Everybody Hates Alberto

Originally Posted at The Festering Swamp on August 29, 2007

These are my thoughts on the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, which took place just over nine months ago. Like many a good Texan before him, Gonzales was unfairly smeared by political jackals who have been cheapening our country's political discourse for decades. - Mike LaRoche

On August 27, 2007 the 80th Attorney General of the United States, Alberto R. Gonzales, publicly announced his resignation, to be effective September 17. Among many conservatives, such as Michelle Malkin, news of Gonzales's resignation was greeted with approval. In her weblog entry, Malkin writes of some of the problems that those on the right had with him such as his mishandling of the "Attorneygate" controversy and the Justice Department's lackluster approach to matters concerning illegal immigration. Conservatives also disagreed with Gonzales's stances in favor of affirmative action and abortion and feared that once another Supreme Court position opened up, he might be President Bush's choice.

The left, on the other hand, expressed contempt for Gonzales long before he occupied the Attorney General's office mainly because of what he wrote, as Bush's White House Counsel, in a memo five years ago concerning the applicability of the Geneva Convention's Prisoner of War (referred to as G.P.W. in the memo) rules to the Global War on Terror:

As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. It is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for G.P.W. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities or war crimes, such as wantonly killing civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms and scientific instruments.

Although some of these provisions do not apply to detainees who are not P.O.W.'s, a determination that G.P.W. does not apply to Al Qaeda and the Taliban eliminates any argument regarding the need for case-by-case determination of P.O.W. status. It also holds open options for the future conflicts in which it may be more difficult to determine whether an enemy force as a whole meets the standard for P.O.W. status.

By concluding that G.P.W. does not apply to Al Qaeda and Taliban, we avoid foreclosing options for the future, particularly against nonstate actors.

Some took that to mean Gonzales was providing a de facto endorsement of torture. For that, in addition to his being a Republican and a minority (as someone of mixed ethnicity, I'm greatly disturbed and angered by "race traitor" charges of any kind), Gonzales would inevitably be reviled by the left.

At a press conference held on the day of the resignation announcement, President Bush lamented that "After months of unfair treatment that has created harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Gonzales decided to [tender his resignation]…It's sad that…his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons…" Yes it is sad, and Gonzales is not alone in receiving shabby treatment from those wishing to score cheap political points. One might be compelled to draw an analogy between Gonzales and Justice Clarence Thomas in that regard, but I believe a better analogy can be made by comparing Gonzales to former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Both are former San Antonians, both had sterling reputations and were respected by members of both parties for their professionalism and decency, and both had their good names trashed by Democratic Party hacks who have contributed nothing of value to the American body politic.

Should Gonzales choose to return to Texas, I will welcome him home with open arms. His political views may not be entirely in line with my own, but he damn well deserved better than what he got from the inside-the-Beltway guttersnipes who brought him down. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, Alberto Gonzales is a better man than the whole lot of them combined.