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Gunning for Gonzales: the Left will assail the attorney general-designate on detainee policy; he, and we, should stand firm

National Review, Dec 31, 2004 by Lee A. Casey, David B. Rivkin, Jr.

PRESIDENT BUSH'S nomination of Judge Alberto Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general will soon come before the Senate for its advice and consent, and there is going to be a battle royal. The Left is marshaling its forces to bloody Gonzales, and clearly hopes to deny him confirmation. The pretext for opposing this superbly qualified appointee will be his role, as White House counsel, in developing the administration's legal position on the classification and treatment of individuals captured in the War on Terror. The stakes in this battle are high: At issue may be nothing less than the future of American sovereignty.

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Ever since the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse photographs surfaced nearly a year ago, opponents of the Bush administration's policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have used those images in their ongoing effort to discredit the American legal position on "detainees." That position--which correctly denies captured al-Qaeda and Taliban members the rights and privileges granted to honorable prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions--was outlined by Gonzales, based on legal advice received from the Departments of Justice and State, in a memorandum to the president dated January 25, 2002. Gonzales explained in that memo that the United States is engaged in "a new kind of war" that is "not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop" for the Geneva Conventions. This "new paradigm," he concluded, "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, script (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments."

The "quaint" reference will undoubtedly be brought up over and over again during the judge's Senate hearings. In truth, Gonzales was being charitable. He could have used far harsher language to describe provisions that, were they applicable to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, would require the United States to provide detainees with amenities such as dormitories, kitchenettes, sports equipment, canteens, and a monthly pay allowance in Swiss francs--all while captured (or kidnapped) Americans are routinely butchered. It is hardly surprising that, while the administration preserved the core requirement of humane treatment for detainees captured in the War on Terror, it rejected calls to grant them POW status.

The Geneva POW Convention was one of four treaties negotiated after World War II, with the circumstances of that conflict in mind. It assumed that captured combatants would by and large be young men conscripted into mid-20th-century-type mass armies controlled by nation-states, which themselves were ready and able to comply with the basic rules of war. Neither the treaty's drafters, nor its terms, nor the governments that agreed to it contemplated the development of transnational terror organizations beyond the control of any state, motivated by religious zealotry and capable of delivering massive attacks on the civilian population.

Even so, the Geneva Conventions do not extend POW protections to captured enemy combatants who do not qualify as "lawful" or "privileged belligerents." At a minimum, this status requires a proper command structure, uniforms, carrying arms openly, and otherwise operating in accordance with the laws of war. Those laws forbid the purposeful targeting of civilians-the preferred tactic of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Iraqi "insurgents."

Although the administration's opponents have variously claimed that the Geneva Conventions do apply to such irregular "unlawful combatants"--either because such individuals are the "armed forces" of Afghanistan or because they are "civilians"--this was not the story 25 years ago. At that time, precisely because the law denies POW status to unlawful combatants, the Left made extraordinary efforts to legitimize the guerrilla tactics favored by "national liberation movements." The result was the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions, a treaty President Reagan rejected and which, as a result, does not bind the United States.

Undeterred by such legal niceties, the administration's critics have continued to demand that effective POW status be granted to captured terrorists or that they be treated like ordinary criminal defendants, entitled to a speedy trial before a civilian court. The critics have also inaccurately accused the United States of "torture." This claim is based on the use of "stress" methods of interrogation, such as isolation, exposure to noise, and standing for up to four hours. This is the genesis of the second accusation against Gonzales: that he commissioned a memorandum, dated August 1, 2002, deliberately defining down the concept of "torture."

Gunning for Gonzales: the Left will assail the attorney general-designate on detainee policy; he, and we, should stand firm

National Review, Dec 31, 2004 by Lee A. Casey, David B. Rivkin, Jr.

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