Spain’s ‘universal jurisdiction’ power play
As the U.S. government’s myriad intrusions radically transform our economy, few seem to notice the dangerous progress of the international Left’s assault on American sovereignty. Without firing a shot, transnational progressives are further along than the Soviet Union could ever have reasonably hoped to be, notwithstanding Lenin’s prescient understanding that we would willingly participate in our own demise. In the Left’s sights is the very concept of the American people’s right of self-defense.
The New York Times reports that a Spanish court is considering filing human-rights charges, and issuing arrest warrants, against former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and five other Bush administration officials. The putative defendants did not carry out a single belligerent act, conduct a single interrogation, or direct the operation of any military or intelligence agents actually engaged in hostilities.
What these former White House, Justice Department, and Pentagon attorneys did do was to wrestle with complex, largely unsettled questions about the parameters of American law. Unlike their demagogic critics, they were engaged in a serious attempt to set the margins of permissible coercion, under wartime circumstances, against detainees who flout the laws of war, who are not covered by the Geneva Conventions’ prisoner-of-war provisions, who are schooled in counter-interrogation techniques, who had just murdered nearly 3,000 Americans in a sneak attack, and who were promising more of the same.
Andrew C. McCarthy, a longtime friend of the Center, was the recipient of the Mightier Pen Award in 2008.
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