New York Times
The Bush administration's misguided effort to sidestep America's existing civil and military courts to prosecute al Qaida and Taliban suspects in military tribunals has lurched from one problem to another. Now the Pentagon is straining to come up with a legal theory that will let it bring some 300 detainees before the tribunals in the absence of specific evidence that they themselves have committed war crimes. This is a distressing exercise. In the United States we do not arrest people and then devise laws to prosecute and convict them. Public confidence in the outcome of these trials demands a return to established American legal principles, including independent court review.
The idea of special military tribunals dates back to the weeks immediately following Sept. 11. It had obvious appeal to a president seeking to convey a sense of wartime danger, a Pentagon eager to interrogate suspects for information bearing on future attacks and a Justice Department impatient with the procedural safeguards and inevitable delays of normal trials. A similar logic led the administration to shortchange the legal requirements of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War in its handling of Taliban and al Qaida detainees, weakening an international treaty that also safeguards the rights of American soldiers captured in battle. ...
Many of the crimes committed in relation to Sept. 11 and al Qaida operations in Afghanistan are distinctive and may call for innovative prosecutorial strategies, but not ones that depart from fundamental American principles of justice. That is all the more reason to insist on independent judicial review of these cases. Trying them in regular civilian or military courts is the best way to assure this.
Boston Globe
The French people do not deserve the political humiliation visited upon them Sunday, when the neofascist leader of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, finished second among 16 presidential candidates, vaulting into a runoff election May 5 against President Jacques Chirac.
Sunday's first-round presidential vote was a debacle not only for the Socialist Party, whose colorless candidate, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, was eliminated, but for the moderate left in France. The stunning result of the first round for the 44 percent of the electorate that voted in 1995 for the Socialist presidential candidate is that those voters will be disenfranchised in the second round this year.
This implosion of the French political system had several causes. Most evident in the results were the relatively high rate of abstention -- 28 percent -- and the combined tally of the far right and the far left -- another 30 percent. Statistics may have a nasty habit of lying, yet those same French kibitzers who ritually deplore the irresponsibility of the American political system must now confront numbers that say nearly 60 percent of the French electorate was so disenchanted with the old political elites of the center-right and the center-left that it opted either not to vote or to cast votes for extremists. ...
The French need to confront serious crises not only in their politics but in their changing demography, their economic choices, and their deepening social conflicts. It is in the interest of France's allies that the French overcome their current humiliation.
Chicago Tribune
France's far-right gadfly Jean-Marie Le Pen placed an astonishing second of 16 candidates in Sunday's presidential election. In all likelihood, that means he will get his 15 minutes of fame, he will get crushed in the May 5 runoff against President Jacques Chirac, and life will go on.
France will be anguished. It is already. Thousands of people took to the streets Monday in Paris, Lyons, Strasbourg and cities across the nation to protest the strong showing of the extreme rightist Le Pen, whose anti-immigration crusade is short on lucidity and long on bigotry. He once dismissed the Holocaust as a "detail" of history.
The French will be embarrassed by the world's attention, especially after elitist ranks of society failed to take Le Pen seriously while his populist appeal attracted constituents worried about immigrants, lost jobs and being swept into an integrated Europe. Many French still have very mixed feelings about integration. ...
Europe also has some issues to deal with. There is a rising anti-immigrant backlash in Europe, which helped Le Pen. European leaders have to prepare their citizens for the inevitable demographic changes that will come as they bring down the walls between countries and integrate the continent.
In that sense, this is a warning for the European Union. France and Germany were to be the foundation for an integrated Europe. This vote shows some surprising weakness in the firmament.
Dallas Morning News
The Catholic Church in the United States is by no means the first institution to be afflicted by scandals involving the sexual abuse of children. However, it has dealt with them more poorly than most. For decades, church officials have been aware of credible suspicions of sexual abuse of children by priests and failed to inform civil authorities, preferring to manage the problem internally, treating pedophilia, statutory rape and other wrongs as moral and spiritual failings rather than as the crimes that they are. The epidemic of coverups has severely damaged the church's public image, caused disenchantment among American Catholics and hurt the morale of the vast majority of priests who have not violated their vows of chastity.
The U.S. church's cardinals, who are its highest officers, are now in Rome at Pope John Paul II's urgent beckoning to discuss the scandals. It is fitting that the pope guide and counsel his troubled American flock, that he urge church leaders to correct their mistakes and implement measures to prevent new ones. In an institution whose defining characteristics include hierarchy and obedience to central authority, papal intervention could set the U.S. church on a more judicious path. ...
A clear, uniform policy for the entire U.S. church would be a welcome reform.
That said, it should be evident by now that this is not exclusively a problem in the United States. Sexual abuse by priests has come to light in Poland, France, Colombia and Tierra del Fuego. Though the controversy has erupted in the worst proportions in the United States, the message should go out around the world that the church must stop harboring abusive priests.
A one-strike-and-you're-out policy is not out of the question. The church should be prepared to report to civil authorities even priests who report their wrongdoings in the secrecy of the confessional, as the law in Texas and two other states requires. The rash of betrayals of the church's most vulnerable members and of its high calling must end.
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Soon after the Sept. 11 attack on America, Congress passed a law that gave the administration what some have regarded as draconian powers to prosecute suspected terrorists. However, it failed to provide methods of keeping track of foreign visitors who may have terrorist plans. A bill nearing enactment would build those safeguards without harming the travel industry or compromising freedoms.
The requirements may cause minor inconvenience to some visitors to Hawaii, and it will increase the amount of paperwork at colleges. However, those are small prices to pay for the security needed because of the events of the past seven months. ...
In November, a review of immigration records showed that 3,761 of the nation's half-million foreign students were from terrorist-supporting countries. Two of the Sept. 11 terrorists were in America on student visas and had violated their terms. The legislation would require schools to notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service if a foreign student failed to report for class within 30 days of the registration deadline.
The INS also would regularly check schools to determine if they are complying with the reporting requirement. Failure to comply could cost schools their authority to accept foreign students.
Houston Chronicle
The sense of dismay that many Americans felt during the drawn-out 2000 presidential election crisis in Florida may be the only thing we have to compare with the depth of sentiment of many in France in reaction to the first-round presidential elections over the weekend. The finish of far-right National Front Party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was second to conservative President Jacques Chirac, has ignited a political firestorm that required police to quell protests.
"It's a political earthquake," Dominique Moisi, a prominent commentator and analyst, said of the showing of Le Pen, a former paratrooper who once called Nazi gas chambers a "detail of history," and has blamed immigration -- particularly from North Africa -- for crime and other of France's problems.
In a column titled "The wound," the publisher of Le Monde, Jean-Marie Colombani, wrote that "France is wounded. And, for many of the French, humiliated."
One commentator put it more bleakly, writing: "One in six French voters has just cast a ballot for Le Pen, a man who denigrates immigrants, calls the euro a 'currency of occupation,' and regards globalization as a plot to allow American super-farms to bury French smallholders." ...
Le Pen's showing is certainly a wake-up call on sentiments about such things as taxation, globalization and the growing power of the European Union.
However, larger questions -- for France and Europe both -- are in the xenophobic messages of Le Pen, who uses "French first" as his slogan.
Is Le Pen's success a fluke of a particular set of political circumstances or a signal of a tilt to the right or even a symptom of a resurgence on the continent of far-right views?
Los Angeles Times
Far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's second-place finish over Socialist leader Lionel Jospin in the first round of French presidential elections is an embarrassment not just for France but all of Europe. Already, extremist parties have scored upsets in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Belgium. The rise of the far right in France, which is one of the main backers of the European Union, provides sustenance to xenophobic movements across the Continent.
Le Pen, 73, has described the Nazi gas chambers as "a detail" of history. A paratrooper in the brutal war in Algeria, he now represents the worst, most thuggish traditions of pre-World War II Europe. He has little chance of defeating President Jacques Chirac in the final runoff for the presidency May 5, but his success shows that Europe cannot be complacent about a rash of anti-Semitic attacks and rising anti-foreigner sentiment.
Like most demagogues, Le Pen claims to represent the excluded, the "little people" whom the establishment stomps on. There's not much he's for, and he's against plenty. He has long denounced immigrants (mainly the more than 4 million Muslims living in France), the European Union and globalization. But Sept. 11 and the French intellectual left's silly, impotent response to the war on terrorism--which amounted to blaming America--created opportunity for an intolerant backlash. European leaders must immediately nail shut the door that Le Pen and his ilk are prying open. They need to say with resolve that the war on terrorism does not legitimize immigrant-bashing; that anger about Israel's current military campaign is no excuse for anti-Jewish bigotry; that fascism has no place in the 21st century.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
For months now, Europe's newspapers have been noting a new continental trend. The fashion involves neither footwear nor cuisine, but rabid xenophobia. Muslims suffer a new scorn since Sept. 11; Jews watch with heartbreak as synagogues go up in flames. Turkish immigrants, asylum-seekers from Yugoslavia and job-seekers from Africa all feel Europe's cold shoulder. Bitterness against foreigners is the new European rage, and nowhere more than in France.
So perhaps it's no surprise that so many French voters leaned to the right in this Sunday's preliminary election, opening the door to a possible presidency for France's most famous bigot, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The 73-year-old Le Pen's stunning second-place finish Sunday qualifies him for the May 5 face-off against incumbent Jacques Chirac. Thus must the French choose between a lackluster right-winger and a frothing racist.
How else to describe Le Pen? This is a man who once called Nazi gas chambers "a detail" of history, who insists France's identity is being tainted by immigration -- especially by Muslims from Africa. He's certainly an equal-opportunity racist, for his antipathy toward outsiders excludes no one. His National Front's policies look like Europe's worst nightmare: He favors banning immigrants, reverting to protectionism and shucking the euro. His "French First" slogan may appeal to France's unseemly nationalist streak, but over the long haul it will serve the country ill. ...
We live in a brave new world these days -- one in which people and products and ideas cross political boundaries almost as readily as air. This fact is bound to inflict some discomfort on those who hold fast to the past. But it doesn't justify the sort of isolationist, jingoistic claptrap that Le Pen preaches. His message has risen from the ashes of the Nazi era, and deserves worldwide disdain and a quick burial. To save their nation's honor, French voters must repudiate it.
Washington Post
The second-place finish of extreme rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen in France's presidential election Sunday has delivered an overdue shock to the country's political system, and to Europe. Mr. Le Pen, who is known for his racially tinged demagoguery against immigrants, captured 17 percent of the vote, and a former deputy got just over 2 percent, meaning that one out of every five French voters chose to back a platform of bigotry and xenophobia. That outcome, which qualified Mr. Le Pen for a second-round runoff against incumbent president Jacques Chirac, was a terrible embarrassment for France's political elite, and yet it may not even be the worst news from the election. Mr. Le Pen, after all, is likely to be trounced in the May 5 runoff; but meanwhile, France's two largest political parties will have to live with the reality that between them they were able to attract only about 35 percent of voters in an election that an unprecedented 28 percent of the electorate chose to ignore. ...
The mainstream parties are now mounting an all-out effort to run up the vote against Mr. Le Pen in the second round. But this should not be enough. France's leaders, beginning with President Chirac, ought to reexamine whether their government is doing enough to foster tolerance toward immigrants, particularly those from the Muslim world, while combating growing anti-Semitism. A serious campaign against corruption is also badly needed. Above all, France's politicians might take Sunday's results as a warning of what happens when governmental institutions, and bureaucratic decision-making, drift too far from local communities and grass-roots democracy. The vast majority of French voters don't really want an extremist president. But neither do they want to perpetuate a political system whose leaders appear to pay them so little heed.
Washington Times
That was the surprising choice of almost 20 percent of the French electorate in the first round of their presidential election Sunday. Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration National Front, recently said of himself, "I am a bit like Zorro. Everyone knows that Zorro exists but they never quite see him." Unfortunately, the world may be seeing a great deal of Mr. Le Pen, who defeated socialist Lionel Jospin and advanced to the May 5 runoff election against incumbent Jacques Chirac. French voters hopefully will see through his demagoguery, or else Mr. Le Pen -- whose career has been built on hatred of foreigners and minorities -- could be France's next president.
It would be easy to laugh off someone -- at least someone over the age of 10 -- who believes in Zorro, but Mr. Le Pen's antics have not usually been that amusing. In 1987, for example, he called the Nazi gas chambers a mere "detail of history." After Sept. 11, he opined that the terror attacks were some vindication of his predictions of an apocalyptic clash of civilizations. His main point is opposition to immigration. He claims to be a Francophile, and not a racist. But earlier this year, Mr. Le Pen compared immigrants to parasitic birds that won't leave no matter how much noise is made. According to the London Times, he said it was not a matter of "expelling" parasitic elements. "We'll allow them to leave," he said. Well, that's mighty French of him. ...
Mr. Le Pen's delusions go beyond Zorro to reach even France's most serious endeavor, soccer. In 1998, when France won the World Cup, Mr. Le Pen said, "I claim this victory for the National Front." Precisely what his party did on or off the playing field is lost to us. The French should buy Mr. Le Pen a sword, a cape and a black horse, and let him ride away. Far away.
Seattle Times
Set against the flames of arson attacks on Jewish synagogues in recent weeks, the unexpected success of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his National Front party has shocked France -- properly so.
No one expects Le Pen and his extreme right views to prevail in the final round of presidential elections, but his second-place showing was not predicted either.
None of the excuses the French are groping for offer any comfort.
Voter apathy is blamed for a roughly 72-percent turnout, poor by French standards, but those are exactly the conditions when raw, persistent undertones are exposed.
Le Pen's elimination of Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was no mathematical fluke. Le Pen is sending a nasty message embraced by millions.
San Francisco Chronicle
Sometime in the next few weeks, the Bush administration is expected to take another brazen step in its gradual replacement of multilateral, alliance-building foreign policy with a unilateralist, go-it-alone stance.
Administration officials have widely signaled that the United States will formally withdraw its signature on the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, which was established earlier this month under United Nations' auspices.
Then-President Clinton signed the treaty in December 2000, placing the nation alongside nearly all U.S. allies in endorsing the court. The ICC will allow the world to bring to trial the 21st century's Milosevics, Hitlers, Pol Pots and Stalins for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Bush administration, backed by conservative Republicans, fears that U.S. enemies could use the court to prosecute American soldiers for civilian deaths during U.S. military operations abroad.
These worries are misguided. ...
A U.S. withdrawal would worsen the administration's record of hostility toward multilateral commitments, from the Kyoto global warming treaty to the ban on land mines. This trend could encourage U.S. enemies to do the same. What's to stop Saddam Hussein, for example, from using the American example as justification for pulling out of treaties on chemical and biological weapons?
No matter what Bush decides, the ICC will begin functioning in the Netherlands sometime next year. But the symbolism of the U.S. decision will be clear -- the administration can either support the movement for global justice and human rights, or it can further its reputation as an arrogant Lone Ranger.
(Compiled by United Press International.)
