Dick Cheney’s daughter is engaging on a witch hunt, it seems. Her Keep America Safe campaign is targeting lawyers who had the temerity to represent terror suspects.
Now Cheney’s daughter, Liz, has taken up the cudgel by heading what some are describing as a McCarthyite campaign to purge the government of lawyers who dared to defend men, and even a child, accused of terrorism. The lawyers drew particular ire by sometimes defeating in court the Bush administration’s attempts to declare itself beyond the law.
Liz Cheney and her organisation, Keep America Safe, have dubbed lawyers who acted on behalf of accused terrorists, and who now work for the department of justice, the “al-Qaida seven”. The group has rebranded the justice department the “department of jihad”.
Liz Cheney, who trained as a lawyer and served as a deputy assistant secretary of state in the same administration as her father, is backed by some Republican members of congress, relatives of 9/11 victims and parts of the conservative press who have accused the lawyers, some of whom worked pro bono, of “coddling” and “abetting” terrorists.
The longer I live, the more I realise that humanity learns nothing from the past. The whole point of a judicial system is that we are all equal before it – innocent or guilty, no matter how heinous the offence of which we have been accused.
Deny the accused terrorist a fair trial with full legal representation and you undermine the whole process. Deny the accused paedophile his right to a fair trial on the evidence and nothing but the evidence, and you deny all of us a right to a fair trial.
Once more, I have to refer to A Man for All Seasons, because once more, I see that the lesson contained therein is being ignored:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
Liz Cheney’s is the behaviour of the lynch mob and she the self-appointed witch-finder general. Just as the howls of outrage and demands for information by the British tabloids over Jon Venables last week, this too, seeks to undermine the rule of law, because the lynch mob will never be out for the decent, upright, law abiding citizen, will it?
Keep America Safe – whose mission statement says the current administration is “unwilling to stand up for America” – has recently launched a television attack advert questioning the loyalty of the targeted lawyers and sinisterly asking: Whose values do they share?
I’d have thought that fairly obvious; they value the rule of law and the right to a fair trial; basic principles that underpin any civilised society, something of which Liz Cheney should be fully aware.
But the assault has prompted an unexpected backlash from some former Bush administration lawyers and officials who have joined liberal critics in denouncing the campaign as unAmerican and violating the principle that even the most unpopular defendant is entitled to a lawyer.
Quite.
Why do I keep thinking of “To Kill a Mockingbird”?
Well said.
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I’m also thinking of another aspect, quite outside of law. Anger towards individual lawyers can have consequences, as happened in the cases of Pat Finucane & Rosemary Nelson (and I am certainly no fan of their typical clients).
I think the latter was murdered not long after the Home Secretary* publicly criticised the defence lawyers of terrorist suspects.
*It might have been the Prisons Minister, in any case it was a senior MP Conservative), formally addressing Parliament.
As well as the Nelson / Finucane thing: NI’s Unionist-dominated parliament decided tp bring in nternment in the early 1970s – and Ulster was in a far worse position than the US will ever be. And what happened then, boys and girls?
Stupid fucking morons to a man, woman and kiddywink.
Yes, internment became a recruiting drum for the IRA.
If these lawyers have the same obnoxious views as there clients then that should be pointed out, what is wrong with that. As for a fair trial that is the indisputable right of everyone. However in the USA trial by media has long since taken over from trial by jury this I suspect is just part of that process.
In my experience of life things are rarely as clear cut as we would like to portray them.
Their views are entirely irrelevant. They are there to represent their clients in court. Hounding the lawyers undermines the process, as has been pointed out by Dave and Paul here in Northern Ireland.
Having browsed the KAS site at some length, it’s precisely what it appears to be; a witch hunt. It is hounding lawyers who advocated in the best interests of their clients – in particular because at least one of them argued for criminal trials, rather than military tribunals as enemy combatants. As I would expect any lawyer to advocate in the best interests of their clients and justice no matter what the charges against them, all I can see is people doing the job for which they are paid and a nasty campaign to demonise them because of the charges against their clients.
There’s nothing complicated here – just good old fashioned lynch law.