America's biggest problem - conservatism - persists, now in the form of a fresh CIA torture inquiry, conducted by Attorney General Eric Holder. Republicans are left to decry this as a "no-new-taxes" brand of dishonesty by President Obama, who promised to maintain a forward focus in his administration.
Certainly they are the authorities when it comes to dissembling. This time, their rote cynicism might be accurately placed, as the White House is aware of erosion among far-left leaning constituents (disaffected by the apparent demise of a public option as a key part of health-insurance reform). A Bush-era investigation would be quite the hunk of red meat for them.
As for the question of whether or not the CIA tortured people, well, that much has long since been established. We also know that the highest levels of power signed off on "enhanced interrogation" techniques, which included waterboarding, an act of barbarism for which many Japanese soldiers were hanged after World War II.
(They had done it to American soldiers. It seems the winner makes the rules.)
Prosecution for torturing detainees, who were only captured because our bombs missed them in the first place, seems like a misplaced priority. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and many other former top officials are guilty of far greater crimes than that - they started an illegal war.
They are unquestionably monsters, personally responsible for more American deaths than were suffered on 9/11, a tally that inches upward to this day. They don't deserve to face Lady Justice.
Make no mistake about it: Those would be easily-obtained convictions. Their own words boldly condemn them. We could arrest them and pack them off to the Hague's damp cellars, we could. Or we could drain their bank accounts to reimburse taxpayers for the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted because of their bloodthirsty folly. We could.
Such a response would signal the rest of the world that America does stand for, and by, the rule of law. It would prove that even our highest positions of power are not insulated from legal consequences, that there are no bubbles of impunity in our politics. It would send the right message. It would...
But I don't want that, because we were suckers for these neo-con thugs, and we have earned the shame of our time. We allowed ourselves to be frightened into giving up precious rights for which others have fought and died over the centuries. The mockery we made of those sacrifices is not something that should be so easily brushed off.
There's something to be said for wearing the scarlet letter. That's not to say, though, that these disgusting domestic despots should be let off the hook. Hell, no. I think they should be tortured, too.
Seriously. It ought not be against the law to do it to someone who says it isn't against the law. There's no need to do this in public, although the interest in doing so would be understandable. It can, and should, be a private experience. Whatever they authorized is good enough for them (I seem to remember something about "organ failure").
That'd be good enough for me. Like they say, a little water never hurt anyone. Bottoms up!
pH 8.25.o9
No comments:
Post a Comment