The Foreign Service Journal, September 2004

This violates the very meaning of the American Revolution. Yes, some, perhaps many, of these detainees may be “pirates,” as my col- league believes. But they are still human beings with rights we must respect. Toward that end, while we must protect secrets, trials should be public, wherever possible. The vic- tims of tyranny in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere deserve this, to say nothing of the citizens of this country, who must be convinced that American justice is open, fair and swift. For when our justice is secret, we are set up for abuses by the few and can’t deflect lies. The Meaning of Justice This is also why the way Saddam Hussein’s sons were killed was repug- nant. The two were savages — no doubt — but tanks and cannon are not police tools. Rather than put out the word “dead or alive,” we should have tried to bring them in alive, to be put on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity, so the world and Iraq would know the meaning of American and international justice — a justice superior to the savagery of Saddam’s Iraq. Every year, as we have done for decades now, the State Department publishes a comprehensive set of country human rights reports evaluat- ing how every government around the world treats, or mistreats, its citizens. But when American officials engage in some of the very practices we right- ly denounce elsewhere, as happened in Iraq and may have happened in Afghanistan and Cuba, those reports lose credibility. And that gap between our words and our deeds only weak- ens our ability to speak out on behalf of victims of oppression and police- state brutality around the world — even here at home. A moral approach to justice isn’t always easy; but uneth- ical shortcuts, though they may have quick positive returns, will in the end destroy us. The Supreme Court has, I am relieved to note, now ruled that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other “enemy combatants” are enti- tled to at least some of the basic due- process rights required by the U.S. Constitution. That set of decisions is not popular in many quarters, but it marks a welcome return to our coun- try’s most fundamental values. Our Founding Fathers launched a revolution that inspired the world, proclaiming that all humans are creat- 20 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 S P E A K I N G O U T