How do you spell “jurisdiction?” How, for that matter, do you spell “nauseating display of sanctimonious political correctness”? How about “Baltasar,” as in Baltasar Garzón, the grandstanding Spanish judge who on Wednesday opened “investigations” at the National Court in Madird into allegations by four “detainess” (“detainees”: that’s Newspeak for “terrorists”) that they were tortured by U.S. Military personnel at Guantánamo Bay.
The proper response? “Buzz off, Baltasar” about covers it: the same response that ouught to have been toute de suite and right speedily when Garzón attempted to extradite the aging General Augusto Pinochet from Britain on charges genocide.
I thought about this early this morning when a friend reminded me that May Day commemorates not only the pink-tinged political fantasies and joyous vernal enthusiasm, but also the opening of hostilities in the Spanish American War, when Commodore George Dewey’s fleet steamed into Manila Bay at dawn. “You may fire when ready, Gridley,” Dewey famously said to his executive officer.
With a deafening roar, the huge cruiser’s guns erupted. The flagship swung around in a wide circle, and each ship followed, guns blasting as it passed. “We made five trips past the fleet,” a gunner on the Boston wrote.
Just two hours after the beginning of the battle we hauled out and, withdrawing a few miles, the order was given for breakfast. I was exhausted from the heat, loss of sleep, and lack of proper food. I went up on deck. Below the thermometer was at 116°, and the fresh air was a great relief. From this vantage point, I could see the destruction we had wrought.
World front page announcing the victory When the thick, black smoke that had obscured the battle cleared, he saw the Spanish fleet, battered and afire.
That “splendid little war” (as the American ambassador to the Court of St. James wrote to Teddy Roosevelt at the time) lasted about four months and yielded control of the Spanish of Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, not to mention a perpetual lease of a pleasant spot on the Cuban coast called Guantáamo Bay. Where are chaps like Dewey and the good Roosevelt (I mean Teddy, of course) when you need ‘em?
Good question!
Teddy Roosevelt is on Mt. Rushmore.
Not Woodrow Wilson, not FDR, and certainly
not Reagan. TR was a man of confidence,
and real understanding of the outside world
and he was a man of real intellect. The last item precludes our the entire run of celebrity
politician frauds.
Looks like Rog isn’t above a few “pink-tinged political fantasies” of his own. I think his bowtie’s on too tight.
Don’t worry ehunter, we’ll get Reagan up there one of these days.
If he goes through with this, Garzon should be indicted in the U.S. for making terroristic threats or conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. Let the sanctimonious, petty little motherf_cker find out what it’s like to be afraid to leave his home jurisdiction.
“The White House legal staff has approved there for you may fire when ready, Gridley”
or
“Gridley, the White House legal staff has not approved, there for you may not fire even if you are ready.”
“Either way Gridley, you are now a war criminal”
Al Qaeda got it right when they bombed the Spanish before the election to get the pussies put in charge of the country, and their efforts are being repaid in full now. mpw
They’re still around, but people like Obambi and Willie Clinton and Kerry and Teddy Kennedy have devoted their lives to defaming them. We see them when we need them, but only then because too many have sold to people like Willie and Obambi for bead and circuses.
Back in the day, jurisdiction was based upon the territory you controlled and over which your (generally) court was given “jurisdiction” by some governing document. We are slouching our way away from those concepts, and not to our benefit. The establishment of an international police apparatus is just one logical step along that primrose path.
Teddy the grandfather of American Fascism is profiled in Jonah’s crimson book.
ehunter: Teddy Roosevelt was probably the second brightest man ever to be President – only after Thomas Jefferson. He won the Nobel Peace Prize back when that actually meant something.
He also started the Panama Canal.
I think we pay too little attention to T.R.
ehunter: The last item precludes our the (sic) entire run of celebrity politician frauds.
Boy, does that resonate. I’ve thought for a long time that one of the biggest disservices Clinton did to the country was to train the populace to think of the President as the Entertainer-in-Chief. One reason Bush 43 was so unpopular was that he wasn’t cool. Now we have the coolest President ever–I hope the country survives him intact.
Dear Mr. Kimball: However distasteful we may find Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, there’s no doubt he was a great war president, not very far behind Lincoln. See e.g. the decision to let George Marshall start Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa, on 8 November 42, the day AFTER the 1942 congressional elections. Said elections cost the Democrats 45 House seats, leading to a 222 to 209 majhority, none too big. In the Senate, the Democrats lost 9 Senate seats, leaving a 58-37 (+1 independent) margin. One big reason for the losses was the public perception that after ten months, the US Army still was not in action (the Navy had been fighting in the Pacific.) How easy to have done a Billyboy and tell Marshall to speed up the landings by a week, just before the election.
He didn’t do it. In my book, that makes him a “good Roosevelt” whatever his other transgressions. There are many, but the sweet goes with the bitter
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
Our European friends just can’t get passed that ole colonial urge. Gotta rule the world. I guess they think “bad colonialism” is with armies and “good colonialism” is with talking, talking, talking. How many of their courts now have claimed global jurisdiction?
I thought we settled sovereignty issues with Spain in 1898.
Retired x-Soviet and East Bloc commissars responsible for a stack of corpses tens of millions high and the enslavement of half of Europe for nearly half a century putter around right under their noses.
Yet these these guys become preoccupied with alleged malfeasance a hemisphere away.
It’s too complimentary to dismiss this as moral grandstanding — it’s naked political warfare of the sort we’ve come to expect from ideologically-compromised trans-national institutions, and what we should expect from the ICC.
I regret to say…
Different time.
Different country.
Different citizens.
Different values.
Different MSM…
Just a minor detail: Gridley was the Captain of the OLYMPIA, Commodore Dewey’s flagship.
Gridley was ready!
This was at least in part because the US Navy practiced naval gunnery more than any other modern navy.
What does Spain have to take from them, other than maybe Ibiza?
ehunter, FDR may not be on Mt. Rushmore, but he has a four-lobed memorial on the Mall in Washington DC–one lobe for each of his four terms–right there with George Washington and Lincoln.
It is detestable.
Fear not. We can tell you from bitter personal familial experience, Spanish governmental effectiveness is inversely related to their distance from you. So I doubt they could manage a telephone call.
“NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!….”
Roger, it’s spelled Manila. One el. I read somewhere that its supposed to be Manilla envelope, but really it’s almost always spelled with only one el, as well. I just came from Manila Bay a few minutes ago. Very calm, and calming. Regards, and keep up the good work.
F.
Thanks to FRML, #24: the extra “el” is history. Thanks for the correction.
“The pains in Spain fail insanely in the brain.”
“The brains in Spain flail inanely, it is plain.”
Spain still has the Canaries. There are also two cities in Morocco, but they’ll eventually be overrun or returned as an apology to Morocco for having offended the country with the Spanish presence for so long.
Judge Baltasar Garzon, a Socialist militant- has exhibited a notorious tendency to please leftists’ agenda by his issuance of arrest warrant for Augusto Pinochet, his desire to prosecute Henry Kissinger, and his reluctant to charge Fidel Castro during the Cuban dictator trip to Spain.
Now he is committed to charge six former Bush officials: Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General; John Yoo, of the Office of Legal Counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; Jay Bybee, also at Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff.
In response to a journalist from Dominican Republic, as to whether he would chargeFidel Castro, Judge Garzon answered: “Proceedings cannot be taken against serving heads of state for any kind of crime, and the standards of the 1969 treaties and the immunity of heads of state are valid. Only an international court has the right to do so.” He admitted having received accusations against Fidel Castro but he “had not studied them in depth, given that action was not viable on account of the limits imposed by international principles”. On April 28, 2001, Castro stated on the daily communist newspaper Granma:” I do not have, nor did I have, the least concern about Mr. Garzon. Quite simply, I am not under his jurisdiction, nor that of Spanish law”.
Garzon was expelled from Catholic monasteries where he was pursuing priesthood for serenading a girl at another school.
In 1993, Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez persuaded him to run for the ruling party PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party). Garzon came second in votes, behind Gonzalez. Garzon was put in charge of anti-drug projects, but he quickly walked out, saying he was not being given the tools to do the job. Party sources said he was upset about being passed over for higher posts, in specific having not being appointed as Minister of Justice. He then angered Gonzalez followers by pressing criminal charges against government officials. “Garzon has an obsessive ambition to head the International Court of the Hague, no matter what” says a Spanish attorney who knows him both professionally and personally.
Judge Garzon has been questioned for tax irregularities. He took a sabbatical year in 2005-2006 to lecture on international terrorism in United States, making $ 100.000 dollars for each of 17 lectures known as “Transatlantic Dialogue” (1.7 million dollars), most from sponsor Banco de Santander, plus his regular salary. On November 27, 2006, after his paid trip to New York, Garzon dropped charges against Bank Santander directors who were accused of stealing 700 million pesetas, which according to the plaintiff were not in the bank books. One of the main shareholders of Banco de Santander is JP Morgan. Emilio Botin, the director of Bank Santander, is known as “the man of New York in Spain”. Garzon is widely considered an “untouchable”. The Judicial Power General Council of Spain confirmed that Garzon didn’t inform about his double remuneration while in sabbatical leave, in violation of Spain laws.
In February 2003, Garzón also ordered the closure of Egunkaria, the only newspaper wholly written in Basque language, once again alleging links with ETA. The evidence was never presented. There was an outcry of public opinion against the newspaper. Prominent intellectual figures like Salman Rushdie and Noam Chomsky condemned the closure.
The Spanish judge’s quixotic quest for justice is deeply conflicting. The Spanish government pardoned officials involved in crimes during the rule of fascist General Francisco Franco. Fidel Castro was a close friend of Franco. Garzón dropped the case against Franco and his allies. Previously, Garzón had formally declared the acts of repression committed by the Franco regime to be crimes against humanity, and accounted them in more than one hundred thousand killings during and after the Spanish Civil War, among them, the poet Federico García Lorca.
Garzon’s investigations crossed paths with another Spanish judge; Manuel Garcia-Castellon was examining the whereabouts of 100 Spaniards who “disappeared” under Pinochet’s regime. Garcia-Castellon focused on the cross-border assassination schemes known as Operation Condor. In1998, Garcia-Castellon traveled to United States to ask the FBI for its files on Operation Condor. The judge cited a 1990 legal assistance treaty that calls for the exchange of information between U.S. and Spanish law enforcement. He returned to Spain with information that was already known. Most of the U.S. evidence came from the Orlando Letelier’s case, the former Chilean diplomat who was murdered by a car-bomb in Washington in 1976. The CIA had worked closely with DINA in the 1970s, but the CIA never divulged anything about Operation Condor. Garcia-Castellon interviewed Michael Townley, the DINA agent who carried out the Letelier assassination- currently in the federal witness protection program. The judge also interviewed former DINA chief Manuel Contreras, who was convicted in Chile for masterminding the Letelier assassination plot. Contreras reaffirmed that his superiors in the Chilean government approved all his actions. Chilean government documents have established that Pinochet kept tight personal control over DINA.
Margaret Thatcher praised Pinochet as “a friend of England during the Falklands War” in 1982. Columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote that Pinochet’s arrest was “a blow for the most ideologically selective justice and for the rankest hypocrisy” — an attempt by “the European left … to give itself a little consolation prize.” William F. Buckley denounced the charges as “an act of ideological malice” against a restrained military leader who ousted president Salvador Allende, who was defiling the Chilean constitution and waving proudly the banner of his friend and idol, Fidel Castro.”
Pinochet received another blow when the Clinton administration announced that it would declassify more secret documents that might be relevant to Garzon’s case. U.S. officials said the cause of human rights outweighed the risk to U.S. national security. Commenting on that decision, one former CIA official complained to The New York Times that the decision could open “a can of worms.”
CIA veterans believed that the evidence could implicate senior officials of the U.S. government, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who oversaw the Chile policy for President Nixon in the early 1970s. Even President George Bush Sr. – who was CIA director in 1976 when DINA agents carried out the Letelier bombing in Washington-, could be questioned. It was unclear if the CIA missed the warning signs on Letelier plot or if the agency chose to look the other way while an allied government got rid of a troublesome dissident.
While Pinochet had been arrested at a private London clinic by an order from a left-wing Spanish judge seeking to jail him under international human-rights treaties, the Cuban dictator Castro was pontificating before journalists at a castle in Spain where he was an honored guest at an international conference of Latin American presidents.
“We do not consider that Fidel Castro is a dictator,” declares Willy Meyer, a leading parliamentary for Izquierda Unida (United Left), Spain’s renamed Communist Party which led the campaign to extradite Pinochet. While enjoying the fruits of Spain’s peaceful transition from the Francisco Franco dictatorship to a democratic system, the Spanish left ignores the cries of Cuba’s tormented democratic opposition. “We respect the Marxist-Leninist legality by whose definition political persecution, torture and disappearances cannot exist in Cuba,” says Meyer.
The communists documented thousands of cases of human-rights violations suffered by leftists, including 90 Spanish nationals who had gone to Chile in 1973. Most of these were violent fighters who travelled to Chile to support the paramilitary activities of the Marxist government of Salvador Allende and seized the opportunity to install a socialist regime. Chile, once South America’s most prosperous economy, was on the verge of a communist takeover. The economy was destroyed by 1,000 percent inflation, nationalization of private industry and the terrorism of Cuban-trained revolutionary militias invading factories and farms.
Allende was condemned by democratically elected Chilean parliament for abrogating the constitution, illegally collecting secret arms and moving the international brigades into positions encircling Chile’s capital. At that time thousands of women took to the streets in protest, banging pots and pans in opposition to Allende and his Communist policies. Chilean women took the lead because the communists were brutally persecuting those men who dared to oppose Allende and the reds.
The Chilean army, navy and air force moved to stop the Communists and restore constitutional order. Pinochet had been appointed by Allende himself and had refused to act against him until, in a general disintegrating social order, huge crowds of Chilean women began shaming the military and calling them cowards. At that moment, the encirclement of the capital by the international brigades became incontrovertible. These are the people whose “human rights” are alleged to have been violated when military forces declared martial law, rounded up the foreign-led guerrilla forces and executed many of them. Allende himself committed suicide with an assault rifle given to him by Castro.
In fact, according to Cuban secret agents currently exiled, Salvador Allende did not commit suicide, nor died under the bullets of the military coup participants the 11th, September, 1973. During the assault against La Moneda palace, the president of Chile was cowardly assassinated by Cuban police General Patricio de la Guardia, who was in charge of Allende’s protection. While the military was bombing the place, Allende, frightened by terror, ran by the corridors of the second floor of the palace shouting: “It is necessary to surrender”. Before he could do it, Patricio de la Guardia waited Allende returned to his writing-desk and shot him in the head with a machine-gun burst. Immediately, he put on the body of Allende a gun – making believe that he was murdered by the military attackers and returned in a rush to first floor of the flaming building where they waited for other Cubans to leave. The group left La Moneda palace in complete silence and after minutes took refuge in Cuba´s embassy, located near from the palace (According to testimonies of high ranking Cuban intelligence officers Juan Vives (Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado´s nephew , the operetta’s Cuban president that reigned from 1959 to 1976, and “was forced to suicide” in dark circumstances in 1983) and Daniel Alarcón Ramirez (a.k.a “Benigno” , one of the three survivors from the guerrilla of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia).
Gualdo Hidalgo, former Cuban political prisoner(hun.ter99@yahoo.com)
I wouldn’t call Teddy “The Good Roosevelt”. He went all progressive in the end.
I think “The Better Roosevelt” is closer to the mark.
I am particularly struck by the line, “…when Garzon attempted to extradite the aging Augosto Pinochet from Britain on charges (of) genocide.” What importance is it, exactly, that Pinochet was ‘aging’ (like everyone else for that matter)? Those of us who do not reside on ‘planet neocon’ and live instead in the real world (where global warming is a fact and not ‘politically correct’ science and were not persuaded by some laughably dismissable prediction that McCain would crush Obama or, my favorite, that ‘aging’ academes are so corrosive to young minds as to be ‘tenured radicals’) recognize Pinochet for who he was: a brutal and oppressive dictator who exercised torture and human rights violations (perhaps it should be the task of the conservative to show how human rights are a ‘social construction’) on the people of Chile for nearly 17 years. It is rather remarkable how almost anything the left does can be explained and dismissed as an act of p.c.ness. I suppose conservatives think the same of reading detainees (err, um, terrorists) their rights (like both the U.D.H.R. and the U.S. Constitution require); seriously, do conservatives ever tire from resorting to the same argument?
If we had a President with any balls he would send the Spanish Government a little note indicating that we would be taking them to court for crimes against humanity in their conquest of Mexico and South America. Of course we would be willing to drop the case if they would shut up and go away. OLE…
Emeraldcitysavant,
No, we do not ever tire from resorting to the same agrument(s) because we have to deal with those, like yourself, who constantly raise the same tired ‘holier than thou’ detritus.
emeraldcitysavant:
A constitution is a document that creates a state/polity consisting of a citizenry/body politic and the institutions through which they govern and are governed. Ideally, it also identifies their pre-existing rights in an enforceable way and limits what their government can do to them.
By definition, a constitution can only uphold the rights of the citizens of that body politic and others lawfully resident on their soil against their own government. It can’t be used to uphold those people’s rights against foreign states, which are none other than those agreed by treaty. Nor can it be used to defend the rights of foreign nationals not lawfully on the country’s soil and thus subject to the constitution.
All of which is true whether or not the US Supreme Court agrees. The Court lacks the power or authority to declare that up is down or black is white.
Therefore the US Constitution applies only to terrorists arrested on US soil, or arrested abroad and being US citizens.
International law comprises treaties freely agreed by sovereign nations and customary practices. Contrary to transnationalist thinking, international lawyers’ seminars and even courts also cannot alter reality. That being so, treaties are binding only on members and customary international law is limited only to well-established and universally accepted norms. Surprisingly little of what transnational advocates say has been the norms since 1945 actually meets that test.
Therefore the US is bound only by that part of Geneva to which it is party, unlike those countries who signed the 1977 Additional protocol agreeing to treat terrorists as though they are soldiers. And the US is bound only to the firmly established older norm that they are not.
Following this line, neither the Constitution nor international law is any problem. The US Constitution is not applicable unless US soil and/or US citizens are involved. If the US government sent its own citizens to Gitmo in lieu of trial, I agree that would be a problem. International law is not a problem because terrorists are not soldiers any more than they are domestic criminals, and the US has signed no treaty agreeing to falsely pretend that they are.
None of which is rocket science, nor amenable to change by courts. As I said, courts do not have the power to reorder reality.
I used to shock peers by analogizing terrorists to pirates, a third category neither deserving nor getting the rights of criminal defendants or POWs. The obvious conclusion is more than some folks will stomach. I suppose I can’t use that analogy now that pirates are back and we no longer know how to deal with them, either.