Scott BresslerA day late and a dollar short, but I still have something to say about the Alberto Gonzales visit-and backlash-last week.
Let’s start with the basics: I am very liberal, am an ardent critic of basically everything about the Bush administration and have never at any time supported the war in Iraq or the use of torture and/or indefinite detention of “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo. I am not, and have never been, a supporter in any kind of the Republican Party generally or Alberto Gonzales personally; in fact, watching the Congressional investigation over the summer along with the rest of the world, I thought he was kind of a joke.
That said, I was genuinely impressed with Judge Gonzales last week, not only with the way he handled himself given how ridiculously unpopular he has become, but more so with his willingness to engage in debate with his critics. I was one of the twenty-some students to attend the Q&A session “for critics and skeptics” before the speech, and I have to tell you, the play that session got here in Student Life and by word-of-mouth on campus was, frankly, wrong. Perhaps the Judge did not answer questions as politically as we may have liked; perhaps he did not give in to the borderline-antagonistic pressure some of my peers tried to exert on him; but that’s not to say that he didn’t answer candidly and frankly. He answered legally.
When asked about the constitutionality of some of the policies in the PATRIOT Act, policies that he personally lobbied Congress to renew, the former Attorney General answered (and I paraphrase), “That law was passed because Congress feels that those tools are the best way to fight the war on terror, and any questions regarding constitutionality can and should be brought before the Supreme Court.”
When asked why the Bush administration has chosen to classify detainees as “enemy combatants” rather than “prisoners of war” given that it has declared a “war” on terror, he answered with the legal definition of “prisoner of war,” a definition with criteria that detainees, not being associated with any legitimate state, simply do not meet. He further stipulated that the difference in label has not stopped the government from treating prisoners humanely.
A student then went for the obvious follow-up, asking “What about waterboarding?” and proposing that CIA and Justice Department officials engaging in and/or supporting waterboarding should have to be water-boarded themselves. To this Hon. Gonzales answered, “What a lot of people don’t understand is that that’s already happening, there are military and Justice Department officials who have voluntarily undergone the procedure.”
It was then pointed out that one Justice Department official who was waterboarded concluded and announced publicly his opinion that water-boarding is torture, to which the Judge responded, “If he did, he didn’t say it to me, and he should have.”
Fault me for na’veté if you want and say what you want about the speech itself (which, I’ll be the first to admit, was highly partisan and, in parts, highly fallacious), but I didn’t see anything partisan, immoral or evasive in the way Hon. Gonzales answered our questions. His answers were ideological, certainly, but they were framed with respect to the role and the responsibilities of a White House counsel and/or a U.S. Attorney General. He didn’t offer moral judgments or admissions that policies are fundamentally “wrong,” but why would he? He wasn’t responsible for designing policies or casting moral judgment, he was responsible for casting legal judgment. Every question, without fail, found a well-developed and well-articulated legal answer.
Anyone who went in looking for vindication, looking for a disgraced politician to admit that he was morally misguided and that the Democrats have had it right all along, walked away disappointed.
But, honestly, anyone who went in with that kind of an attitude would have walked away with the same opinion either way, so then what’s the point? Alberto Gonzales was brought to campus to inspire political discourse, because he is a controversial former public official. (Note: PUBLIC official, not political official; PUBLIC figure, not political figure.) And to the extent that he came here, to the extent that he volunteered himself to defend his actions as the Attorney General, with respect to the obligations and responsibilities of that office, I think he did a pretty good job.
I don’t agree with any of his political opinions and I probably never will, but at least I can respect the office.
Sara is a junior in Arts & Sciences and a staff columnist. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].