention thing, but I was overruled, too.” This is foreign policy in the Bush II era – we turn a deaf ear to common-sense protests by our strongest allies, then we compensate for it by publicly humiliating our secretary of state.
It’s appalling to watch Colin Powell, who has spent his life in service to his nation, getting jerked around like a puppet by a couple of draft dodgers who are his mental and moral inferiors. Historians will see this as a travesty; why more journalists don’t is a mystery.
The Bush administration is right about one thing: Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are not prisoners of war in the traditional sense. The groups to which they belong are not recognized as legitimate governments; if these prisoners are released at the end of hostilities, there is no reason to believe they will return to their homes and families and every reason to believe they will commit further acts of violence against civilians.
So we’re on new ground. This is a 21st century war with 21st century prisoners who do not easily fit into Geneva Convention categories. The Bush administration sees this as a loophole and treats it the way it treats all loopholes, by ruthlessly exploiting it for short-term gain, with no thought given to the possibility that today’s actions will come back to cause the United States grief in the near future.
No one in American politics has made so bold as to propose that since we are confronted with a new, 21st century situation, that we conduct ourselves in a way that will set a precedent to be followed when these situations arise in the future.
For instance, one reason the U.S. does not want to classify the Guantanamo prisoners as POWs is because the Geneva Convention does not allow the interrogation of prisoners of war and the U.S. wants to know what these men can tell us about their groups. That’s fair enough, but I wonder how many of these fanatics will spill the beans just because we ask them nicely. So how do we encourage their cooperation? Isolation cells? Sensory deprivation? Sleep deprivation? At what point does aggressive interrogation become torture?
If the Bush administration wants to argue that the Guantanamo prisoners do not fall under Geneva categories, there is some merit to that, but then the administration must clearly and thoroughly articulate a civilized code of treatment for these prisoners, and it has failed to do so.
I suspect Colin Powell is thinking all these thoughts, late at night when he cannot sleep. Secretary Powell was once a general and before that, a soldier. He knows there is a price to be paid for the recklessness of George Bush and he knows American soldiers will be the ones to pay that price.