Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:
His departure has brought relief to many.
La Jornada, Mexico
Alberto Gonzales: The 'Executor' of Injustice
"His
legal backsliding generated a catastrophic moral regression in the society of
our northern neighbor, sparking a weakening of ethical and humanitarian
standards and encouraging public officials to maintain that torture is acceptable."
EDITORIAL
Translated By Barbara Howe
August 28, 2007
Mexico
- La Jornada - Original Article (Spanish)
The relief
provoked by the news of Alberto Gonzales' resignation from the U.S. Department
of Justice is insufficient to overcome the tremendous destruction wrought by
that public official on our neighbor to the north's system of justice, on
individual liberties and guarantees, and on the cause human rights. First, as
legal counsel to George W. Bush and later as Attorney General, Gonzales - the
first U.S. citizen of Mexican origin to hold that position - engineered the
biggest rollback of the institutional protections and democracy in that country
in decades, and it will take much time and legislative work to repair the vast
legal regression he has caused.
Certainly
Gonzales didn't act alone, nor does the fundamental responsibility for the
grave legal distortions introduced during the Bush Government correspond only
to him. Simply put, he was the executor of the group of fanatical
neoconservatives that had taken control of the superpower's levers of power -
and by extension the world - after the contested U.S. election in 2000.
One must keep in
mind that as a presidential advisor, the now outgoing Attorney General played a
major role in elaborating the legal regression called the “war against
terrorism,” launched by Bush after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. This
regression took its most deplorable expression in the so-called Patriot Act 
,
approved by Congress in October of that year, all within the context of the
hysteria generated by the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. That
document legalized, among other things, spying on U.S. citizens without a
warrant, the illegal searches of homes, and - if thought to be suspicious in
the eyes of the authorities - the indefinite detention of foreigners without
providing them with legal counsel. In addition to promoting that legislation,
Gonzales drew up a document [Executive
Order 13233 ] in which he
recommended ignoring the directives of the Geneva Conventions on the matter of prisoners of war, with the
purpose of giving the military and U.S. public officials wide latitude to mistreat
those captured and put them under “moderate” torture.
This and similar
kinds of legal backsliding have generated a catastrophic moral regression in
the society of our northern neighbor, sparking a weakening of ethical and
humanitarian standards and encouraging public officials and opinion leaders to
maintain that if inflicted on terrorists - torture is acceptable. Because of
these acts, a repressive and barbaric climate eventually translated in the
atrocities perpetrated at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay
and other detention centers operated by the U.S. armed forces, as well as the
creation of a vast government network dedicated to the kidnapping, aerial
transport and torture of uncounted terrorist suspects in Europe, Asia and
Africa.
With this record
Gonzales arrived at the Justice Department in February 2005, exercising his
duties with a clear sense of partisanship and in a spirit of complete
submission to Bush. During his management, the FBI was accused of applying the
Patriot Act in an abusive and illegal manner, and the Department of Justice
became a gigantic front for masking the shady behavior of the president and
vice president. One incident that brought into bold relief, the authoritarian
and dictatorial mentality of Gonzales, was his declaration that in the United
States, habeas corpus falls outside constitutional protections - an opinion that scandalized
jurists of the neighboring country.
[Editor's Note: The writ of habeas corpus
is the name of a legal
action through which a person can seek relief from the unlawful detention of
themselves or another person. Its Western origins go back to the 13th century and until the Bush
Administration, questioning its constitutional effectiveness was nearly
unthinkable ].
The straw that
broke the camel's back was the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors who had
been observed to be impartial and non-partisan, only to be replaced by Bush and
Republican Party loyalists. This action put Gonzales in the sights of the
Capitol [Congress] and forced him to testify before legislative committees,
which resulted in an overwhelming loss of the Attorney General's credibility.
As has occurred with other Bush collaborators - Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz
and John Bolton - the President clung to his position far beyond what political
decency and personal dignity would advise.
While Bush is the
person most responsible for the tragic regression of individual liberties and
guarantees in the United States and the world - as far as this decade goes -
Gonzales will be remembered as the principal executor of that backward
movement.
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