Bush Does Not Get It (Part 2): The Assault on the Geneva Convention undermines the War on Terror

In the New York Times (December 30) Andrew Rosenthal claims that ‘the Bush administration's assault on the Geneva Conventions’ has led not only to ‘the brutal treatment of prisoners at American military jails’ but has also ‘caused collateral damage…to the legal offices of the executive branch and the military’. Rosenthal argues that ‘To get around the inconvenience of the Geneva Conventions, the administration twisted the roles of the legal counsels of the White House, the Pentagon and the Justice Department beyond recognition. Once charged with giving unvarnished advice about whether political policies remained within the law, the Bush administration's legal counsels have been turned into the sort of cynical corporate lawyers who figure out how to make something illegal seem kosher - or at least how to minimize the danger of being held to account'.

Rosenthal might have added that it has also been a propaganda victory on a quite spectacular scale for the terrorists and Ba’athists. Before he retires Colin Powell might remind President Bush of something he, Powell, said in 2001 about the collapse of the Soviet empire ‘We beat them on the field of ideas; we contained them on the field of battle but we beat them on the field of ideas…Even in places like Iraq and Iran and elsewhere, I believe these forces are irresistible’. Democracy’s wars with Totalitarianism are never won any other way. When that is remembered, the war on terror will turn. (AJ)