[Marxism] Eric Posner and his leftist allies justify kangaroo courts

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

As comrades know, I try to keep track of what rightwing social democrats
and liberals are saying on the Internet. Sometimes, I feel like I am
trudging through the sewer when I look in on red-baiter Leo Casey's mailing
list, the "decent left" pro-war blogs, etc. Most days I don't have anything
to say about what I find there, because it falls into the category of "dog
bites man".

But today, an item written by U. of Chicago lawyer Eric Posner that
originated on something called http://www.opendemocracy.net showed up on
Casey's list and Marc Cooper's blog that deserves some commentary.
Basically it defends the idea that the ends justify the means in the trial
of Saddam Hussein. Even though the US invasion of Iraq violated
international law, it is okay for it to put Saddam Hussein on trial because
his evil is equivalent to Adolph Eichmann's. Posner likens the trial to the
Israelis kidnapping the Nazi war criminal. Obviously, Posner, Postel and
Cooper don't really get the Nazi analogy right since it is the United
States that is launching blitzkriegs based on lies and deception, not a
tin-pot dictator like Saddam Hussein. In fact, Saddam Hussein only invaded
Iran and Kuwait after getting the green light from Washington.

At first blush, www.opendemocracy.net looks like Commondreams or Alternet,
but in reality it is quite a few degrees to the right. The execrable Todd
Gitlin is on the editorial board, as is Danny Postel who crossposted
Posner's article to Casey's list. Postel was briefly involved in Central
America solidarity in the 1980s but seems to have found his niche in recent
years as a Paul Berman wannabe. But the editor I really get a kick out of
is Roger Scruton, the English "philosopher" who got in trouble for
receiving kickbacks from the tobacco industry for making the case that
smoking won't hurt you. On February 5, 2002, the Independent reported:

>>PROFESSOR ROGER Scruton, the darling of the intellectual right, was
sacked as a commentator for The Wall Street Journal yesterday in an
editotial after admitting he took money from the tobacco industry to place
stories in the national press.

The philosopher, a professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London
University, has been told to "take a holiday" from the prestigious
newspaper because he failed to disclose his ties with Japan Tobacco.

An editorial in yesterday's European edition of The Wall Street Journal
admitted: "We've come in for criticism lately because one of our
contributors, the British conservative writer Roger Scruton, wrote an essay
for our European edition while being paid by a Japanese tobacco company.

"Our long-time standard is that such financial ties should be disclosed, so
readers can make up their own minds." The move follows his sacking last
week by the Financial Times over his tobacco links.

The Wall Street Journal had intervened to defend Professor Scruton over his
pounds 4,500-a-month contract with the tobacco giant.

But it said yesterday: "Mr Scruton had an obligation to tell us and his
readers about his tobacco financing when he was writing about tobacco
issues; he didn't, and so he will be taking a holiday from our pages."<<

Just the sort of person, in other words, who you would expect to serve on
the editorial board of an Internet publication that provides left cover for
a United States kangaroo court.

Googling "Eric Posner" will point you to a U. of Chicago lawyer's blog that
he participates in. There he makes no effort to disguise its reactionary
Alan Dershowitz/Alberto Gonzalez type reasoning with respect to Saddam's
trial. An entry titled "Should Saddam Hussein's Trial Be Fair?"makes the
case for bending the rules:

"When conventional procedural protections would ensure that highly
dangerous people go free under conditions of fragile security, the standard
of proof is lowered, independent lawyers are prohibited, access to evidence
is reduced, and the other conventional protections are similarly
compromised. (A more familiar example is the practice of allowing
exceptions to the warrant requirement when the police are in hot pursuit
and in similar circumstances.)

"Saddam is not an ordinary criminal defendant, and so there is no reason to
think that fairness requires that he enjoy ordinary criminal defense
protections."

Full: http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2005/10/should_saddams_.html

Posner co-authored something called "The Limits of International Law" with
Jack L. Goldsmith that argues that states should engage in international
laws and treaties only when it is consistent with their national interests.
In other words, the John R. Bolton approach.

An amazon.com reviewer awarded the book one star (you are evidently
prevented from handing out zero stars) and opined, "While claiming to be an
academic book, the text reads more like a neconservative, ideological
condemnation of international law."

As the United States becomes more and more polarized politically, you will
continue to see characters like Postel, Cooper et al lurching more and more
to the right. This is an inexorable process as was demonstrated by the
tendency of many liberals to beat the drums of anti-Communism during the
Cold War. Today, the crusade is against "Islamfascism" but the logic is the
same. They have convinced themselves that the USA, despite its flaws, is an
agent for progressive change even if it comes at the hands of a President
who is not likely to be invited on a Nation Magazine cruise. The human mind
is capable of all sorts of self-deception, but in this case we are talking
about a feat that can best be described as a pretzel-like contortion.


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