In the Louisville Courier-Journal yesterday, I read of Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson and current defense attorney for deposed Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.
I have long wondered about a man who could voluntarily defend the kinds of people he has defended and still live with his own conscience. It appears that, based upon his philosophy of life, there is no problem. The story paints the picture of a man lost in his own contradictions, yet comfortable with the relativistic synthesis of truth he holds to.
He is an old man, untroubled by the fact that his latest client is a former dictator. In his 78 years, he has represented many infamous men and many divisive causes....
Clark is a man with a number of enemies who see him as one whose only conviction seems to be defending those accused of atrocities against humanity. When describing those who are fans of Clark, the writer of the article refers to a Who's Who of left-wing organizations and individuals convicted of crimes against humanity:
People have said good things, too -- the NAACP and the ACLU have lauded his civil rights work.
So have despots and dictators -- like his newest client, Saddam Hussein, who faces death by hanging if convicted in a chaotic Baghdad trial marked by assassinations of attorneys, emotional meltdowns and shouting matches with the judge.
There have been many others in the last 40 years. Clark has offered legal counsel and advice to a rogue's gallery of the accused:
Nazi concentration camp boss Karl Linnas; Liberia's Charles Taylor, now charged with crimes against humanity; Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, on the run from charges of genocide; former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who died last month in his cell in The Hague while on trial for war crimes; Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the Rwandan Seventh Day Adventist pastor convicted by the U.N., with his son, of herding thousands of Tutsis into a church compound and then calling in rival Hutus, who killed them in an all-day massacre.
He accepts these clients, he says, for the sake of justice and to uphold the right of every person to a fair and impartial trial.
"Especially those people," he says, "who allegedly did terrible things."
William Ramsey Clark is a complicated and contradictory man.
As the story continues, a clearer pictures of this man's contradictions and self-constructed moral code comes to light:
Is Saddam's prosecuting body, the Iraqi Special Tribunal, a legal entity? No, in his view. Is Saddam getting a fair trial? A resounding no. Is there any evidence that Milosevic, whose funeral he attended, actually ordered mass rapes and killings in the former Yugoslavia? Absolutely not, he says.
But there is no mention of the humanity lost under the rule of his clients, or of the evils of genocide and murder. Or of what should be done with people who commit them.
Instead, he lives in a reality of his own making, where the rules of rhetoric and logic apply to circumstances of his choosing. There is no evil. There is no death penalty. There are no prisons. He hesitates when asked what should replace the later two.
Ramsey's philosophy is clear in his response: "I don't believe in punishment."
On the one hand, Ramsey Clark has constructed a worldview that he cannot possibly live with. In the reality of the day-to-day world, there cannot be any form of justice without some form of punishment. This clearly reveals Clark's conviction that there is really no such thing as "right" and "wrong." Nothing can really be considered wrong. Perhaps there are some things less right than others, but with the right perspective, man cannot be punished for any action that he takes. This worldview is indicative of a man vastly out of touch with reality.
On the other hand, Clark is currently defending a man who clearly believes in punishment. All of Clark's clients, including his current one, are exactly in the position they are in because they chose to punish people they thought were in the "wrong." Based on Clark's own twisted worldview, how could he represent such "misguided" men in the first place to think there were people worthy of punishment? In a world of synthesis, contradictions are absolutely appropriate...even though there is no connection to reality.
Deborah Hastings, the writer of the article, points to New Yorker correspondent Jon Lee Anderson, who writes of Clark in his book The Fall of Baghdad that he is "well intentioned but morally blind." Based on Clark's worldview, morals are what one makes them out to be--a point which Clark sees clearly.
Hastings concludes her article with keen insight into this man's sadly twisted mind:
Nuremberg...holds great meaning for Clark. As a young Marine courier, he spent two days at the Nazi war crimes tribunal. At the defense table in Baghdad, he recalls the words of prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, in his opening statement at the trial of Hermann Göring, Albert Speer and 19 others:
"We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well."
But Jackson also said some wrongs are "so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored."
And these are words that Clark does not quote.
Read Deborah Hastings article in its entirety here.
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