Kathy G.: The prosecution of George W. Bush for murder
[Kathy G. is a shrill feminist, bleeding heart liberal, hardcore policy wonk, political junkie, ardent cinephile, and lover of 19th century novels. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two loveable mutts, where she is attempting, amidst numerous diverting distractions, to complete a Ph.D. in the social sciences.]
One of the most memorable cinematic experiences I've had in the past several was the brilliant neorealist Romanian drama, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The film tells the harrowing tale of a young woman who helps her friend obtain an illegal back alley abortion in Ceausescu-era Romania. In the final scene, the two women are having a somber dinner together. One of the young women starts to talk about the terrifying ordeal they have just experienced, but her friend cuts her off, saying "Let's never talk about this again."
Those are the haunting final words of the film. And yet, of course, the entire film gives the lie to those words, because above all else, it's about the importance of speaking out, and documenting the horrors of a despotic and criminal political regime. Bearing witness to such crimes is, after all, the crucial first step towards apportioning responsibility for them, and towards creating a just, humane and democratically accountable society.
Ever since I saw that film, I've been haunted by that final scene, and especially by those words: "Let's never talk about this again." Because my greatest fear about the Bush era is that many Americans, and particularly our media and political elites, are going to want to pretend it never happened. That whole business of going to war with Iraq on the basis of brazen, baldfaced lies? The unspeakable torture at Abu Ghraib? The illegal detentions at Guantanamo? The criminal negligence before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina? The unconstitutional surveillance of countless law-abiding American citizens? The corrupt, profiteering war contractors? The U.S. Attorneys scandal? The stolen election that kicked off this whole tragedy? Let's just forget about all that, please.
It seems not only possible, but highly likely, that none of those crimes and scandals will be fully investigated, and few if any of the people responsible for them will be held accountable. For one thing, Barack Obama has made it abundantly clear that he has no interest in getting to the bottom of the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration. For brother Barack, it's all about "the audacity of hope" and "healing" and "let us transcend the politics of division." It's extremely depressing that Obama the former professor of constitutional law refuses to so much as hint that the Bush regime has provoked a constitutional crisis and that we need to find a way to resolve it.
But if we let this gang of criminals off scot-free, I believe it would be a tragic mistake. It’s vital for the health of our democracy that Bush and company be held accountable in some meaningful way. Otherwise their behavior in office will set a horrible new precedent – “defining deviancy down," in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's words. And next time out those sons of bitches will push the boundaries even further.
We’ve seen it happen in our lifetime. Every two-term Republican President we’ve had from Nixon on has provoked a constitutional crisis: Watergate, Iran-contra, and now the Bush scandals. We seem to have learned nothing from any of these crises – except that the Republicans have learned to be a lot smarter about covering up their crimes. Worse, you see the same people who were discredited in previous Republican criminal regimes coming back again and again. Karl Rove, for example, got his start as a teenage dirty trickster during the Nixon administration. Even people like John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams, who were convicted of crimes connected to the Iran-contra scandal, came back to serve in high-level positions in the Bush administration!
That is seriously fucked up. And I’m sickened by the idea of these bastards once again getting away with it. It reminds me of the lines from that great Watergate-era Bob Dylan song, “Hurricane” – “All the criminals in their coats and their ties / Are free to drink martinis, and watch the sun rise.” Jesus, what a bitter and depressing image. But you just know it’s going to happen.
There are however, several alternatives to head-in-the-sand denial about this. I believe the most appropriate response to the abuses of the Bush administration would be impeachment, and Dennis Kucinich, God bless him, recently submitted articles of impeachment against George W. Bush to the House Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, though, we've been assured that impeachment is "off the table" -- thanks, Nancy and Harry!
Another possibility, which has been advocated by Mark Schmitt and which I also support, is transitional justice, aka a truth and reconciliation commission. Such a commission would not have the power to indict anyone, but would be able to deliver subpoenas and grant limited immunity, and would be empowered to fully investigate the crimes and misdeeds of the Bush era and make recommendations on how to avoid such abuses in the future. Unfortunately, though, this solution has also garnered little support.
A third option would be to prosecute Bush and other administration officials for war crimes. As Scott Horton recently explained, while this almost certainly will not happen in the U.S., it's likely to happen elsewhere in the world, should indictable officials travel to Europe or other places unlikely to grant them immunity. I support these efforts at international justice as well, but I would strongly prefer that America, rather than some international court or another nation, deal with the crimes of Bush et al. The prosecution of American officials by non-Americans would likely result in a nationalist backlash here in the U. S. of A., which ultimately might raise questions about the legitimacy of the prosecution, and could damage international courts as an institution. On the other hand, though, prosecuting the Bushies might deter future potential war criminals, and may also help Americans realize that what the Bush administration has done has indeed been a grotesque violation of international laws and norms.
Up to now, I thought those three options -- impeachment, a truth and reconciliation commission, or prosecution for war crimes -- were the only alternatives to doing nothing. But recently I became aware of a fourth option. Author and former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has written a new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which advocates just that (the murder victims alluded to in the title being the casualties of the Iraq War).
The book, which was published on May 26th, has become a phenomenon. It's currently #24 on Amazon, where it has already garnered 98 customer reviews and an average rating of four stars. It's also been on the New York Times best seller list for three weeks, where it's currently #14.
This is in spite of a virtual black-out in the mainstream media. Bugliosi hasn't snagged any television interviews, and he's been on very few radio shows. The only advertising for the book has been on the internet. To my knowledge, none of the liberal blogs I visit regularly has so much as mentioned the book. Nor have there been any reviews that I know of in any mainstream publications. When I planned this post Sunday night I was ready to write that the book has gotten zero mentions in the mainstream press, but I woke this morning to discover that the New York Times has, at long last, run a story about the book.
And btw, I just love this quote from Newsweek editor John Meachum, about why he thinks the mainstream media has almost completely ignored this book: “I think there’s a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there,” says Meacham. Riiiiiight. There have just been, like, so many serious, detailed discussions in the mainstream media about the abuses of the Bush regime, and all the possible legal and public policy responses that could be pursued to hold the administration accountable.
A little about Bugliosi: he is very much a mainstream figure and not a crank. He's most famous for prosecuting Charles Manson for the murders of Sharon Tate and others, and he wrote a famous book about this, Helter Skelter. He's also written other true crime books about subjects like the O.J. Simpson trial (which he argues the prosecution screwed up pretty thoroughly) and the assassination of JFK (he's no conspiracy theorist -- his massive book on that subject argues that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone).
I haven't read Bugliosi's book, but I have read a brief excerpt from it, and also the Times piece and this transcript of a Democracy Now! interview with Bugliosi. In addition, I've viewed a talk Bugliosi gave about the book which apparently is supposed to run on CSPAN, which you can find via Youtube: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.
The gist of Bugliosi's argument is that George W. Bush knowingly led us to war under false pretenses, and thus is criminally responsible for the deaths of the 4,000+ American service men and women who have died in the Iraq conflict (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have also died as a result of the war). According to Bugliosi, any district attorney in the country has the legal authority to put Bush on trial for murder, so long as an American soldier from their district died fighting in the war in Iraq.
What should we make of all this? I strongly believe that George W. Bush and most likely Dick Cheney are morally guilty of murder, and that Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, and others are at the very least guilty of being accessories to that crime. And I for one think Bush and Cheney deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars for their unforgivable crime of sending so many to their deaths for no discernible reason other than the egos and greed of their leaders.
But believing that the Bush regime deserves to be held criminally liable in the abstract doesn't mean it would be practicable or worth it in reality. For one thing, being morally guilty (which I believe Bush is) is not the same as being guilty under the law. Also, in one sense, all it would take to bring Bush to trial is one determined prosecutor. But for a prosecution to be successful, and for the charges to stick, I think there'd need to be a broad national consensus that prosecution is the right thing to do, and right now that certainly doesn't seem to be the case. I seriously doubt that Bush will ever be brought up on charges (although murder of course does not have a statute of limitations, and I suppose it's conceivable that, years from now, public opinion will change about this).
As a practical strategy, then, Bugliosi's book is of little value. But I believe it's useful in other ways. First, Bugliosi does us all a service by carefully, methodically laying out the facts about how the Bush regime sold the war. Those facts are damning, and the brazen cynicism with which Bush & Co. sold the war, as well as the bloodthirsty zeal which drove them, still have the power to shock. Though this information has been publicly available for a while, it's still relatively little known, so I think Bugliosi is doing an admirable job of educating the public here.
Secondly, I appreciate what Bugliosi is doing in terms of a potential Overton window effect. Millions of Americans, myself included, are filled to the brim with rage and disgust at the war and at many other aspects of the Bush regime's conduct in office, but sadly, our fury something our media and political elites don't seem to get. Bugliosi's book expresses some of that outrage for us, and its success might even make some of our elites sit up and take notice of it for a change. And who knows, by making such an extreme argument -- that Bush should be tried for murder -- Bugliosi may make some of the milder alternatives like impeachment, which seem so unlikely right now, look more and more like serious, viable alternatives.
I'll close by posting some of the Youtubes of Bugliosi that I linked to earlier. First, here's part 4 of his talk, in which Bugliosi lays out some of the overwhelmingly persuasive evidence that Bush led our country into war under false pretenses.
I found this section of Bugliosi's talk (part 5), on Bush the sociopath, to be especially chilling and powerful. Bugliosi points out that throughout the length of the miserable parade of death and suffering he initiated, "George Bush smiled through it all."
"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! . . . That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain" -- rarely have these bitter words wrung more true.
Read entire article at The G Spot (blog)
One of the most memorable cinematic experiences I've had in the past several was the brilliant neorealist Romanian drama, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The film tells the harrowing tale of a young woman who helps her friend obtain an illegal back alley abortion in Ceausescu-era Romania. In the final scene, the two women are having a somber dinner together. One of the young women starts to talk about the terrifying ordeal they have just experienced, but her friend cuts her off, saying "Let's never talk about this again."
Those are the haunting final words of the film. And yet, of course, the entire film gives the lie to those words, because above all else, it's about the importance of speaking out, and documenting the horrors of a despotic and criminal political regime. Bearing witness to such crimes is, after all, the crucial first step towards apportioning responsibility for them, and towards creating a just, humane and democratically accountable society.
Ever since I saw that film, I've been haunted by that final scene, and especially by those words: "Let's never talk about this again." Because my greatest fear about the Bush era is that many Americans, and particularly our media and political elites, are going to want to pretend it never happened. That whole business of going to war with Iraq on the basis of brazen, baldfaced lies? The unspeakable torture at Abu Ghraib? The illegal detentions at Guantanamo? The criminal negligence before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina? The unconstitutional surveillance of countless law-abiding American citizens? The corrupt, profiteering war contractors? The U.S. Attorneys scandal? The stolen election that kicked off this whole tragedy? Let's just forget about all that, please.
It seems not only possible, but highly likely, that none of those crimes and scandals will be fully investigated, and few if any of the people responsible for them will be held accountable. For one thing, Barack Obama has made it abundantly clear that he has no interest in getting to the bottom of the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration. For brother Barack, it's all about "the audacity of hope" and "healing" and "let us transcend the politics of division." It's extremely depressing that Obama the former professor of constitutional law refuses to so much as hint that the Bush regime has provoked a constitutional crisis and that we need to find a way to resolve it.
But if we let this gang of criminals off scot-free, I believe it would be a tragic mistake. It’s vital for the health of our democracy that Bush and company be held accountable in some meaningful way. Otherwise their behavior in office will set a horrible new precedent – “defining deviancy down," in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's words. And next time out those sons of bitches will push the boundaries even further.
We’ve seen it happen in our lifetime. Every two-term Republican President we’ve had from Nixon on has provoked a constitutional crisis: Watergate, Iran-contra, and now the Bush scandals. We seem to have learned nothing from any of these crises – except that the Republicans have learned to be a lot smarter about covering up their crimes. Worse, you see the same people who were discredited in previous Republican criminal regimes coming back again and again. Karl Rove, for example, got his start as a teenage dirty trickster during the Nixon administration. Even people like John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams, who were convicted of crimes connected to the Iran-contra scandal, came back to serve in high-level positions in the Bush administration!
That is seriously fucked up. And I’m sickened by the idea of these bastards once again getting away with it. It reminds me of the lines from that great Watergate-era Bob Dylan song, “Hurricane” – “All the criminals in their coats and their ties / Are free to drink martinis, and watch the sun rise.” Jesus, what a bitter and depressing image. But you just know it’s going to happen.
There are however, several alternatives to head-in-the-sand denial about this. I believe the most appropriate response to the abuses of the Bush administration would be impeachment, and Dennis Kucinich, God bless him, recently submitted articles of impeachment against George W. Bush to the House Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, though, we've been assured that impeachment is "off the table" -- thanks, Nancy and Harry!
Another possibility, which has been advocated by Mark Schmitt and which I also support, is transitional justice, aka a truth and reconciliation commission. Such a commission would not have the power to indict anyone, but would be able to deliver subpoenas and grant limited immunity, and would be empowered to fully investigate the crimes and misdeeds of the Bush era and make recommendations on how to avoid such abuses in the future. Unfortunately, though, this solution has also garnered little support.
A third option would be to prosecute Bush and other administration officials for war crimes. As Scott Horton recently explained, while this almost certainly will not happen in the U.S., it's likely to happen elsewhere in the world, should indictable officials travel to Europe or other places unlikely to grant them immunity. I support these efforts at international justice as well, but I would strongly prefer that America, rather than some international court or another nation, deal with the crimes of Bush et al. The prosecution of American officials by non-Americans would likely result in a nationalist backlash here in the U. S. of A., which ultimately might raise questions about the legitimacy of the prosecution, and could damage international courts as an institution. On the other hand, though, prosecuting the Bushies might deter future potential war criminals, and may also help Americans realize that what the Bush administration has done has indeed been a grotesque violation of international laws and norms.
Up to now, I thought those three options -- impeachment, a truth and reconciliation commission, or prosecution for war crimes -- were the only alternatives to doing nothing. But recently I became aware of a fourth option. Author and former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has written a new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which advocates just that (the murder victims alluded to in the title being the casualties of the Iraq War).
The book, which was published on May 26th, has become a phenomenon. It's currently #24 on Amazon, where it has already garnered 98 customer reviews and an average rating of four stars. It's also been on the New York Times best seller list for three weeks, where it's currently #14.
This is in spite of a virtual black-out in the mainstream media. Bugliosi hasn't snagged any television interviews, and he's been on very few radio shows. The only advertising for the book has been on the internet. To my knowledge, none of the liberal blogs I visit regularly has so much as mentioned the book. Nor have there been any reviews that I know of in any mainstream publications. When I planned this post Sunday night I was ready to write that the book has gotten zero mentions in the mainstream press, but I woke this morning to discover that the New York Times has, at long last, run a story about the book.
And btw, I just love this quote from Newsweek editor John Meachum, about why he thinks the mainstream media has almost completely ignored this book: “I think there’s a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there,” says Meacham. Riiiiiight. There have just been, like, so many serious, detailed discussions in the mainstream media about the abuses of the Bush regime, and all the possible legal and public policy responses that could be pursued to hold the administration accountable.
A little about Bugliosi: he is very much a mainstream figure and not a crank. He's most famous for prosecuting Charles Manson for the murders of Sharon Tate and others, and he wrote a famous book about this, Helter Skelter. He's also written other true crime books about subjects like the O.J. Simpson trial (which he argues the prosecution screwed up pretty thoroughly) and the assassination of JFK (he's no conspiracy theorist -- his massive book on that subject argues that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone).
I haven't read Bugliosi's book, but I have read a brief excerpt from it, and also the Times piece and this transcript of a Democracy Now! interview with Bugliosi. In addition, I've viewed a talk Bugliosi gave about the book which apparently is supposed to run on CSPAN, which you can find via Youtube: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.
The gist of Bugliosi's argument is that George W. Bush knowingly led us to war under false pretenses, and thus is criminally responsible for the deaths of the 4,000+ American service men and women who have died in the Iraq conflict (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have also died as a result of the war). According to Bugliosi, any district attorney in the country has the legal authority to put Bush on trial for murder, so long as an American soldier from their district died fighting in the war in Iraq.
What should we make of all this? I strongly believe that George W. Bush and most likely Dick Cheney are morally guilty of murder, and that Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, and others are at the very least guilty of being accessories to that crime. And I for one think Bush and Cheney deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars for their unforgivable crime of sending so many to their deaths for no discernible reason other than the egos and greed of their leaders.
But believing that the Bush regime deserves to be held criminally liable in the abstract doesn't mean it would be practicable or worth it in reality. For one thing, being morally guilty (which I believe Bush is) is not the same as being guilty under the law. Also, in one sense, all it would take to bring Bush to trial is one determined prosecutor. But for a prosecution to be successful, and for the charges to stick, I think there'd need to be a broad national consensus that prosecution is the right thing to do, and right now that certainly doesn't seem to be the case. I seriously doubt that Bush will ever be brought up on charges (although murder of course does not have a statute of limitations, and I suppose it's conceivable that, years from now, public opinion will change about this).
As a practical strategy, then, Bugliosi's book is of little value. But I believe it's useful in other ways. First, Bugliosi does us all a service by carefully, methodically laying out the facts about how the Bush regime sold the war. Those facts are damning, and the brazen cynicism with which Bush & Co. sold the war, as well as the bloodthirsty zeal which drove them, still have the power to shock. Though this information has been publicly available for a while, it's still relatively little known, so I think Bugliosi is doing an admirable job of educating the public here.
Secondly, I appreciate what Bugliosi is doing in terms of a potential Overton window effect. Millions of Americans, myself included, are filled to the brim with rage and disgust at the war and at many other aspects of the Bush regime's conduct in office, but sadly, our fury something our media and political elites don't seem to get. Bugliosi's book expresses some of that outrage for us, and its success might even make some of our elites sit up and take notice of it for a change. And who knows, by making such an extreme argument -- that Bush should be tried for murder -- Bugliosi may make some of the milder alternatives like impeachment, which seem so unlikely right now, look more and more like serious, viable alternatives.
I'll close by posting some of the Youtubes of Bugliosi that I linked to earlier. First, here's part 4 of his talk, in which Bugliosi lays out some of the overwhelmingly persuasive evidence that Bush led our country into war under false pretenses.
I found this section of Bugliosi's talk (part 5), on Bush the sociopath, to be especially chilling and powerful. Bugliosi points out that throughout the length of the miserable parade of death and suffering he initiated, "George Bush smiled through it all."
"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! . . . That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain" -- rarely have these bitter words wrung more true.