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California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Created: January 5, 2005
Latest Update: January 5, 2005
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Our Law, Our Culture, Our ValuesOur laws enforce the values that we as a people accept as important. Alberto Gonzales, who struggled from humble beginnings through Harvard Law School, is now nominated for the highest law enforcement position in this country. And yet, there is extensive documentation and evidence that when President Bush wanted license to go outside and beyond the Geneva Convention on torture, Alberto Gonzales used his legal skills to support that position. Now, we as individual Americans, need to support our legislators in determining is such support at the behest of one's superior, is appropriate to the office of Attorney General.
No, we don't get to decide. But we do get to have a voice. You cannot effectively voice your opinion on this other equally important social and political issues as they come up in this second term of intensely conservative rule, unless you are aware of the issues. Please, keep aware.
For those of you who doubt that having a voice really matters, go back and look at Bush's announcement of $15 million dollars in aid after the Tusnami. The collective voices of the world made a whopping difference. Leaders, all leaders, can only move within the bounds their followers will accept, and that's political. They try to persuade that they are knowledgeable authorities and always right, but when we refuse to believe it, and raise our voices in concert, they have to backdown or increase violence and suppression. And violence and suppression require power, lots of it.
Remember also that the leaders know damned well they're not always right, unless they've got a psychosis, which I grant is possible, but which still necessitates power to survive. Although they may not admit being wrong, they can do pretty fast flip-flops, which they, of course, can't admit as flip-flops, since we know about flip-floppers.
Much has already been made of Alberto Gonzales being a poor Mexican-American who made good. Clarence Thomas was poor Black who made good. Being poor and making it offers no guarantee that the resultant "hero" will identify with the poor and downtrodden, especially not if he feels, as Clarence Thomas did, that he did it all on his own, anyway. Do we thank God for our success, or do we just assume that we're better than the Other, and so did it on our own. These are major social issue and religious belief questions that will come up this semester.
Also at issue here is the transparency of the process that will lead to the highest law enforcement office in the Nation:
Gonzales was the author of a January 2002 legal opinion advising Bush that suspected terrorists picked up in Afghanistan did not qualify for prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention — a view that Bush embraced in an executive order.
"Gonzales wrote, among other things, that the war on terrorism presented a 'new paradigm' that rendered the protections of the Geneva Convention "obsolete."
"He also solicited an August 2002 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that identified a number of legal defenses for U.S. operatives suspected of torturing prisoners in Afghanistan, and which held that the president's war powers may transcend federal restrictions on torture.
"Portions of the Justice Department memo were included in a Pentagon working group report, prepared on the eve of the Iraq war, on permissible means of interrogation of military detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
"Democrats and others said one of the main questions about Gonzales was whether he endorsed the Justice Department memo and urged its inclusion in the Pentagon document.
"Some Democrats on the Judiciary Committee complained that the White House was refusing to turn over documents that illuminated Gonzales' role.
"Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking Democrat, accused Gonzales of stonewalling over key documents.
" 'In fact, I and other senators have requested a number of documents from you and other administration officials that have not been released,' Leahy wrote in a letter to Gonzales dated Tuesday.
"The missing documents, according to Leahy's letter, include a copy of the final version of Gonzales' January 2002 memo to Bush on whether the Geneva Convention applies to Al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers.
From More Heat over Gonzales and Torture" by Richard B. Schmitt. Los Angeles Times. January 5, 2005. Backup Scroll down about two inches for this citation on the backup.
Discussion Questions
- When we say that leaders can only lead so far, how does that relate to issues like the U.S. Supreme Court wanting unanimous rulings in Brown v. Board of Education?
Did we have the police power to enforce the integration of southern schools if the people had refused to do so? Would we have wanted to use the police power for internal domestic problems?
- Is democracy in Iraq and internal domestic problem for Iraq? What about foreign military power to enforce internal domestic problems?
For years I have taught my law classes that the only international crimses we could agree on were torture and piracy. What does Gonzales' position on torture do to the position I have taught, thinking it was the truth, for all these years?
- What's the problem with transparency here? If the White House withholds information on Gonzales' position, how can we know who we are supporting or opposing?
Consider that refusal to make processes transparent makes it near impossible to hold anyone accountable. How dangerous is that when we're talking about rights like the right to a trial by jury and right to protection from torture, and human rights?
Resources:
- Backing Gonzales Is Backing Torture By Robert Scheer. Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, January 4, 2005. Backup.
- Backing Gonzales Is Backing Torture Truthout version of Robert Scheer's article.
- Gonzales Is Likely to Face Hard Questions in Hearings By Neil A. Lewis. The New York Times. Monday 03 January 2005. Truthout version.
- More Heat Over Gonzales and Torture By Richard B. Schmitt. Los Angeles Times. January 5, 2005. At p. A20. Backup.
