Torturing The American Soul

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Yet another former interrogator came out yesterday pointing out the critical flaws in the Bush administration's torture policy.

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Yes it really doesn't work.  But that's not really the issue - it was illegal and morally wrong.

 

Pat Lang chimes in:

I don't have a quarrel with the Obamanian decision to avoid prosecuting people from the Bush Administration for war crimes connected with Iraq.  I understand the evident decision.  Politically, such prosecutions would sharply divide the country and probably hurt the Democratic Party in the mid-term elections in 2010 or the general in 2012.  More importantly, a precedent of prosecution of members of a previous administration is likely to lead to retaliation on an unending basis.  I understand the decision but I don't like it.

"I was ordered to..." has been a a discredited and unacceptable basis for a defense in war crimes trial since the trials of the Nazis at Nuremberg.  "Things were tough..." is an equally discredited defense.

What are we saying?  Is it our position that international law applies to everyone but us and that it does not apply to us because we are "special?"

Are we that childish?  

Yes Pat, there are many who are.  That's what PNAC, Project For The New American Century, is all about - American Exceptionalism.  

Paul Krugman suggests that what is really being tortured now is the American soul. 

“Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” So declared President Obama, after his commendable decision to release the legal memos that his predecessor used to justify torture. Some people in the political and media establishments have echoed his position. We need to look forward, not backward, they say. No prosecutions, please; no investigations; we’re just too busy.

And there are indeed immense challenges out there: an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an environmental crisis. Isn’t revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can’t afford?

No, it isn’t, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

We are correct to say that Dick Cheney is only looking out for Dick Cheney when he acts and speaks.  How much longer will it be before we have to say the same thing about Obama?  It would appear that he has little concern for the American soul which is what really made this country exceptional not the constant saber rattling of PNAC and the neocons. 

Comments

[Observer]

You understand of course it is not his role to dictate to the AG. The worse thing Obama can do is take a public stance that's seen as undue influence on independent branches of the government.

Or is it not sexy to pressure Holder.

[Ron Beasley]

Observer
The position that Obama has taken in opposition of any investigation or prosection is seen as undue influence on independent branches of the government