Prisoners Straddle an Ideological Chasm
The New York Times
January 27, 2002
THE TREATMENT
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 —
The White House tried
mightily today to dismiss the
arguments about how the United
States treats captives of the war
in Afghanistan as an abstruse
argument among government
lawyers, rather than a
fundamental split between
America and its allies, or between
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other leaders of
President Bush's national security team.
But clearly, the dispute is over something deeper than
just legalisms.
There is an ideological aversion among leading members
of the administration — led by Vice President Dick
Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld —
to be bound by aging international treaties in an era of
new conflicts. And not for the first time, that view has
caused problems for Mr. Powell, whose job it is to keep a
fragile international coalition together for the war on
terror.
Mr. Cheney summed up his view of the prisoners held at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, quite succinctly on Friday:
"Nobody should feel defensive or unhappy about the
quality of treatment they've received," he told an audience
in Cincinnati, proclaiming that the captives are cared for
in a manner "consistent" with America's obligations under
the Geneva Conventions.
"It's probably better than they deserve," he added.
Mr. Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others
have contended that since the Taliban and Al Qaeda
fighters represented no legitimate government and fought
outside the rules, they should be considered "unlawful
combatants" undeserving of full protection under the
famed 1949 Geneva accord on the treatment of prisoners
of war.
Earlier this month, Mr. Bush agreed.
As the president's legal counsel, Albert Gonzales, wrote in
a memorandum on Friday, a decision to avoid invoking the
Geneva Conventions "preserves flexibility" as Mr. Bush
conducts the war. He appeared to be referring to the
ability to interrogate prisoners at length, in hopes of
getting them to reveal secrets of the terrorist organization,
but his meaning was not entirely clear.
Mr. Gonzales's memorandum, which leaked with
astonishing speed, recommended rejecting an unusual
request by Mr. Powell that Mr. Bush reconsider his
decision.
As they struggled to explain the disagreement, some aides
said that Mr. Bush's decision that the captives were not
prisoners of war was made in informal discussions, and
apparently without fully consulting his traveling secretary
of state.
In a White House that prides itself on a corporate-style
decision-making process, this decision appears to have
been made quickly and viscerally.
"That's why there are all these legal memorandums flying
all over town today," said one White House official, as
more of those memos came across the fax machine into
the office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security
adviser. Another added: "It was more like, `Decide first,
write the memos later.' "
Meanwhile, Germany called in the American ambassador
to express its concerns about human rights. Jack Straw,
the British foreign secretary, said any British prisoners
should be tried at home, not by the Americans, who might
sentence some of them to death.
Perhaps the most searing critique came from Christopher
Patten, the vice chairman of the European Commission
and the last British governor of Hong Kong, where he
regularly spoke out against Chinese human rights
abuses.
"Having won the campaign," Mr. Patten said this week, "it
would be a huge error if the international coalition were to
lose the peace."
Mr. Powell called for a review after returning to the United
States from a trip to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and
from an international conference in Tokyo on rebuilding
Afghanistan.
Curiously, what Mr. Powell seeks is a change in some
legal niceties, rather than a real change in the way
prisoners are ultimately defined or treated at
Guantánamo.
Mr. Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff agrees with President Bush, administration officials
said today, that the captives in Guantánamo were not
"prisoners of war" under the definition of the conventions.
But the Geneva Conventions require due process for
determining the status of captives, and Mr. Powell
contends that the United States must acknowledge that
international law — not the administration's desire —
governs how they should be treated. He has told Mr.
Bush, officials say, that acknowledging the supremacy of
the Geneva Conventions is the only way to answer
European criticism and to protect American soldiers who
may be captured in the future.
"This is not about how we treat the prisoners; that's
already humane," said one administration official eager for
Mr. Bush to reverse his decision. "It's about the political
statement we send to the world, and about recognizing
our international obligations."
And in that sense, it's just the latest in a series of
arguments between the internationalist wing of Mr.
Bush's team and the "America- first" wing. The president's
views are still taking form — he has no objection to
international treaties, he says, as long as they protect
American interests and reflect the reality of the world
today.
But in the next day or two, Mr. Bush faces a difficult
choice.
To continue on his current path is to publicly undercut
his secretary of state and to reject the views of close allies,
some of whom will be stationing peacekeepers in
Afghanistan.
Yet if Mr. Bush changes his position, it will appear he did
so under pressure. And that would amount to a tacit
acknowledgment that his first take on the issue may have
been hasty.
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