BEIRUT — An important global dynamic today bridges the worlds of politics, morality and violence. Societies are grappling with the challenge of how to hold accountable the political leaders who are accused of various degrees of criminal behavior, including war crimes, torture — even genocide or crimes against humanity. The most outrageous cases are tried in special international tribunals or at the International Criminal Court. Other cases reflect more contested situations and raise critical issues of the universality of ethics and law.
Two cases last week in the United States and Israel are interesting in this respect, because these two countries remind us twice a week — and more often in war time and on patriotic national holidays — that they are democracies whose values should be spread around the world. Well, the world at the receiving end of their moral munificence frequently asks an important question to which it has yet to receive a clear answer:
Are the United States and Israel subject to the same standards of accountability for their behavior as everyone else in the world, or do they operate at a higher plane of impunity when it comes to using violence to kill, torture, and invade or occupy other peoples?
The relevant Israeli case saw Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni cancel a trip to London because an arrest warrant had been issued for her by pro-Palestinian activists. They accused her of war crimes and crimes against humanity for her alleged role during Israel’s military assault on Gaza one year ago, when she was foreign minister. They want her to stand trial on charges that her decisions led to the deaths of over 750 Palestinian civilians.
Livni’s cancellation follows a similar case two months ago, when Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon did not travel to London on the advice of legal experts in his government, who warned him that he could possibly find himself arrested and put on trial for his part in a 2002 Israeli bombing raid against Gaza that killed 15 people (when he was armed forces chief of staff). Some Palestinians petitioned a court in London in September to arrest Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak for his role in the Gaza war, but that court decided that Barak enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
The fact that senior Israeli officials think twice about traveling abroad for fear of being indicted on war crimes charges is a positive development — if they are given a fair trial, and if the same standards of criminal culpability are used to assess the behavior of leaders in all other countries.
In the United States, courts similarly are weighing whether officials can or should be held accountable for their actions during the George W. Bush administration in cases of alleged torture and mistreatment of prisoners that the US captured during the “global war on terror.”
A US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco this week considered a case that claimed five victims of “extraordinary rendition” and torture were criminally mistreated. The court will decide whether to allow a full trial to take place, or accept arguments of the Bush and Obama administrations that the executive branch can stop any such legal cases on the basis of “national security” concerns.
Critics of the US government’s behavior argue that the courts are the last resort for limiting or ending the government’s use of kidnapping, secret detention, abuse and torture to address national security issues. Accountability, they argue, not impunity, is the appropriate response in this case. Various court levels in the United States offer slightly different responses. The Supreme Court seemed to support the government last week when it let stand a federal appeals court ruling that had dismissed a lawsuit by four British citizens at the Guantánamo Bay prison who accused the US government of wrongly arresting, detaining and mistreating them.
This line of thinking suggests that “enhanced interrogation techniques” can be used when the government feels the need to do so in the battle against terrorism. The charges accused the US government of using procedures like prolonged sleep and food deprivation, forcing prisoners into stress positions, sexual humiliation, death threats, simulated drowning (water-boarding), repeated beatings, extremes of hot and cold, forced nakedness, interrogations at gun point, menacing with unmuzzled dogs, and religious and racial harassment — actions that have been clearly documented in congressional reports and Justice Department memos. The issue is whether they are acceptable behavior, or criminal actions for which the officials who ordered them should be held accountable.
If strong, aggressive military powers like the United States and Israel remain above the law, then the law becomes meaningless for everyone else. Holding the US and Israel accountable like everyone else, according to a single, equitable standard of justice and behavior, is the best way to spread the democratic values they otherwise disdain when they claim to be immune from such accountability.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 21 December 2009
Word Count: 807
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