■"Rumsfeld Is Sued By Iraqis, Afghans For Alleged Abuse," by Jess Bravin, Wall Street Journal, 2 March 2005, p. A4.
So the ACLU and other lawyer organizations are helping formerly jailed suspects try to sue Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for damages in a civil proceedings. You want to know why U.S. administrations, both Democrat (Clinton) and Republican (Bush) fear and dislike the International Criminal Court, this is why. You start calling everything a "war crime" and nothing will get done. This is not how we want to build international law.
This is justice in search of defendants. There is no Secretary of Everything Else, or the guy who immediately takes responsibility once the Secretary of War has done his thing-and that's the problem. This guy doesn't exist, and Donald Rumsfeld isn't his name. Accountability comes with defined positions and bureaucratic policies that buttress and define those responsibilities. Our mistakes in this Global War on Terrorism reflect the gaps in our system, not the commission of crimes by identifiable parties. When you seek to punish the players absent the critical mass of system, you don't build the system, you abort it.
This dog is trying to hunt. It's just barking up the wrong tree.
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