Hannah's Blog

No WMD? who cares?

So, another group of OUR analysts has determined, agreeing with Sadam Hussein and the UN weapons inspectors, that there were NO weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when the United States attacked. What do you want to bet Rummy is unimpressed?

Rummy made it clear some time ago that ?Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.? This is a logically correct or ?true? statement. What it means is that the inability to see (hear, smell, taste, feel) something doesn't PROVE that something isn't there. It's quite possible that one's senses have gone bad.

What is equally true, however, is that it isn't possible to prove that something ISN'T, ever.
The negative cannot be proven. Which, of course, is why our system of justice presumes that an individual is innocent--i.e. hasn't done something--until it has been shown that he did. This isn't a matter of bending over backwards or giving someone the ?benefit of the doubt.? It's simply a matter of logic. There is no way for an accused person to prove he didn't do something. We do what we can.

If you're thinking, ?Du..h!? at this point, bear with me for just a little longer. I just said that our system of justice presumes innocence when dealing with an accused. It's what we are taught in school and it's what we are led to believe. But in actual practice that's not how the system behaves.

How do I know? From personal experience and observation, going back over twenty years. As Dr. Phil would say, ?a changing day in (my) life? happened when my spouse and I were arrested--he because he refused to give his height and weight (which they could judge for themselves) to a couple of campus cops who had come to our house, ostensibly to complete a complaint WE had filed the evening before; I because I objected rather vociferously to this blatantly illegal assault.

Of course, we hired a lawyer and after some back and forth the charges against us were dismissed. The eye-opener came from the lawyer who was moved to explain, for some reason I didn't comprehend at the time, that he had ?never had an innocent client before.?
Since he was relatively young, though not inexperienced in the criminal law, I assumed it to be a factual representation of his practice, peculiar to him; not that we were an exception to the general experience of his profession. He was not, however, moved to return the substantial retainer we had paid him. Perhaps he felt entitled to be compensated for the hours he had spent fruitlessly trying to persuade us to plead guilty.

So, in addition to feeling violated by the cops, I felt we had been cheated by the system and that perhaps I should take a closer look--consider the money it had cost us not as wasted, but as a down-payment on an education. I became a court watcher. And I soon discovered that, regardless of the supposed presumption of innocence, the general consensus in law-enforcement was that ?everyone's guilty of something.?

Whether this is a conclusion derived from experience or a prejudice arising from one's religious beliefs (in Original Sin), the consequence for the legal system is, to put it bluntly, sloppiness. Because, if everyone's guilty, then they obviously deserve to be punished, regardless of whether their guilty of the particular misbehavior or crime they are charged with. And if that's the case, then it doesn't really matter if those who run the system do a good job or not.

What does this have to do with the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Everything, I would suggest. The fact that they haven't been found is irrelevant because Sadam Hussein was clearly guilty of having, using, and/or wanting them in the past, so he deserved to be punished. That a lot of ?innocent? Iraqis, not to mention American soldiers, have suffered the ?ultimate penalty? (meaning that they can no longer be punished because they are dead) is just too bad.

Or rather, given that ?everyone is guilty of something,? they too probably got what they ?deserved.? Besides, there's always the ?deterrent effect? of the system of justice to fall back on. This is the belief that all punishment is preventive in the sense that the example of one person being punished will keep another from doing whatever that person did to ?deserve? it, even if they didn't do anything. Which, of course, cannot be proven.

It is this belief, for which there is no support in fact, upon which the Bush administration's so-called Doctrine of Preemption is based. Preemption in this case is actually a component of prevention. The intent is that the attack on Iraq will be seen as an example by other ?bad actors? in the region (or even the whole world), and that they will thereby be deterred from doing their own thing. In other words, though it would be impolitic to admit it, especially since it conflicts with our supposed principles of justice, the assault on Iraq was actually intended to influence the behavior of someone else--someone who is almost certainly stronger and more likely to fight back. Which suggests that the people who die, ?innocent victims? or not, are being sacrificed to satisfy some ulterior goal. Not because of what they or their government did, but because of what OUR government wants others not to do.

Which, of course, is exactly the strategy employed by terrorists--target the uninvolved and powerless in order to influence the behavior of those who are!

Posted by Hannah at January 9, 2004 07:27 AM