Bush's Assault on Freedom: What's to Stop Him?
Paul Craig Roberts
Tuesday, July 4, 2006


On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-3 decision ruled that President Bush's effort to railroad tortured Guantanamo Bay detainees in kangaroo courts "violates both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions."

Better late than never, but it sure took a long time for the checks and balances to call a halt to the illegal and unconstitutional behavior of the executive.

The Legal Times quotes David Remes, a partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling: "At the broadest level, the court has rejected the basic legal theory of the Bush administration since 9/11 – that the president has the inherent power to do whatever he wants in the name of fighting terrorism without accountability to Congress or the courts."

Perhaps the court's ruling has more far-reaching implications. In finding Bush in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the ruling may have created a prima facie case for charges to be filed against Bush as a war criminal.

Many readers have concluded that Bush assumed the war criminal's mantle when he illegally invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The United States itself established the Nuremberg standard that it is a war crime to launch a war of aggression. This was the charge that the chief U.S. prosecutor brought against German leaders at the Nuremberg trials.

The importance of the Supreme Court's decision, however, is that a legal decision by America's highest court has ruled Bush to be in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

There are many reasons to impeach Bush. His flagrant disregard for international law, U.S. civil liberties, the separation of powers, public opinion and human rights associate Bush with the worst tyrants of the 20th century. It is true that Bush has not yet been able to subvert all the institutions that constrain his executive power, but he and his band of Federalist Society lawyers have been working around the clock to eliminate the constraints that the U.S. Constitution and international law place on executive power.

Republicans are "outraged" that "liberal judges" have prevented Bush from "protecting us from terrorists." In the U.S. Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist said that Republicans will propose legislation to enable Bush to get around the Supreme Court's decision. Sen. Arlen Spector, R-Pa., already has a bill ready. What sense does it make to talk about "liberal opposition" when liberal Republicans like Spector are falling all over themselves to kow-tow to Bush?

Americans are going to have to decide which is the greater threat: terrorists or the Republican Party's determination to shred American civil liberties and the separation of powers in the name of executive power and the "war on terror."

The rest of the world has already reached a decision. A Harris Poll recently conducted for the Financial Times found that the populations of our European allies – Britain, France, Italy and Spain -- view the United States as the greatest threat to global stability.

A Pew Foundation survey released the same week found that 60 percent of the British believe that Bush has made the world less safe and that 79 percent of the Spanish oppose Bush's war on terror.

Republicans and conservatives equate civil liberties with homosexual marriage, abortion, racial quotas, flag burning, banning of school prayer and crime resulting from a lax punishment of criminals. This is partly the fault of the ACLU and left-wingers, who go to extremes to make a point. But it is also the fault of conservatives, who believe that their government is incapable of evil deeds.
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