Bush Cancels Visit To Switzerland Due To Threat Of Torture Prosecution

From Reuters via the Huffington Post news wire:

"President Bush has admitted he ordered waterboarding which everyone considers to be a form of torture under international law. Under the Convention against Torture, authorities would have been obliged to open an investigation and either prosecute or extradite George Bush," Brody said.

Swiss judicial officials have said that Bush would still enjoy a certain diplomatic immunity as a former head of state.

Dominique Baettig, a member of the Swiss parliament from the right-wing People's Party, wrote to the Swiss federal government last week calling for the arrest of Bush for alleged war crimes if he came to the neutral country.

Bush, in his "Decision Points" memoirs on his 2001-2009 presidency, strongly defends the use of waterboarding as key to preventing a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Most human rights experts consider the practice a form of torture, banned by the Convention on Torture, an international pact prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. Switzerland and the United States are among 147 countries to have ratified the 1987 treaty.

More here.

In the United States, President Bush's status as war criminal is only mentioned in the public discourse in terms of denial. That is, when the subject comes up, which isn't often, it virtually always serves as a springboard for castigating as crazy or stupid the person who dared broach the topic. Even liberal hero John Stewart poo-poos calling our last President a war criminal.

But in more civilized parts of the world, this truth is fully embraced.

Make no mistake. Bush is a war criminal. Not only did he approve the harsh torture regime that began shortly after our ill fated and ill considered invasion of Afghanistan, he also waged an aggressive war against the sovereign nation of Iraq: according to the legal principles established at the Nuremberg Trials, aggressive war is the most heinous war crime of all, worse than bombing civilian populations, worse than genocide, because all other war crimes come from the waging of aggressive war. All signatories to the above mentioned Convention on Torture, including the United States, are compelled to prosecute war criminals. It only makes sense that the Swiss, or any other treaty member, would wish to oblige their treaty obligation and prosecute our former President. This is not weird.

What's weird is the utterly bizarre sense of denial in the US that prevents both the political and economic establishment, as well as rank-and-file citizens, from accepting that the man who was once our leader needs to be brought up on charges. I mean, we're the ones who should be doing this, not Switzerland. This is our responsibility. But we've failed miserably, if only because we cannot grasp the horrible truth, cannot allow ourselves to even imagine that we twice elected an evil man to our nation's highest office.

America, in the twenty first century, has failed in too many ways to count, but our unwillingness to see justice done on this gravest of issues is probably the most emblematic: we Americans cannot accept responsibility for our wrongdoing; we cannot honestly look at ourselves in the mirror. We are a delusional people. We cannot comfortably exist in reality as it actually is.

This will be our eventual undoing.

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