The United States has completely failed to convince the world that its detention and investigation of terror suspects in Guantanamo has been carried out fairly.
The administration this week announced a military trial for six out of around 550 prisoners held in Guantanamo prison in Cuba, who are accused of helping in the terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11 in 2001.
These trials should stop and the process should be moved to normal US civil courts, where they can be tried properly by judges who know how to deal with trials. In addition, the fact that only these six and two others have ever gone to trial in over seven years is a disaster.
Either the hundreds held are guilty of something, in which case they should be tried, or they are not guilty in which case they should be set free.
The six men now on trial have been held since 2002 or 2003, since then the US has not been able to find evidence to take them to court. After so many years, it is bizarre that the trials are going ahead, and that the remaining hundreds of prisoners are still being held with no limit on their prison terms. When will Guantanamo end?
For justice to work and be accepted by society, it not only has to be free and fair, but it also has to be seen to be free and fair. This is true within a nation where civil society is held together by common social bonds of history, language, religion and custom, but it is all the more important for trials which cross national boundaries.
Wider message
Sceptical observers from different societies far away from the trial process watch what is happening to their co-religionists and for an American trial to have any kind of wider message about the importance of transparent and equitable justice, all of us watching these trials all around the world need to believe that the justice being administered is free, impartial and fair.
Without this belief, what President George W. Bush, or his military judges might call justice, simply turns into the perception of the United States carrying out its own revenge or continuing its war against terror through other means.
These trials would be better carried out in the well established American civil courts, where they would be held in the open under rules that have been well established over centuries of legal practice, which are there to allow both the guilty to be found as well as the innocent to be able to protect themselves against the power of a state which sees itself at war.
The accused should be able to defend themselves in the normal way, without having the rules changed on them every few months.
There is little doubt that the American military and security forces have imprisoned some dangerous people, some of whom may have contributed substantially to the horrific terrorist attacks on September 11, and maybe to many other shocking and terrible acts.
But such suspects have to be tried openly and fairly, so that the evidence against them is presented to the world at large, and the whole world is able to agree that the individual did what they are alleged to have done, and that they deserve to be punished under the law.
Bush acted on his own authority as commander in chief of the US forces when he set up special military tribunals to try the suspects held by the Americans on war crimes charges.
These tribunals do neither follow the laws of the US, nor do they run under either the civilian or military legal practice of the US.
They operate in their own legal sphere, and when Congress shamefully allowed the administration to reorganise the tribunals, they could not alter the basic fact that they were part of a destruction of the United States' basic legal system, that everyone deserves a fair trial.
It is a travesty that the Bush administration has resorted to its own special courts to try terror suspects, when it has a perfectly good court system ready to be used.
It sends a very strong message to the whole world that America is unable to meet its own standards. It is at times of crisis when societies are being sorely tested, that it is all the more important to stick to the basic laws and social conventions.
Unfortunately, it is not just the military tribunals that wreck the United States' moral position. Guantanamo is a prison that should not exist.
The secrecy over who was held there, the lack of public supervision, the removal of normal prisoners' rights, all add up to a betrayal of accepted legal standards, which is a perfect gift to the United States' opponents, who are able to point to this outrage and use it for their own propaganda.
Degrading
This all goes along with many failures of practice by the US, such as the disgusting degrading of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and the legal games around the practice of "rendition" under which the US government agreed to allow prisoners to be moved to the legal authority of friendly authoritarian regimes where they could be held and questioned outside US law, including the use of torture.
It all goes along with the outrageous legal games by Bush's officials on how to handle torture under US authority. They have permitted "harsh questioning" including sensory deprivation, compulsory enemas, and disorientation.
They have also allowed the savage practice of near-drowning someone by covering their face with a cloth and pouring water over the face and down the throat.
This "water-boarding" has been described as torture by CIA officials and officials from many other intelligence agencies around the world, yet the White House describes it as permissible.
The Bush administration has lost its moral authority. The taking of six men to trial shows an administration in its final year running out of time and seeking to justify itself, rather than the search for justice.
The whole world admires the stirring words of the American Declaration of Independence which states that "all men are created equal" and have certain unalienable rights among which are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Any American presidency should seek to live up to these magnificent ideals, rather than ditching them when under attack, and imperiling any moral authority it had left.
