ADVERTISEMENTS

I am writing to express my deepest concern that you have invited George W. Bush to speak at this year's gala. I am a life-long member of the ACLU and support the right of all people to speak their minds. ACCA's yearly gala is, however, a curated event in which only the most prestigious and influential voices are invited to be heard. My attorney husband and I have, for instance, heard Al Gore, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell speak and have been happy to listen even though we support some but not all of the views expressed by those individuals. 

The support for the investigation stems from Bush's open admission that the authorized water boarding, the necessity people feel to hold torturers accountable if we are to end torture, and the utter failure of the United States to investigate Bush and others. The U.S., as the most powerful country in the world, is an example to the world: If the U.S. can openly torture, so can every other country.

There have been some naysayers to the attempts to internationally prosecute Bush and other officials. They have it wrong. They want a world in which if a country does not investigate its own torturers, then no other country should. They argue, as David Frum did in a recent column on this site, that efforts by the Center for Constitutional Rights and its partner legal organizations to seek criminal accountability of former President Bush in Switzerland amount to "law as a weapon of politics" and "assault upon the basic norms of American constitutional democracy."

Let's correct one major misconception some have about the basis for this action and how it relates to the U.S. legal system at the outset. The Convention Against Torture, which mandates that Switzerland and 146 other countries including the United States investigate and prosecute torturers, is part of U.S. law. Its ratification and its enforcement is part of our constitutional democracy.

The anti-American and anti-Constitutional acts were Bush's decision to authorize torture and the U.S. failure to hold him accountable. Politics are being used as a weapon against the law by claims that these are policy choices. They are not. As the State Department Legal Advisor Harold Koh stated, torture can never be a "policy choice." Likewise, the investigation and prosecution of our homegrown torturers is a legal obligation and should not be driven by politics.

Victoria Pynchon, Esq.

American Arbitration Association

(as recently featured on NPR's All Things Considered)

ForbesWoman's She Negotiates Blog

Member, Panel of Distinguished Neutrals,

Chair, ADR Section, Federal Bar Association

(please note that the only organization on whose behalf I am authorized to speak is She Negotiates Consulting and Training - I am simply on the panels of the listed ADR associations and am simply one of many bloggers at ForbesWoman)

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