Like father, like daughter. Liz Cheney is now fronting another one of the right wing’s outrageous smears. The issue at hand is the conduct of nine lawyers who, prior to their current service in the Department of Justice, represented detainees at Guantanamo. Cheney has dubbed them the “Gitmo Nine,” and openly questioned their patriotism. It seems that in the Alice in Wonderland logic of the extreme right, believing in American values is treason is you believe in them enough to act on them in unpopular cases.
Okay, folks. We’re supposed to be the good guys. We’re the good guys because we have a set of values that we believe are superior to the values of our enemies. That’s why they’re the bad guys. So we’re defending our American way of life, our democratic values, against people who don’t believe in them. Follow that so far? A central tenet of that way of life is the belief in a fair trial. That’s why it’s in the Constitution. We believe that people–no matter how heinous the crimes they might have committed– are entitled to know the charges against them, to face their accusers, to hear the evidence against them, and to mount a defense. That’s the only way we can truly decide if they’re guilty. Except, Cheney seems to believe, when we’ve already decided they’re guilty before we try them. Question: if we don’t believe that our own values apply when the issue is national defense, then what, exactly, are we defending?
The Bush administration did a great job of muddying the waters, refusing to clarify that the detainees at Guantanamo were ACCUSED terrorists. Most were not, in fact, captured on any battlefield. Many were turned in for bounty, the evidence against them dubious at best, completely fabricated at worst. Yet, the administration created a system of indefinite detention in which they had no rights, no access to counsel, no chance of proving their innocence, no legal recourse–a lifetime sentence of limbo. The lawyers who came to their defense persuaded the Supreme Court–a very conservative Supreme Court, I might add–that this system was untenable under our own laws.
Now the men and women who stood up, not for terrorists, but for the American system of justice, are being pilloried as traitors. The Cheney legacy of contempt for the principles this country allegedly stands for passes proudly to the next generation.
I found myself wondering how Cheney, Fox News & co. would have reacted to John Adams’ defense of the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre in 1770. As tensions escalated in the Colonies, a much-despised contingent of British troops was stationed in Boston. On March 5, a confrontation between colonists and the troops turned violent, with British soldiers killing five Americans. Twelve soldiers were arrested, eight ultimately coming to trial for murder. A young lawyer named John Adams was asked to defend them. Knowing how unpopular it would make him, he still accepted the job. He believed that it was essential to show that Americans could give their hated overseers a fair trial. He performed brilliantly, and his clients were ultimately acquitted.
Had he been hounded from government service by his critics, as Liz Cheney and friends are trying to do to the Guantanamo lawyers, that same John Adams would not have been available to negotiate desperately needed loans from foreign governments to keep the fledgling United States solvent, would not have been one of the intellectual fountainheads of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, someone else would have became the second President of the United States, and this country’s history would have been very, very different.
Well, I certainly learned something today. Thank you for the perspective and the history lesson.
Insightful as always, Ed. Do you see this as a return of McCarthyism, packaged in a different form perhaps?
With “Wrong-way” Bill Kristol behind her it is MUCH clearer that she’s insane. I’m so sick of preventing our enemies from destroying our way of life by destroying it for them.
In 1770, John Adams, a British subject living and working in the British colony of Massachusetts as a lawyer, defended in a British court the British soldiers that had fired into a crowd of British subjects in the British colonial city of Boston. He did this because he believed that all British subjects were protected under British laws and entitled to fair trials.
This was five years before the Siege of Boston that opened the Revolutionary War and made the British our sworn enemies, and six years before the people in the colonies started thinking of themselves as Americans.
Read David McCullough’s book ‘John Adams’ before you think of this cartoon as history.
I have read McCullough’s biography of John Adams, and other sources, as well. My point has nothing to do with the venue or the court system. It has to do with the courage of John Adams and the unpopularity of his defense of the British soldiers. The Boston massacre, in fact, was one of the seminal events that led to the Revolution. The British garrison in Boston was already deeply resented by 1770, and there was some difficulty in finding an attorney to represent them. Adams was subjected to a great deal of anger and abuse for his willingness to take the case, and Abigail worried for his safety. I stand by my argument that we as Americans must extend to all people under our control our value system and our legal protections, or those values have no meaning.
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I appreciate it.
First, I believe we do extend our value system to all people, under our control or not. If others in the world want what we have to offer, that is their gain (or loss if they choose other paths). This was the “idea” of America starting with the Founding Fathers. Lincoln summed it up best with, “…last best hope of Earth.”
Next, the fact that we have not executed captured terrorists in the field is an indication that we value life. The Geneva Convention makes it clear that we are not obligated to make a terrorist in civilian garb a prisoner of war, but we do anyway. In this, they are lucky to have been captured by us. I just don’t believe they should be treated better than the hundreds of thousands of soldiers we have captured on thousands of battlefields in all our wars. It makes no sense to me that an Al Qaeda terrorist has the right, under our Constitution, to a fair trial when the Germans, Italians, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Iraqis were made to sit around until those wars ended (or perform menial labor).
Lastly, I took offense to the second panel – it distorts history. The incident was an “All British” affair, just in the colonies instead of the home islands. British soldiers were notorious for firing on civilians and resented in London just as much as in Boston. Plus, it wasn’t as much a horrible massacre of innocent civilians as Sam Adams made it out to be. The mob had some responsibility for what happened too.
BTW, Sam Adams’ editorials were also seminal events leading to the war – maybe more so than the actual firing on the mob.
Eric–And your point is???
I’m guessing that Eric was addressing the caption “this country’s sworn enemies” and he is correct that was not the case in 1770. But I’m also not sure what his point was other than historical accuracy.
I totally disagree with his statement, though, that people in the colonies did not think of themselves as Americans before 1776. Even those that thought of themselves as loyal British subjects thought of themselves as Americans.
If his point was the notion Adams only believed in fair trials for British subjects at least we know his son, John Quincy Adamas believed that the Africans on the Armistad were entitled to a fair trial. Even if John Adams did think that, we have to remember that in those days “all men are created equal” meant “all white males who owned property”, although I think Abigail pretty much had him convinced that women otherwise.
I wish there was a way to edit after posting as my last sentence obviously needs “that women” struck out.
The colonists knew that they were British subjects living in the Americas; they thought of themselves as citizens of the colony where they lived, though. The “nationalist” thinking only came later with the Constitution.
Come on, Eric…
How on earth does this apply to the cartoon? The point of the cartoon doesn’t concern whether or not America was a single united country at this time of the Boston massacre, the point of it is that there were American values common to all the colonies at the time. That sentiment was the basis for the Declaration of Independence, signed 11 years before the Constitution, which included many of these values as the justification for seccession from GB. In fact, take a look at this line of the Declaration:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
And lay off the ad hominems. It only makes you seem more deluded.
Sorry – I’ll type s-l-o-w-e-r next time. Maybe that will help you.
The point is: The Law. When you are in this country, you are subject to the law; ignorance is no defense. When you travel and holiday in any other country, from Afghanistan to Zanzibar, you are subject to, The Law as well, whatever it is. Here, we have what we call The Constitution. England has a Magna Carta. Whether you are a citizen or a tourist, you are subject to, The Law. When you get into trouble, you are subject to, The Law. When in another country, and you are involved in a crime, the US State Department can help guide you, but they cannot circumvent, The Law. So, in this country, The Law is: you get representation in a felony case, free if you cannot afford it yourself. Lucky you. Nothing new here. The only thing new, actually, is used, in that Lizzie Borden Cheney, the non-Lesbian daughter of Dickless the Darth hiding in the shadows unconvicted felon war profiteer Chainee, is a re-hash of the last Congressional fear mongering hack, Joe McCarthy. Why are we wasting our efforts on this silliness when truly important issues are at stake? Oh, the stake has a purpose…
We have a few bad laws but mostly good laws. Either way, “The Law is The Law” and should apply to Anyone whom our country has jurisdiction over. That includes our alleged enemies. We should trust in our laws to come to the correct conclusions in court and if felt not correct then an appeal can be made.
If our country was to restrict lawyers to only those clients that we approve of, then where’s the justice? If our country allowed the court appointed lawyers to decide whether or not to take a particular case, then where’s the justice? Lawyers are allowed to defend anyone they chose unless appointed by the courts to defend someone and then they are required by law to defend that client to their best ability. Our laws speak to “Conflicts of Interest” in courts and there are procedures to follow and appeals can be made. Without a conflict of interest then there is no reason for any lawyer not to be involved in any case they choose without future reprisal from any government agency.
It’s funny how those that profess to be “Conservatives” mostly are afraid of our courts screwing up and letting our enemies go. Everyone feels some concern about the outcomes of the trials, but we should trust in our system and appeal if needed.