President George W. Bush repeatedly says that he wants to “bring the terrorists to justice,” yet the extra-legal prison at Guantanamo by its very existence denies his statements.

Yes, I am being deliberately provocative, but before you tune out, think for a moment about what constitutes “justice” by any conventionally accepted definition.

Justice is intimately related to the rule of law, and an established order of courts to administer those laws.

If you dispute that the prison at Guantanamo Bay was built specifically to be outside of the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, your views are not worthy of a serious discussion, so please stop wasting your and my time and cease reading now.

For those of you who acknowledge reality, where exactly is “bringing terrorists to justice” in holding those who have been accused of being terrorists in a prison constructed explicitly to be extra-legal?

I write “those who have been accused of being terrorists” rather than using the administration-preferred terminology of “those who have been caught in combat against the United States” because it can be easily shown that many (if not most) of those now in the prison at Guantanamo were NOT caught on some battlefield but instead brought to US forces to gain some kind of reward, monetary or otherwise. Note the silence of those on the right-wing who have requested a “blogswarm” to analyze the recently released transcripts of the “tribunals” held to determine the status of the prisoners, proceedings where the accused were not allowed to confront accusers, and often where the accused were not even allowed to know what supposed “evidence” existed against them.

This is justice?

If you agree it is, then I am curious how you yourself would fare in such a system, especially if you had done something to piss off your neighbors.

Wasn’t this kind of governmental arbitrariness when it comes to the rule of law exactly what we were in opposition to in the Cold War? That is what I recall…

I am not arguing some partisan point of view, because if the Democrats were worth anything, they would have pursued this issue (among others) far more vigorously using arguments based upon fundamental principals rather than the weak, partisan attacks they have used to date.

The Democrats are just as morally bankrupt as the party in power, but neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are as impoverished in principles as the administration itself, which has rejected anything associated with what I understood the Republican Party to stand for.

Many who wish to prove a point like to say “we are at war!”

Many who wish to gain some kind of political advantage construct arguments upon foundations of straw (as in straw-men they construct to knock down).

If we are at war, by our actions in this war we define who we are as a culture and a society.

Are you proud of the actions we have taken so far?

Abu Ghirab…

Guantanamo…

Extraordinary rendition to prisons used by the former Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellite states…

This is what the rest of the world sees.

Are we truly seeking justice, or vengeance?

Recall the old proverb, if you seek vengeance, first dig two graves.

Who writes the history?

The winners of the conflicts.

Who won the Cold War?

The US, a nation that held to certain standards despite staring in the face of complete annihilation.

Now, we are confronted by forces which are mosquitos in comparison with those we fought in the Second World War, much less those of the former USSR.

Yet we shit in our pants every time a conflict arises between essential liberty and security, quaking in our boots until security wins out over that liberty, proving we deserve neither.

Are we out for justice, or for vengeance?

The answer to that question will help determine who we truly are in this War of Definition.

Technorati Tags: commentary, fundamentals, opinion