Petraeus and the Rule of Law

When Petraeus was given the top post in Iraq, I was skeptical about him. My feeling at the time was that we needed to get out, the sooner the better. Petraeus, on the other hand, was gearing up to fight a counterinsurgency, which meant that we would be in Iraq for an indefinite amount of time.

A few weeks ago Thomas Ricks spoke at Amazon. Since then I've been reading The Gamble, Ricks' follow up to Fiasco, his scathing critique of the Iraq war. The Gamble has really changed my opinion of both Petraeus and the surge. It's a good read--I highly recommend it.

Anyway, today I saw a quote from Petraeus that only increased my respect for him, particularly the second paragraph.

   What I do support is what has been termed the responsible closure of Gitmo. Gitmo has caused us problems, there's no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activity since 9/11 and again Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard... I don't think we should be afraid of our values we're fighting for, what we stand for. And so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to operationalize them in how we carry out what it is we're doing on the battlefield and everywhere else...

   So one has to have some faith, I think, in the legal system. One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law. When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

It's really amazing to see that quote from someone who's in a position to understand the danger to American lives, typically the justification for ignoring, subverting, and trampling the rule of law outright. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, Congress has passed a law allowing Obama not to comply with the Freedom of Information Act and release photos of detainees, because even though the photos are "not particularly sensational" they will nevertheless "put our troops in greater danger."

To me, that argument doesn't appear to hold a lot of water. I honestly don't understand Obama's interest in covering up the crimes of his predecessor, unless it's meant to reinforce policies that dramatically increase Executive power. I don't point this out of the sake of liberal outrage. I don't consider it surprising that those in power seek to consolidate it, whether it's Dick Cheney or Barack Obama.

Yesterday, Jenny sent me a quote that perfectly describes this problem:

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." --Plato

I believe that's true, especially when the people in question are able to interpret and re-write the laws at will.

Frankly, it's been a depressing experience to watch Cheney & Bush run roughshod over the Constitution for eight years, only to have Obama come in and do the same. Still, I find Petraeus's quote inspiring. It points to a lofty ideal, something worth believing in, even if we're very far from it, and the way forward isn't always clear.