Time for Cheney to stand trial for war crimes

By Fred Snyder
Contributing Writer

May 3, 1946 and Dec. 5, 2008. These two dates are more than 60 years apart, but what happened on these days can be seen as a measurement for how far we have come as a nation.
The first date marks the beginning of the The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, or as its more commonly referred to: The Tokyo Trials. These trials were led by the U.S. and a coalition of other countries that fought in World War II. Their goal was to put Japanese military officials and civilians that where suspected of authorizing , engaging in, or promoting war crimes against enemy prisoners of war and civilians on trial.

By the time the trials ended on Nov. 12, 1948, there were seven people sentenced to death and 16 sentenced to life in prison. Of those seven sentenced to death, five were found guilty of Count 54, which was for those thought to have ordered, authorized and permitted “inhumane treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) and others.” This makes what happened on Dec. 5, 2008 so historical and so disturbing.

On Dec. 5, 2008, ABC news anchor Jonathan Karl conducted an interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney has done hundreds of interviews throughout his political career but what made this sit-down so special was that it gave a new title to the former Vice President; he was now an admitted war criminal. The question asked was, “Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?” The answer was “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared… and I supported it.” This program included the use of waterboarding on detainees at Guantanamo Bay. A 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum states that waterboarding was used 83 times on Abu Zubaydah and a total of 183 times against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

This was not because of “a few bad apples” like in the case of abuse in Abu Ghraib, this time the torture was approved and promoted by Vice President Cheney. Waterboarding is performed by strapping a prisoner to a flat surface and pouring water into their nose and mouth to simulate death by drowning. It is obvious that this is a form of torture and that is why waterboarding was one of the “inhumane treatment(s)” listed under Count 54 in the Tokyo Trials, and it is to this day seen by every organization as a form of torture. Waterboarding is illegal and goes against both the War Crimes Act and the Detainees Treatment Act, and as it was over 60 years ago, the punishment, if found guilty, is death.

This admission by any elected official, let alone the second most powerful person in the country, is an offense that should have Americans taking to the streets and Cheney sitting in a defendant’s chair. But sadly this isn’t the case. It has been more than nine months since Cheney’s admission on national television but there has yet to be any strong outcry from the public or our elected officials.

We talk about how much we need change, but in a democracy, you can’t just say you want something then sit back and wait, you need to take action. Gandhi put it best when he said, “The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.”

We have a new administration but we also need to have a new mindset. The way to prove to ourselves, to our government, and to the world that we have changed is to punish the people of the last administration that showed blatant disregard for laws and human life. We must start with former Vice President Cheney because we have the evidence and we have an admission.
I am like the rest of the rational thinking members of this country in that I want to move forward and far away from the eight years of abysmal Bush administration memories. But we all need to have some closure. Americans and the rest of the world know that what the Bush Administration did (wire taps, outing CIA officials, starting wars on false information) were all morally wrong and in the case of former Vice President Cheney authorizing torture tactics, downright illegal. The ace that Cheney holds is the sad but true belief that Americans simply don’t care. This may have been true before but the time has come to change this way of thinking. Cheney is not any more powerful than you or I because he gets his power is from the people. This is the double-edged sword that is democracy. We get to have officials that we elect, but we also have to hold ourselves responsible for their actions. By silently observing criminal actions that take place on a national and global level, we are also be to blame.

One of the things that Cheney said is that when he looks back on all the things he has caused in the last two terms, he has no regrets. Well, Former Vice President/War Criminal Cheney, I wish the American people could say the same thing. What we can do is make our voices heard and our power felt. We must make it known that we won’t accept anything less than to see Cheney punished for the war crimes that he committed, and admitted to.

The Bush Administration supporters are always saying that “history will judge the Bush Administration,” but this escapist ideology cannot be accepted anymore. We cannot wait, we need to take action now and make Cheney stand trial. We cannot forget that we have the power to make Cheney pay for what he has done to this country, the American people and the world.
Lets get something done.

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