[NYTr] Murder: When the President Does It That Means It's Not Illegal

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Oct 6, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/bovard10062007.html

"When the President Does It That Means It's Not Illegal"

Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners?

By JAMES BOVARD

What is the common term for ordering soldiers to kill vast numbers of
innocent people?

A war crime.

But not when it is done on the command of the U.S. president.

Killing innocent foreigners seems to be a perk of the modern
presidency--akin to the band's playing "Hail to the Chief" when he
enters the room.

Bush is revving up the war threats against Iran. Seymour Hersh reported
in the current issue of the New Yorker that the administration is
advancing plans to bomb many targets in Iran. British newspapers have
confirmed that the Pentagon has a list of thousands of bombing targets.
Hardly anyone claims that Iran poses a threat to the United States.

Yet few people in Washington seem to dispute the president's right to
attack Iran. It is as if the presidential whim is sufficient to justify
blasting any foreign nation that does not kowtow to the commands of the
U.S. government.

Jack Goldsmith, a former top Bush appointee in the Justice Department
and now a Harvard Law professor, observes in his new book, The Terror
Presidency, "The president and the vice president always made clear
that a central administration priority was to maintain and expand the
president's formal legal powers." And the power to attack foreign
nations is one of the most valued prerogatives of today's Republicans.

Bush's top advisors--and especially the vice president--are devoted to
a Nixonian view of absolute power for the commander in chief. After he
was driven out of office in disgrace, Nixon told interviewer David
Frost in 1977, "When the president does it that means that it is not
illegal." Frost, somewhat dumbfounded, replied, "By definition?" Nixon
answered, "Exactly. Exactly."

This seems to be the attitude of Bush and his war planners towards
Tehran. Pentagon Deputy Assistant Secretary Debra Cagan recently told
several British Members of Parliament that "I hate all Iranians."
Perhaps Cagan got her position because of such prejudice towards
nations that Bush formally designated as "evil." At the same time that
Congress is considering hate-crime legislation, ethnic hatred may be
driving U.S. plans to slaughter Iranians.

For Bush, attacking Iran may simply be a question of checking off
another item on his final To Do list--or one more wild swing at making
himself a legacy. Bush told a biographer that, after he leaves office,
he looks forward to receiving "ridiculous" (in his words) speaking fees
of $75,000 per talk. He is also looking forward to putting in some time
on his "fantastic" Freedom Institute.

The fact that thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iranians might die
is irrelevant. Bush appears far more concerned about baseball
statistics than the body counts compiled by the U.S. military abroad.
The fact that many Americans could also die--either during the attack
or from Iranian retaliation on U.S. forces in Iraq--doesn't appear to
be costing Bush any sleep.

No American politician has ever been sentenced to death for ordering
U.S. soldiers to kill innocent foreigners. Such orders have gone out
many times--from the Philippines in the early 1900s, to Haiti in the
1910s, to Vietnam in the 1960s. There have been many other conflicts in
which American presidents rubber-stamped U.S. military rules of
engagement that guaranteed carnage among foreign women and children.

Americans cannot expect to have good presidents if presidents are
permitted to make themselves tsars. The president and his top officials
should face the same perils common citizens face when they are accused
of breaking the law. Seeing a president answer for his crimes would be
public education at its best. Consider how the subsequent course of
American foreign policy might have differed if Lyndon Johnson or
Richard Nixon had been tried, convicted in federal court, and punished
for committing war crimes.

Perhaps Bush thinks that starting another foreign war will help boost
demand for his speeches among groups that want to see U.S. forces kill
more Muslims. But if he cares about freedom as much as he claims, he
will cease acting as though he is above the law. And if Bush refuses to
restrain himself, Americans should remember the wisdom of Thomas
Jefferson: Sometimes the threat of a noose is the best way to keep the
peace.

[James Bovard serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom
Foundation and is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush
Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books. ]