My friend Ansour forwarded me this beautifully written Anant Raut article which appeared in Salon.com earlier this week. Raut is a corporate litigation attorney in DC who is representing five so-called “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo. He wrote his piece as an open letter to deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs Cully Stimson, who urged the corporate clients of Raut’s firm to take their business elswhere in response to Raut’s decision to defend these individuals.
According to the article, Stimson stated,
When corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.
I actually don’t disagree entirely with Stimson. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Corporations do have a right to boycott law firms if they disagree with the causes that those firms support through their pro bono work. Similarly, I have a right to boycott Domino’s Pizza, since its founder, Tom Monaghan, is a philanthropist for causes that I disagree with.
That all being said, however, Mr. Stimson comes off as terribly paranoid. If you have to go as far as to bully law firms out of representing certain pro bono clients, it seems as though you must be afraid of those clients receiving a fair trial. In any case, Raut responds quite nicely to Stimson’s comments:
Mr. Stimson, I don’t defend “terrorists.” I’m representing five guys who were held or are being held in Guantánamo without ever being charged with a crime, some of them for nearly five years. Two have been quietly sent home to Saudi Arabia without an explanation or an admission of error. The only justification the U.S. government has provided for keeping the other three is the moniker “enemy combatant,” a term that has been made up solely for the purpose of denying them prisoner-of-war protection and civilian protection under the Geneva Conventions.
The branding of “terrorist” is a personal one for Raut:
In November 2001, I was walking to dinner in the trendy Dupont Circle area of Washington, D.C. Just as the sun was going down, I heard a car slow to a halt behind me. “Hey, you, dumb blonde,” yelled the driver to my date, “can’t you see he’s a terrorist?” He then sped off. Dehumanizing people makes it easy to believe the worst about them. When they look different from you, when they sound different, it becomes easier, and when you dress them in identical uniforms and lock them in cages, it becomes easier still. All I’ve been trying to do for the past two years is give my clients a chance to challenge the assumptions that have been made about them.
His comments on Guantanamo detainees were particularly poignant for me:
There is a widespread belief, as well as a need to believe, that the men we’re holding in Guantánamo must be bad people. They must have done something to end up there. They couldn’t just be, in large part, victims of circumstance, or of the fact the U.S. government was paying large bounties in poor countries for the identification and capture of people with alleged ties to terror. If the bulk of the detainees are guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, if there’s no evidence that some of them did the things of which the government has accused them, then it would mean that we locked innocent people in a hole for five years. It would mean not only that our government wrongfully imprisoned these men but that the rest of us stood idly by as they did it. It would mean that we have learned nothing from Korematsu v. United States, that we have learned nothing from the McCarthy-era witch hunts, and that when we wake up from this national nightmare, once again we will marvel at the extremism we tolerated in defense of liberty. It would mean that even as we extol the virtues of fairness and due process abroad, we take away those very rights from people on our own soil.
This piece resonated with me more than anything I’ve read in a while. Similar to Raut, I’m often asked why I get easily bothered by hate speech against Muslims. “You’re not even one of them,” a colleague said to me recently. “You’re a Hindu.” Well, I am also a human being. Last time I checked, the two weren’t mutually exclusive.
Check out the article yourself. It’s a quick, easy read.
Great post, thanks.
As 24 hypnotizes society (myself included), it’s good have these calm yet poignant reminders of the reality of the situation.
The thing that bothers me about Stimson’s attitude is the idea that the government should actively be trying to deprive its detainees of good legal counsel by shaming other clients. That’s a scary line for the government to cross, even if such behavior is acceptable for private citizens. If the system is as flawless as Homeland Security bureaucrats like to tell us, then it should be open to the same philosophical foundations as the rest of the justice system: everyone is entitled to good representation.
Thank you again for a great post and cheers to Raut. I keep forgetting about the completely different mindset driving these organizations. A desi guy I knew in college embraces this wholeheartedly . . . and works for the FBI. I’d like to be able to shrug it off but it slaps you in the face. For example, “for a good laugh” he recently forwarded this (urban myth) to me.
Subject: Bless Bubba – City Councilman from Midland, TX )
Bless Bubba – City Councilman from Midland, TX )
T. Bubba Bechtol, part time City Councilman from Midland, TX, was asked on a local live radio talk show the other day just what he thought of the allegations of torture of the Iraqi prisoners. His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience.
“If hooking up an Iraqi prisoner’s scrotum to a car’s battery cables will save one American GI’s life, then I have just two things to say”:
It’s not just brown people and Muslims who get caught in the crossfire of the Bush administration’s War on Terror.
There’s also an Australian guy who’s been in there for the past five years on no charge whatsoever.
That’s why it’s disheartening for others to think that it’s only people who are Muslim or ‘who look like them’ who should be worried by new anti-terrorism laws or the loss of fundamental rights like due process or fair legal representation.
Everyone deserves a fair trial, and if we don’t uphold that right, fewer and fewer people will have access to it.
Great post, Naina
Great post – and Anant’s piece was great – he’s a good friend from law school, and I know he and many other lawyers out there are dedicated to preserving our system of justice, which the Bush administration seems intent on destroying. I’ve written to the White House to demand that Stimson is fired and that the President take a stand for our system of justice – which includes habeas corpus rights.
America has the worst historical memory of damn near any country on the planet. I think our collective capacity to forgive is linked to our collective incapability to remember anything that happened more than 10 years ago with clarity or objectivity. So the Japanese internments of WWII just never happened; when I’ve made the comparison between Gitmo and the internment camps, many people express surprise and disbelief.
Excellent, chilling post. Raut puts ‘our need to believe’ eloquently. Jack Bauer and Councilman Bubba may get away with trying to defend torture committed against real terrorists, but who can defend Gitmo if even its premises are flawed.
Well put.
It seems that even committed human rights lawyers have the same preferences as all the other gentlemen out there…
Thanks for the link to Raut’s piece. Some of the violations to human dignity/constitutional law/international sovereignty that are happening today I brought up as certainties at post-911 gatherings and was immediately shouted down by my liberal (!) friends as being overly paranoid. It’s good to know that in the sea of denial and blinkered consciences that there are still those of us fighting the good fight. Honestly, when I get the equivalent of “Why do you hate America”, I reply: ” No, why do YOU?”
Great post, Naina! (It’s nice to finally see some intelligent female representation on SM – no offense to the brilliant male contributors!)
I fully agree with Neal with no e on this. As a lawyer, I find that many people do not fully understand due process, civil procedure and what it is that lawyers exactly do. For example, a friend of mine is a federal public defender who routinely goes to court on behalf of rapists, murderers, and drug dealers. So often she isn’t actually defending the allegations against her clients; rather, she is arguing against technical inconsistencies and errors which have resulted in her clients receiving unfair trials. I find that what Mr. Raut is doing is similar. A lawyer’s work (especially in the pro bono field) so often revolves around ensuring that their clients receive fair and equal representation. The bigger goal isn’t necessarily to argue that suspected terrorists and rapists are morally righteous; rather, it is to ensure that they are secured their right to a fair trial. The whole point is to refine, bolster and strengthen the American legal system so that both sides involved in litigation are fairly represented. If this is ensured to the highest degree possible, then you have a better chance of a fair and just judgment.
Also, law firms routinely take “controversial” pro bono cases which may garner the firm more recognition and publicity. Having a lawyer win a pro bono case like Raut’s isn’t a small deal.
Well put. I too am bothered when people defend themselves with lines like “I am not a Muslim, I am a Sikh” or “I am persian not arab” because it really doesn’t matter who you are, it shouldn’t be happening to you even if you were one.
Thank you anant – I wish this article was in the more mainstream press because its somehting everyone should read
Tash- I agree that Stimson is an idiot and that the detainees should be given trials, but implying that the non-Afghan detainees are innocents caught up in indiscriminate cross fire is ridiculous. At the end of the day Hicks (the Aussie you are probably referring to) and the Brit-Pakistanis were probably not engaged in international terrorism. They were just enthralled with the Taliban’s disgusting vision of utopia. If the Left chooses to defend liberty and the court trials that it demands, it will find itself with many new allies and wider scope. If it chooses to elicit sympathy for these detainees, this will just have to remain a cause for rants in Counterpunch
After 9/11 most of the PR activity from groups like CAIR was around communicating that they were “People of the Book”. Implicit was that this was an aberration as they are not godless commies or pagans.
I don’t think Stimson’s comments will actually have any effect. Large law firms – which are the object of Stimson’s ire – obtain all of their work from large corporations. The corporations’ legal work is channeled through their corporate counsel’s office who actually selects the law firms. These corporate counsels likely dismissed Stimson’s comments as ridiculous and are not going to change their assignments based on one government lawyer’s position. Also, the attorneys in the corporate counsel office usually were former attorneys in the same law firms which they are now giving legal work to. Stimson’s comments will do nothing to change this relationship. In the end, the only thing Stimson’s comment does is reveal the hostility mixed with irrationality that some individuals in the government possess.
The Australian guy, David Hicks, is actually a Muslim (he converted and then went to Pakistan/Afghanistan).
I don’t think there any non-muslims in Guantanamo (?)
Louicypher @ #12, While I appreciate the nuanced reference to non-Afghan detainees, as contrasted with accidental Afghan captives, in this:
I must point out that: a) Nobody on this thread has so far has implied that non-Afghan detainees are innocents caught in the crossfire. Tash is merely pointing out that non-brown detainees also exist; and b) If one appeals to logic alone, one sees no reason why someone hanging out with the Taliban must be up to no good just because he is non-Afghan.
An illustration of (b) is provided by the travails of a good friend of our family (a non-Sikh) who was briefly incarcerated in the ’80s simply because he was a student at a Canadian university who hung out with members of a Sikh “village-defence committee” in Punjab: ergo he must’ve been up to no good! Fact: this person was tracking the progress of a public-funded immunization project.
I am somewhat discomfitted by your rhetorical “ridiculous”. It is not this blog’s readership, but the U.S. justice system, that is supposed to presume that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. While logic is not a fashionable thing, it is only a cold application of logic that ensures that this admirable system is preserved. Even if one grants that there is some sort of logic-of-expectations behind your certitude that non-Afghans detainees “must be” guilty as hell, that “ridiculous” betrays a decision not of the head, but of the heart. Perhaps you want to be mindful of what you call ridiculous, lest the power of such words cloud those faculties that ensure that the justice system stays fair ?
Naina,
Stimson wasn’t telling corporations anything they didn’t already know (or couldn’t easily find out if they cared). Every law firm that’s part of the Guantanamo Bay Bar Association, of which I know, not only hasn’t hid but has actively publicized its pro bono work. It’s sold as one of the fundamental values of lawyering: everyone has a right to due process.
As another commenter has said, what Stimson was doing was putting government pressure on the law firms and their corporate clients. I wouldn’t object to this if he were a private person (there are some who think Wal-Mart’s devotion to diversity in its law firms is due to pressure from people like Jesse Jackson), but this is so inappropriate for a government official that “chilling effect” doesn’t come close.
Large law firms don’t pick causes that their major clients are likely to find horribly objectionable. (That’s why you don’t see such firms taking up Erin Brockovich-style class actions on behalf of the downtrodden against corporations.) It would be like Domino’s funding a campaign to promote veganism.