Because We Say So Read Free

could have been won with more dedication;and at the opposite extreme, the critics, to whom it was “a mistake” that proved too costly.
    Still to come was the bombing of the remote peasant society of northern Laos, executed with such magnitude that victims lived in caves for years to try to survive; and shortly afterward the bombing of rural Cambodia, which surpassed the level of all Allied bombing in the Pacific theater during World War II.
    In 1970 U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had ordered “a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves”—a call for genocide of a kind rarely found in the archival record.
    Laos and Cambodia were “secret wars,” in that reporting was scanty and the facts are still little-known to either the general public or even educated elites, who nonetheless can recite by heart every real or alleged crime of official enemies.
    Another chapter in the overflowing annals of unhistory.
    In three years we may—or may not—commemorate another event of great contemporary relevance: the 900th anniversary of the Magna Carta.
    This document is the foundation for what historian Margaret E. McGuiness, referring to the Nuremberg Trials, hailed as a “particularly American brand of legalism: punishment only for those who could be proved to be guilty through a fair trial with a panoply of procedural protections.”
    The Great Charter declares that “no free man” shall be deprived of rights “except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.” The principles were later broadened to apply to men generally. They crossed the Atlantic and entered into the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, which declared that no “person” can be deprived of rights without due process and a speedy trial.
    The founders of course did not intend the term “person”to actually apply to all persons. Native Americans were not persons. Neither were those who were enslaved. Women were scarcely persons. However, let us keep to the core notion of presumption of innocence, which has been cast into the oblivion of unhistory.
    A further step in undermining the principles of the Magna Carta was taken when President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which codifies Bush-Obama practice of indefinite detention without trial under military custody.
    Such treatment is now mandatory in the case of those accused of aiding enemy forces during the “war on terror,” or optional if those accused are American citizens.
    The scope is illustrated by the first Guantánamo case to come to trial under President Obama: that of Omar Khadr, a former child soldier accused of the heinous crime of trying to defend his Afghan village when it was attacked by U.S. forces. Captured at age 15, Khadr was imprisoned for eight years in Bagram and Guantánamo, then brought to a military court in October 2010, where he was given the choice of pleading not guilty and staying in Guantánamo forever, or pleading guilty and serving only eight more years. Khadr chose the latter.
    Many other examples illuminate the concept of “terrorist.” One is Nelson Mandela, only removed from the terrorist list in 2008. Another was Saddam Hussein. In 1982 Iraq was removed from the list of terrorist-supporting states so that the Reagan administration could provide Hussein with aid after he invaded Iran.
    Accusation is capricious, without review or recourse, and commonly reflecting policy goals—in Mandela’s case, to justify President Reagan’s support for the apartheid state’s crimes in defending itself against one of the world’s “more notorious terrorist groups”: Mandela’s African National Congress.
    All better consigned to unhistory.

WHAT ARE IRAN’S INTENTIONS?
    March 1, 2012
    The January/February issue of F OREIGN A FFAIRS featured the article “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option,” by Matthew Kroenig, along with commentary about other ways to