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Jewish World Review
Jan. 13, 2005
/ 3 Shevat, 5765
Keeping the score on Gonzales
By
Ruben Navarrette Jr.
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Did you catch the score from the Senate confirmation hearing on Alberto Gonzales? Latinos 1, Liberals 0. I say that because my liberal friends were hoping that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee would treat Gonzales like a punching bag, and that didn't happen. And now the Harvard Law School graduate and son of farmworkers appears ready to become the nation's first Latino attorney general.
A few prominent Democrats went through the motions. They read strongly worded statements and grimaced for the cameras. But in the end, they pulled as many punches as they threw.
This will disappoint such left-leaning organizations as People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties Union who have been gunning for Gonzales since long before his nomination. For several weeks, I've been getting e-mails from these outfits asking me to urge Senate Democrats to "scrutinize" (read: trash) the Gonzales nomination.
In fact, People for the American Way sent out a news release opposing the nomination on Jan. 4 — two days before Gonzales appeared before the Senate. Doesn't sound like the American way.
Liberals say with a straight face that the reason they have opposed Gonzales early and often is that they hold him responsible for the torture of prisoners in the war on terror.
Not fair. Yes, according to memorandums uncovered by news agencies, lawyers in the administration — at least as early as January 2002 — were concocting legal justifications on how far U.S. military officers could go in detaining and interrogating prisoners.
But it's also clear that this campaign started in the Justice Department, where a staff attorney in a Jan. 9, 2002, memo drafted legal arguments to keep U.S. officials from being charged with war crimes as they interrogated prisoners. Gonzales got involved a couple weeks later when, as White House counsel, he advised President Bush that the Justice Department's reasoning was solid and suggested that the prisoner of war provisions of the Geneva Conventions didn't apply to Taliban and al Qaeda detainees.
Personally, I think that was a bad decision, but it hardly makes Gonzales responsible for everything that occurred from there. The memos show that there were at least five entities vying to have a say about the treatment of prisoners — the Pentagon, Justice Department, CIA, White House and State Department. President Bush was getting plenty of advice, but the final say about what would be permissible in interrogating prisoners was the president's alone.
Besides, no matter what the lawyers said or when they said it, I'm not convinced that any of this had much to do with why the goons on the night shift at Abu Ghraib staged their horrific frat party. That was the military's mess from start to finish, and it's more likely that it happened because of a lack of leadership on the ground than because of something lawyers said half a world away.
Liberals aren't stupid. They must know this. Which brings us to the real reason that they're conducting this witch-hunt against Gonzales. It isn't all that different from the reasons that Democrats kept Honduran-born, Harvard- educated Miguel Estrada off the federal appeals court. Both men were nominated by a Republican and owe nothing to the Democratic Party. That makes them a target for liberals, who are only interested in minorities succeeding if they can claim the credit.
It doesn't help endear Gonzales to the left that he also has been mentioned as someone who may yet be nominated to become the first Mexican American on the Supreme Court. Were that barrier to fall — with the credit going to a Republican president — the Democratic Party would lose its grip on the nation's largest minority. The stakes couldn't be higher.
And yet Senate Democrats went soft on Gonzales. They had no choice.
They got the message. It was delivered in person by two other Democrats: new Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, who sat at Gonzales' side, and Hector Flores, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, who sat just a few rows behind. Both were there to show their support for the Gonzales nomination, and both were — one assumes — delighted at the idea of a Latino attorney general.
The message was simple, and it was offered up on behalf of a large portion of the Latino community: "Hurt him, and we'll hurt you."
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01/10/04: Parents on Strike
© 2005 WPWG
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