Did the Bush Administration Look the Other Way on War Crimes in Afghanistan?

That the U.S. may have worked with and supported a war criminal in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 does not surprise me, but that doesn't render this story any less depressing:

After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations.

American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups — because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A. and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, in which General Dostum had served as a defense official.

Dostum is accused of having overseen the murders of hundreds and perhaps thousands of Taliban prisoner of war deaths. The report mentions FBI documents from 2003 in which detainees back up the allegations of being crammed into overstuffed containers and left to die or being shot. Dostum himself admits that there were around 200 under his watch, but that they were due to "combat wounds and disease." And satellite pictures and human rights groups have uncovered evidence of a massive grave in the area.

All of this combines to paint a grim picture of the actions of a man the U.S. openly supported during the Bush administration. Which of course brings the question around to Bush officials: if the administration was paying and openly supporting a war criminal, and if that war criminal gets convicted, could Bush officials be more likely to face charges? Of course, the landscape of this case could change, but right now, it doesn't seem like Bush or Cheney are directly tied to Dostum. Even if the administration announced its diplomatic support for a war criminal, that (unfortunately) doesn't translate into being charged as a criminal oneself, as the U.S. has proven time and again in the second half of the 20th century.

But things get a bit chippier once we get into the Department of Defense, under Rumsfeld at the time.

In 2002, Physicians for Human Rights asked Defense Department officials to open an investigation and provide security for its forensics team to conduct a more thorough examination of the gravesite. “We met with blanket denials from the Pentagon,” recalls Jennifer Leaning, a board member with the group. “They said nothing happened.”

Pentagon spokesmen have said that the United States Central Command conducted an “informal inquiry,” asking Special Forces personnel members who worked with General Dostum if they knew of a mass killing by his forces. When they said they did not, the inquiry went no further.

“I did get the sense that there was little appetite for this matter within parts of D.O.D.,” said Marshall Billingslea, former acting assistant defense secretary for special operations, referring to the Department of Defense.

I admit openly that I don't know enough of the details of international law to fully know what constitutes a "cover-up" of a known war crime, but this does seem to be pushing the envelope of the definition of a "cover-up." Blanket denials to investigate the matter independently and taking at face value the word of people who worked together with the alleged war criminal in order to close the investigation look suspect, to put it lightly. What role, if any, Donald Rumsfeld may have had in this is unclear for now, but one can't help but think he knew something, given that one of his deputy secretaries, Paul Wolfowitz, was more than aware of the problems:

Another former defense official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, recalled that the prisoner deaths came up in a conversation with Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense at the time, in early 2003.

“Somebody mentioned Dostum and the story about the containers and the possibility that this was a war crime,” the official said. “And Wolfowitz said we are not going to be going after him for that.”

In an interview, Mr. Wolfowitz said he did not recall the conversation. However, Pentagon documents obtained by Physicians for Human Rights through a Freedom of Information Act request confirm that the issue was debated by Mr. Wolfowitz and other officials

Again, it's no surprise that Wolfowitz's stench would be attached to this particular case - he was actively involved in some of the darkest parts of the Bush administration's foreign policy. The documents confirmed by the FIA request indicate Wolfowitz knew exactly what had happened and what the allegations were, and was simply not interested in going after Dostum for the crimes. Given that position, plus the "blanket denials" the Pentagon issued, Wolfowitz comes out looking particularly bad. It seems to early to say if he looks "war criminal" bad, but if nothing else, he is attached to yet another despicable act of support for an open criminal, all in the name of furthering the Bush administration's misguided, inept, and downright destructive foreign policies.

Of course, if this case gains greater traction, the wingnut talking points are easy to predict: "It was a state of war! After 9/11! The Taliban was teh evil!" Many may agree with this, but it doesn't take away from a central tenet codified in such quaint documents like the Geneva conventions: "war criminals" of any stripe are tried and sentenced for their crimes in courts. They are not summarily executed, and they are certainly not thrown into overcrowded containers to slowly die (if they aren't shot) and then be dumped in a mass grave. What Dostum's men did, with or without his orders (and it would seem from the report that he was more than aware of those actions), constitutes a violation of the Geneva conventions and a war crime.

It's too soon to know where this will end up - probably at most with Dostum facing some level of ostracization, but not enough to be completely deprived of any power. I'd like to be proven wrong, but this doesn't seem like the kind of thing that will snowball a la the Pinochet case. And as for those in the administration who tied themselves, directly or indirectly, to this kind of war criminal, it will mark just one more file in the case that should be filed against the Bush Administration's own criminals, but never will be.

Photos Don't Lead to Anti-American Sentiment; Torture Leads to Anti-American Sentiment

Some new photos from Abu Ghraib have come out, and, well....no need to mince words: they're fucked up. We all know we torture(d) under the Bush regime, and it's not like we didn't know about Abu Ghraib. Still, seeing men covered in shit, cuffed into contorted positions, and left to die is no less outrageous. And Obama wants to hold off publishing more images because they "could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops"?

You know what else endangers U.S. troops and stokes anti-American sentiment? Going to wars we have no business being in, and treating prisoners the way we treated Iraqis in Abu Ghraib and detainees in Guantanamo (and who knows where else). So fuck Bush for getting us into this mess, and if American military leaders aren't ready for the international backlash, well....you should have not followed orders from Rumsfeld and put an end to this crap before it got this far, and not only when documentary evidence and photos became public. No amount of justice or indignity can address what these people have done, but still, it must be said.

Shame on all of them, from Bush down to the lowliest soldier involved in this ordeal.

Did Bush Speak at Columbia Today?

People are outraged that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a speech today at Columbia University. I suspect that virtually no one would care if Ahmadinejad hadn't made his horrible remarks about Jews and the Holocaust, but that's another issue. The New York Times is featuring this comment by angry Columbia alum Dr. Stephen Steinlight:

"As a 1970 graduate of Columbia College, Columbia University, I’m profoundly ashamed of the University for extending this invitation to an exemplar of monstrous evil and a practitioner of torture and a supporter of terrorism.”

I am very sad to note that if I didn't know Ahmadinejad wasn't speaking today, I could easily have mistaken this statement as Steinlight objecting to a George W. Bush speech. And the sad thing is that I have every reason to believe that the statement fits Bush to a tee.

On a related note, check out this Philip Roth video. Roth talks about contemporary politics and compares Bush and Ahmadinejad.

Are We Also Taking Names, Mr. President?

Building on Trend's earlier discussion of Bush's idiocy this morning, I want to puke after reading about W telling an Australian reporter that "we're kicking ass" in Iraq.

This makes sense. Bush is still seeing this war as his own personal video game. He gets to move the troops around, change leaders, set policies, and then watch people die. He gets to go to Iraq sometimes and have his generals show him really big holes in the ground where we've blown shit up. That's super cool! Then he gets to put on his military outfit and hold a gun. Rad! What a good time. Then he can go back to Washington and talk about how much fun he had playing with his soldiers!!!

Meanwhile, seven more U.S. troops were killed in Iraq yesterday.

Is it 2009 yet?

Generally, comments on stories like this from the White House almost seem almost futile, aside from the reminder that, as the Onion put it in 2002, "They say people get the government they deserve, but I don't recall knife-raping any retarded nuns".

Yet there are two extremely disturbing things here. The first is, Bush is presently gladly declassifying documents from the last 3 years of our ongoing "war on terror" to say, "look, the terrerrists could attack!", even while historians still can't get access to various documents (the Iran-Contra affair comes to mind) because of "national security". So the administration is giving the message that documents are only to be declassified when they aid the administration in its ongoing, corrupt war, but any actual declassification for historical research is not going to happen. No surprise here, but it's still infuriating.

Secondly, let's pretend that Bush's contention that bin Laden admitted to wanting to set up base in Iraq in 2005 is true (and it very well may not be). That would never have happened had we not still been there in the first place. This isn't a support for Hussein - 2005 was two years after Bush went to war in Iraq. Had we never gone to war, or had we actually had a plan for stability after we got in, then it wouldn't have been so unstable for bin Laden to set up camp in the first place (again, IF we accept this claim as true). But of course, this doesn't matter to Bush - it's just one more in the increasingly awful and baseless attempts to tie bin Laden to Iraq any way the administration can.

Latin Americans weren't born yesterday

If one wants to understand why Bush's rhetoric on his Latin America trip has rung hollow on most ears here, one only needs to look here to see how popular opinion, both from the left and the right, is not simply distrustful of Bush, but rather is simply unbelieving. It's bad when even one of your own senior administration officials, who is supporting you on this stuff, says “For close to 20 years of democratic processes and rhetoric about the benefits of democracy and free markets, the average person is waking up and saying, how’s my life gotten better?” (Short answer for the majority of those average persons: "it hasn't". Hence the growing gaps in income and the leftward shift in Latin America in the last 5 years.)

Bush in Brazil: A tale of two media

As has been making news both in the U.S. and here in Brazil, Bush's visit to Brazil has (not surprisingly) led to protests and public displays of disapproval. However, the news coverage between the two countries has been vastly different.

Most notable is the complete absence of Lula in any of the discussion in the American news media, which, as I've commented before, is nothing new, given American journalism's interest in telling the story of the visit in terms of Bush-vs.-Chavez. By contrast, here in Brazil, Lula is front and center, as some members of the PT criticize the visit of Bush (though must such criticisms are muted - after all, Lula is the president, and thus, as the leader of Brazil, has to meet with both popular and unpopular political leaders). The portrayals of popular "fears" of a US-Brazil alliance are highly overblown in the U.S. media, and some of Lula's proclamations in public are not making any news in the states, such as his accurate declaration that American subsidies are "nefarious," primarily because they try to undermine Brazilian private and state-run businesses for exploitation by foreign investors. Given the history of free-market economics and American "aid" since neoliberalism (and really since well before the Taft administration), such subsidies generally have screwed over Latin America. And that's putting it lightly.

Also, Bush's visit comes across in American journalism as a goodwill mission meant to bolster Brazil's and America's ethanol production, but this is actually quite misleading. As I mentioned, Brazil is doing just fine in its ethanol production (8 out of every 10 new cars runs on ethanol here). Brazil doesn't need Bush quite so much as Bush apparently needs Brazil (though you'd never hear ANY American politician or bureaucrat say as much). As the Times hints, this visit is meant not so much for goodwill as to undermine Chavez's petro-economic influence in the region, and the only way to directly hit at that influence is through alternative fuels. Fortunately, the Brazilian media has for the most part viewed this current spectacle for what it really is - a weak attempt at PR from the American president in an effort to look like he cares about the environment and to try to combat Chavez. Unfortunately for Bush, the media here, both rightist and leftist, wasn't born yesterday, and the country seems to almost uniformly recognize that this visit is too little, too late.

As for the logistics of the visit, once again, the media have taken two very different tacts. The American media (particularly the NY Times, CNN, the Washington Post, etc.) refer primarily to the protesters and the anti-bush graffiti (which isn't news for two reasons - first, it just isn't newsworth, and second, it isn't anything new - when I lived in Costa Rica at the beginning of 2002, there was graffiti calling Bush an "assassain", and this was before the Iraq war). However, on the Brazilian side, it has been more concerned with the logistics of getting the president around São Paulo. São Paulo's already experiencing a bit of a "traffic crisis" (last week, there were 100 miles of stopped and slowed traffic throughout the city, and when I was there, I spent an hour on a bus just to get to the subway). Naturally, then, the media here is using the visit more as a question/analysis of the infrastructural complications not just facing São Paulo from the point of view of logistics, but in terms of larger infrastructural issues facing the city.

Overall (and this should come as no surprise to me, yet it is disappointing), the media is really mishandling this story, treating Brazil simply as a generic stage for Bush to wage his anti-Chavez, pro-U.S. PR campaign. There is none of the mention, analysis, or reference to things actually going on here in Brazil beyond the rowdy protesters, which is the narrative that generally accompanies a Bush visit to anywhere - instead of focusing on the actual implications of deals that governments are trying to put into place and their possible consequences, we hear about more people in the international community angry at the U.S. government and/or population (they are often unfairly equated). I'd hope that maybe the media could actually include small things like, oh, the leaders of other countries, but I'm guessing I'd be wasting my time.