I don’t agree that Dick Cheney should be shipped to the Hague to answer for human rights violations. I don’t see any good reason why the United States’ courts can’t take care of adjudicating Cheney’s crimes. We ought to be able to enforce our own laws without relying on any international tribunal. Of course, Dick Cheney would be ill-advised to do any foreign travel once he is out of office.
When it comes to the really big violations of law committed by the Bush administration, it appears that the main culprits were Dick Cheney and his assistants, Scooter Libby and David Addington. There is also culpability in the Pentagon, including the former secretary, Donald Rumsfeld and several of his high-ranking assistants, like Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. Additionally, it appears that Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, and Alberto Gonzales committed high crimes in their management of the Department of Justice. I don’t doubt that a full airing of the facts combined with the fair implementation of the law, would land all of these individuals in federal prison.
Whether that is in the best interests of our country is probably open to debate. But I know what side I would be arguing. Authorizing torture, obstructing justice, perjury, violating treaties, and politicizing the Justice Department (including prosecuting false cases), are all crimes outside the normal leeway we give to any administration during wartime. There are some crimes, like expanded surveillance, that must be stopped but can be forgiven in a post-9/11 environment. Dick Cheney and several others committed many more crimes than that. They ought to be impeached and disqualified to ‘hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.’ At a minimum.
