MB Civic

Editorial | July 19, 2006 | The Boston Globe

PRESIDENT BUSH’S response to the Supreme Court rebuke of the administration’s kangaroo court tribunals for Guantanamo prisoners has been to ask Congress to grant them legal status. The House and Senate should instead insist that the administration follow the court’s ruling. Detainees should be prosecuted through military court martial proceedings, which contain substantial protections for the accused.

This is the position of Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. Graham, a darling of the right for leading the Clinton impeachment when he was in the House, wants the United States to adhere to the Geneva Conventions not just because the Supreme Court said it must. Failure to do so harms the United States in the eyes of the world and breaks from US tradition.

Graham brings to the issue six years of experience in the military Judge Advocate General Corps. That kind of background has been lacking in an administration that stumbled into the Iraqi war with just one leader — the relatively isolated Colin Powell — with deep military experience.

The tribunals favored by Bush do not guarantee defendants the right to attend their own trial or be confronted by sworn testimony, not just written statements from witnesses. The tribunals violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which requires that any prisoner trials include the legal rights “recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

By asking Congress to give legal authority to its military tribunals without due process rights, the Bush administration is asking it to override the Geneva Conventions. Legal experts cited by The New York Times’ Adam Liptak last week said Congress has the power to do this, but advised against it. “It would put us on the wrong side of history,” said Harold Hongju Koh, dean of Yale Law School. “Do we want to encourage the parliaments of every country in the world that want to abuse, humiliate, and torture our soldiers to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions?” Koh asked.

The administration might be pushing for Congress to rubberstamp the tribunals as a way to put opposing Democrats in the position of seeming to coddle terrorists afew months before the November elections. That makes it all the more important that principled Republicans like Graham standup for the Geneva Conventions, knowing full well the danger to US troops in future conflicts if other countries were to follow Bush’s lead.

The insurgents in Iraq are not adhering to the conventions, but this, sadly, is unlikely to be the nation’s last war. Congress should consider this issue in light of the nation’s past and its future, and not just with an eye to November.