The Trouble With Ramsey
In the recent past I’ve written rather harshly about former Attorney General Ramsey Clark who, once again, finds himself in Baghdad as part of Saddam Hussein’s defense team. The right-wingers call him a traitor. Some intelligent leftist critics call him the best friend of war criminals. I, on the other hand, just think the poor old guy is visibly addled.
Reading yesterday’s reports of Clark standing on the Baghdad court steps and making lofty statements about the right to a fair trial in a duly constitued court, I paused to reflect…and, frankly, I tried to evoke a more charitable view of him. After all, I also believe in due process…be it in Gitmo or in Saddam’s court room. I also oppose the death penalty faced by Saddam; I oppose it for anyone. Especially for genocidal dictators upon whom I wish a long, long life and an even more prolonged and anguished death. In any case, anyone — even the most heinous criminal– deserves the best legal representation possible. And no lawyer should be condemned for defending the worst of criminals.
But I just couldn’t get there. I just can’t buy Clark’s shtick. The more I thought about him, in fact, the more I thought about a story that a long-time friend once told me:
This friend dates back to college days in the 60′s where he was a radical student organizer at UCLA. Later, he went on to become an excellent teacher in one of the most presitgious and progressive private high schools in Los Angeles. For years he dedicated himself to organizing a union for the school teachers. And after much resistance, my friend and his union were victorious.
Surprised I was, some years later, to bump into him and find out he had quit his job and was now working as a teacher at a local low-end, working-class community college. "Why on earth?" I asked him.
"It wasn’t an easy choice," he answered. "But eventually it became very clear to me. In the private school where I taught, most if not all of those kids that I taught we’re going to make it with or without me. They had the connections, the talent, the support you need. But teaching at community college, I knew that I could make a real difference. What I did there really counted and could easily make the difference between success and failure."
Taking that line of reasoning, and stealing and bastardizing a line from Bogie, I’d ask Ramsey Clark, then, of all of the trials in all of the world where a defendant might need your help, why would you choose Saddam Hussein? Certainly, with 3500 Americans on death row and more than half of them with no legal representation whatsoever, Clark’s humble services might be better proffered to one of these hapless, condemned souls.
That Clark, instead, chooses to defend a war criminal already outfitted with literally dozens of lawyers and paid for the by vast fortunes he has squeezed from his victimized population, makes it impossible (at least for me ) to have any tempered view of him. I can only conclude that in helping Saddam, or in gesturing to help him which is more like it, Clark believes he is making some broader political statement about America’s role in the world. It’s a piss-poor platform from which to do that sort of political work. And it is marvelously counter-productive and I would say downright stupid when you have simultaneously positioned yourself as a major figure in an already struggling peace movement. And that’s the trouble with Ramsey. Big trouble.
November 29th, 2005 at 3:13 am
The wikipedia entry on Ramsey Clark is quite interesting…ranging from Truman’s comments on why appointing his dad to the Supreme Court was a mistake (he wasn’t very smart, apparently) to the reason Johnson appointed Ramsey AG (to get his dad to resign from SCOTUS, mostly so he could appoint Thurgood Marshall) to Jon Stewart’s comment about Clark: “He needs a new business card. Ramsey Clark – Defending Sick Fucks Since 1980.” It doesn’t explain the mystery of his political dementia, but it’s fascinating background on one of the stranger figures to have ranged the American political landscape. I think most of it must have to do with ego and a perverse need to step into the limelight, even if it’s at the margins. That and the liklihood that the ANSWER crowd supplies him with a steady stream of sychophants telling him precisely what he wants to hear about himself.
November 29th, 2005 at 3:18 am
My turn to say, “Could you have picked a more boring topic”? Soon enough, we’ll see more flaming here about ANSWER and perhaps about whether Trotskyism is just a mutated form of syphilis, and whether its tertiary-stage dementia might usefully explain the behavior of Christopher Hitchens, Ramsey Clarke, Irving Kristol, etc., etc.
So I randomly clicked on the blogroll, and there’s Kevin Drum with a real story: Shi’ite death squads. And that’s even vaguely relevant to Saddam’s defense, assuming old Ramsey cares. Saddam told April Glaspie during a fateful encounter not long before Iraq invaded Kuwait that Iraq would “not accept death.” It was rumored that Saddam would base his defense of invading Kuwait on the importance of heading off an Iranian-sponsored uprising in the South (southern Iranian oil-fields being the alternative target that Glaspie warned him would be an unwise choice from the point of view of the U.S., “Arab-Arab” border issues being something on which the U.S. curiously had “no position” at that point.) Well, that gets squirrelly as hell, I don’t exactly follow it, but … here we are in somewhat of a pickle that Saddam might have kindly predicted for us: a certain creation of Iran called “the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq” is the strongest political force in what used to be Saddam’s country, working shoulder to shoulder with Moqtada al Sadr, a guy Michael Totten said we should kill, just kill, that’ll settle his hash. (Tots has since moved on to really important topics, like those crazy drivers in Beirut.) And these forces are hand-in-glove with this New Iraqi Army that’s supposed to soon be adequate to the task, according to our Fearless Leader. Forces that freelance as extrajudicial executioners and torturers.
Saddam was Iraq, Iraq was Saddam, and without him, Iraq is “accepting death” as nation, and becoming something else entirely. What’s old Ramsey up to? Who the hell cares. Ramsey’s sallying forth to argue with umpires who don’t matter, while the real players are starting to use baseball bats on heads, and Bush is noticing he’s made some bad trades and should probably sell the team soon. If you can’t keep your eye on the ball (what ball?), at least keep your eye on the game.
November 29th, 2005 at 3:52 am
Marc’s addicted to demonization. Sadly, it’s a common habit and one that, more than any, led straight to the war in Iraq.
So many otherwise reasonable Americans couldn’t see the obvious moral, political, diplomatic, geopolitical and economic problems with invading Iraq because Saddam had been so sensationally demonized.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:47 am
On Ramsey Clark, at least, I am a cynic in that I believe his conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest. His public record makes the case quite well. How this all serves his self interest, other than to keep his name in the news, I can’t imagine. But maybe, for Ramsey, that is enough?
November 29th, 2005 at 8:31 am
Let me add a detail to this entry so no one accuses Marc of being one sided:
“…about former Democratic Attorney General Ramsey Clark….”
November 29th, 2005 at 8:59 am
It just confuses things to call Ian Williams a “leftist critic” of Ramsey Clark. If Noam Chomsky or Tariq Ali lambasted Clark, that would be of interest since they are genuine leftists. Williams, on the other hand, is a case-hardened “bombing leftist” of the Paul Berman sort. Maybe for the purposes of clarification, Marc could henceforth refer to people such as Ian Williams as bleftists, a neologism for bombing leftist.
November 29th, 2005 at 9:21 am
It does seem like he’s lost it but I think the community college remark is out of place. What he said about private schools is true. I study law at one right now. Should I tell the lawyer professors they’re losers for teaching there? I think not.
As to the Saddam thing, he really is off the tracks but it’s a red herring. Completely personal and has nothing to do with him Being Lyndon’s AG. Woody as usual in his ad hominems implies “well you know Democrats are crazy radical leftists” and you led him there beautifully. This is about as deep as these people can get.
There’s something more sinister afoot though. Saddam may kill off his opposition and get back in. Try that one on for size. John Burns did.
November 29th, 2005 at 9:52 am
OK, so this thread is going to be about Ramsey after all, dammit. And I’m contrarian, as you all know. So let me say this: if Ramsey has made a career of defending sick fucks, you’d think defending Rwandan genocidal maniacs would be the absolute nadir.
I think you might be wrong about that.
I’ve just spent about an hour reviewing the case of Rev. Elizaphan Ntakirutimana and his son Dr. Gerard Ntakirutimana, at the ICTR’s own website, and I have to say, I wouldn’t blame any lawyer for being tempted by the role of defense attorney for these two men. They may actually have been guilty beyond some shadow of a doubt. But if they are, it says something about how rapidly insanity can descend even on upon unexceptionable individuals when a whole society is going nuts. Even the Court agreed (not just in sentencing, where “character” defences are accepted sometimes for war crimes, but also during the trial, where they usually aren’t) that these two men somehow, overnight, went from exemplary public servants to accomplices (if not direct perpetrators) of harrowing massacres.
They were not found guilty of the worst charges, but the court did find a few that appeared to stick. It’s not inconceivable (but apparently too much of a stretch at the moment) that they are innocent even of these, and that a few “witnesses” will recant someday and say they were bullied or cajoled into assigning to the Ntakirutimanas a far greater role than even the Court decided was appropriate. Who knows?
If there’s one thing you can say, it’s this: If a minister who had never shown the slightest bias against Tutsis, and his son, who went to work in a Tutsi region, was married by a Tutsi pastor, with a Tutsi best man at his side, could suddenly become “sick fucks” for a couple of days, then it could probably happen to the best of us under similar circumstances. Whether old Ramsey helped or hurt the defense is something I haven’t been able to satisfy myself about, just from the on-line documents. Perhaps self-aggrandizement was at the root of motives for taking the case, I don’t know. But having read for a while, I think you could make a very interesting movie about this trial, and if it was written from a reasonably faithful script, nobody would leave the theater feeling there were any easy answers to the questions that it would have to leave hanging in the air as the credits rolled.
So as not to end on too grim of a note: I’d cast Nick Nolte (a bona fide nutter in real life, a big help in some of the roles he gets recently) as Ramsey. He’s certainly starting to look old enough.
November 29th, 2005 at 10:23 am
Actually, I don’t think Clark can be faulted for making a specialty of defending “sick fucks” (alleged or real) because it’s the proverbial dirty job that somebody’s got to do. As a lawyer, he’s on defensible turf taking seemingly indefensible clients. It’s the half-baked political pronouncements and not-even-dubious associates that make him seem like a bit of a sick fuck himself – however irrelevant and immaterial, as you pointed out in your first post – in my view. Perhaps Jon Stewart should have finished his observation with the Seinfeldian qualification “…not that there’s anything wrong with that” (the liberal’s slyly “non-judgemental” equivalent of Dick Cheney’s “Some would argue…”).
November 29th, 2005 at 10:43 am
“Former Ku Klux Klan leader and Louisiana State Representative David Duke was in Syria on Monday to express solidarity with Damascus.”
http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=93548
You can find nut jobs anywhere if you look hard enough.
November 29th, 2005 at 10:50 am
Im sorry to be so rude as to laugh at my own commenters.. but Buukerbuster, you crack me up, boy! Am I paying you by the way? If not send me a note so I can put u on the pad…what a gas!
So let me see if Ive got this right… Poor Ramsey Clark is being “demonized” like poor Saddam was? Oh shit, Im sorry. I didnt understand they were in the same category of folks! Next time I’ll make sure to link them closer together.
Anyway, I dont see how Im demonizing Ramsey. You seem to believe that the world is neatly cleaved into two teams; you choose one and swear loyalty. And even a murmur of criticism about “your side” is heresy. Have u investigated the Vatican? Seems lile there might be a job there for you– and that would take you off my payroll.
Tom C: Here’s the difference between you and Ian Williams who you disparage as part of “The Bombing Left.” He’s a distinguished writer and author with a lifetime of work under his signature… work he is willing to standby and defend with argument. He also has a wonderful record as a social activist and while he might not be a fire-breathing Leninist-Guervarist he is one of the organizers of the Socialist Scholars Conference. You, on the other hand, are an anonymous grafitti sniper whose only demonstrated talent to date is, from the shadows, to blast out one-line disparagements of people you disagree with. I suppose that would you make part not of the “bombing left” but rather of the Idiot Left. Next time around try to make a cogent argument or get the fuck out of here.
November 29th, 2005 at 10:57 am
May I suggest that some of the motivations we attribute public figures may be fun to talk about, but they hardly add much to the discussion. Let’s face it, most people, especially public figures, have huge egos. Examples of such speculation here have been:
“… ego and a perverse need to step into the limelight….”
“… I am a cynic in that I believe his conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest.”
One motivation that is worth talking about is RC’s apparent desire to expose the hypocrisy of US foreign policy. We could also discuss whether or not there is anything to expose or whether RC is successful in doing so.
That would be interesting… not whether or not he’s a shit.
November 29th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Michael Turner.. You know I want to add something here. Im sorry to bore u with some of my postings. But u’d have to sit where I sit to see how irritating a comment is like this. I have four jobs and a family. My blog is for me to have fun. And, sorry, it’s resally to entertain you. Im sure Kevin Drum or the Man in The Moon for that matter can regularly or occasionally post more interesting matter. But as they say in the networks, no one is forcing you to read what I post. So give me the pleasure, please, of posting what I like– without first polling the audience.
On the other hand… Ive placed a PayPal button on the front of the blog. If you would like to help sponsor this blog by giving money, I — like the networks– will be happy to pander to you.
November 29th, 2005 at 11:18 am
Ian Williams has connections to the Socialists Scholars Conference, but so does Bogdan Denitch. However, both are big-time advocates of NATO’s wars in Yugoslavia. Here’s another pip of an article from salon.com by Williams drolly titled “Give War a Chance”.
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/1999/05/14/left/index.html
With “leftists” such as these, no wonder we are in Iraq today. In fact, I heard Williams at a panel on Orwell at the Socialist Scholars Conference just before the war in Iraq started. He wagged his fingers at the audience, telling them, “Wait until the war starts, you’ll see all the WMD’s that Saddam has on hand. You’ll see.” I guess he was talking to the same people as Judith Miller.
November 29th, 2005 at 11:22 am
Mark D – I think that there’s already an assumption among some of us that if RC’s mission is to expose the hypocrisy of American foriegn policy, he does a bad job of it and appears to engage in considerable hypocrisy himself. That’s my view. I know that there’s an underlying argument about double standards and the “real” war crimes and such that drives Clark, but if I were going to go out into the world as the tribune of consistency and enemy of hypocrisy, I wouldn’t do it appearing to stand on the shoulders of – or at least holding hands with – the Workers World Party, which is a particularly rotten group even by sectarian leftist standards.
November 29th, 2005 at 11:37 am
I don’t see how a Ramsey Clark can be making a big deal about the justice being handed out in this case or any case in Iraq. Iraq is now a free democracy with the aid of America. Just ask those guys who were tortured by the Interior Ministry. They were released after their torture of a few months finally, right?
It is true Marc Cooper could also be doing more than wasting blog space on Clark and giving more attention to cases that deserve his attention and writing talents:
http://wm3.org/splash.php
Will Marc ever do an interview with this journalist who has written an outstanding book on this case?
http://wm3.org/live/howtohelp/bookdocs_display.php?id=DK
November 29th, 2005 at 11:49 am
What does this Memphis three issue have to do with global politics?
November 29th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Well, Marc is the one who is criticising Ramsey Clark for going to Iraq and not spending more time on poor people’s need for fair trials, etc. Well, why doesn’t Cooper walk the walk…Can’t think of a better use of his blog space than to write about the Memphis 3 or Bernard Baran…or others who have been railroaded because by the justice system they were poor…Instead, it’s just one more boring post on Ramsey Clark…
He’s the pot calling…
November 29th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Boy, we’ve really smoked out the fringies today! The Mepmphis Three? Forgive me for not dedicating every waking hour, comrade.
November 29th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
My thoughts exactly, Marc. Well said.
November 29th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
oh yeah, i know Marc…that’s really the fringes…I hear ya…
why would a blogger like yourself ever wanna talk about such trivial things…eh?
November 29th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
The West Memphis 3 and Mumia people are great. I love them. While the WM3 folks are far more sane than the Mumia nuts, they still seem to think that any moment not spent talking about that case is wasted. Leonard Peltier as well… I love these cases.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:13 pm
The West Memphis Three are a completely lost cause. The time to fight that fight was, oh, a decade ago.
WHERE WERE YOU A DECADE AGO?
November 29th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
a lost cause? you must be kidding. WM3 doesn’t meet Josh’s politically correct litmus test I guess…ho hum…
November 29th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
a decade ago, i was supporting the wm3…and other cases like it…all the things that cooper accuses Clark of not caring about…my bad.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
I ain’t Josh.
What legal remedies, short of revolution, currently exist for the WM3?
None?
Thought so.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
“frank”…”al derardo”.. “jimmi fox”… AKA good ol’ steve.
Where’s “whitey herzog” been hidin’?
November 29th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
To tell you the truth, I don’t care much about the WM3. There are plenty of poor folks sitting in jail who nobobdy pays attention to. I guess they have boring cases and are not heavy metal fans.
Ramsey is a nut job. But is he not kind of a staw man? Everyone knows he is going to defend the more vile person he can find. Better to ignore him and the Answer nuts. The RCP too.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
Oh, and Marc, not to give you a writerly ribbing, but you sound like the angry band member who chastises the crowd for not playing what they want. True, they’re (usually) paying fans in that example, but unless you’re writing in your private journal, or playing songs on your acoustic guitar in your lonely basement, your audience will engage with you–poke, prod, gush, whine, chastise. All the good stuff. Not that you can’t poke back, of co– Yeouch! hey, that hurt!
I’m remembering that ol’ Smiths classic … “Hang the DJ (hang the dj), hang the DJ..”
November 29th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Holy crap. You’ve obviously hit a nerve, Marc. (I am shocked that there has been no mention of freeing Mumia yet). I think it is great that you are reporting on the antics of Ramsey Clark. Everyone should take a real look at Clark and International Answer before they go to the next peace rally.
November 29th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
Mark D – but what is it about Ramsey Clark that we should discuss if not his motivation for sitting at Saddam’s defense table? We know where he is (Iraq). We know what he is doing there (on the Defense team). The only question left is why? Our respective guesses are as good as any, right?
At least Alan Dershowitz, who is also fond of big name show trials, seems to pick ones that have interesting legal questions and challenges.
What is interesting about Saddam’s case? There’s pretty broad agreement on the evidence, the only questions are: what will be his defense and will the prosecution credibly connect the person to the crimes.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:06 pm
Thank you Too Many Steves. Precisely. If Clark sticks his schnozz into this hi-profile trial it seems he makes himself fair game. But we all KNOW the answer to the Big Question. Clark is there to turn this trial around and try the US for its policy in Iraq. What a stupid, fucking way to do it. SLam the policy all you like… but to do that in defense of a mass murderer like Saddam is nauseating. Im happy Saddam is on trial. Shoot me.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
We’re all happy he’s on trial but he may also just be pulling the stings of the insurgency as well.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
TThe late William Kunstler said that every defendant was entiltled to legal representation. But that didn’t mean he was entitled to Kunstler’s. Ramsey Clark has shown a penchant for some very bad people and, unlike the ACLU, only shows up on one side. The Civil Liberties Union will defend the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie as well as Communists to teach or gays to be scouts. That’s the difference.
November 29th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
Was it not the CIA who helped Saddam over-throw the Qassim Regime in 1963? And wasn’t the reason for the overthrow, a fear that the Iraq Petroleum Company would be nationalized? So now, we have another game of “musical chairs,”–for the exact same reason. The U.S. governement lost control of another puppet. The high price one despot pays for being too independent — a mock trial and laughable defense.
November 30th, 2005 at 6:34 am
Marc writes: “You seem to believe that the world is neatly cleaved into two teams; you choose one and swear loyalty. And even a murmur of criticism about “your side†is heresy.”
Sorry, but “my side” isn’t Ramsey Clark or, certainly, Saddam Hussein, and my critique of your approach is that it lacks nuance and context, dwelling as it does on bombastic ad hominem attacks. I would be no less disappointed if you made similar hatchet jobs on W and Dick Cheney.
Here’s an example of how Marc chooses demonizatin over analysis. He says he’s “happy” that Saddam is on trial.
Indeed, justice for despots is a pleasant thought, but the facts of how Saddam came to trial and the circumstances of his ongoing trial should be deeply disturbing to anyone who cares about democracy and the ideals and institutions it’s based on.
But no matter, Marc is happy because Saddam is a demon, enuf said. Marc accuses me of breaking the world into simple categories of the good and bad guys, but I think it’s Marc who overlooks the details in favor of demonization.
Marc, apparently, has no important response to the fact that Saddam’s trial by his most vehement political opponents can’t possibly be fair and is itself a product of war crimes. Let me guess: he’ll say I’m a leftist dupe of some sort who can’t stomach criticism of Saddam. No, I just think supporting the principles of jurisprudence are more important than seeing a dictator, even one as vile as Saddam, fry.
What is more important, that Saddam fries for his crimes in an obviously unfair trial, or that the political paradigm that created and sustained him be destroyed?
November 30th, 2005 at 8:09 am
Iraq to Ramsey Clark: Go Home
Iraqis know what Saddam Hussein did to their country. And yet there appears to be no stronger defender of Saddam Hussein than Ramsey Clark, who now runs ANSWER (the far left anti-American organization), and who seeks to find fault with every bit of A…
November 30th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
A couple of years ago a friend of mine sent me the “indictment” Ramsey Clark had written as articles of impeachment for Bush. (This may even have been before Iraq, and all been about his war crime of overthrowing the Taliban.)
What amazed me was not only that it was a bunch of crap, that was expected, but that it was a bunch of crap that bore absolutely no resemblance to the actual grounds for impeachment specified in the US constitution. Bush was to be impeached for not signing Kyoto (should every senator who voted against it be impeached too?), for violating this or that rule of the UN, for failing to give his full support to gay marriage, for being funny-looking. There was not, in that, a single charge that could last a minute in a Congressional hearing; it was just clubbing Bush with any stick at hand.
None of that would be surprising coming from your run of the mill college lefty but one does assume some higher standard of basic legal competence in the former Attorney General of the US. Apparently one assumes it in vain in regards to the ridiculous Mr. Clark. Whatever motivations of resentment, vanity and just general nuttiness drive him, he is not a serious person who trades on the seriousness of an office he held long, long ago.
July 25th, 2006 at 9:10 am
Ein Schloss, Ein poker Wurst, Ein Kopf !xjj
August 1st, 2006 at 9:56 am
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