Category: Torture

I’m having the argument about whether it’s worth prosecuting war criminals in the US for torture. A friend pointed out that we all know that investigations will lead inexorably to Cheney, and probably to George Bush, and suggested that such prosecutions would rip the country apart.

My response is:

If you’re not willing to fight that fight, what separates you from Germans after WWII?

Note that Germans who were in no way involved with the concentration camps were hung for the crime of pre-emptive war.

Bush is a war criminal even if he didn’t know anything about torture.

The US is a rogue state, and until America faces that fact, a lot of people outside the US isn’t going to trust it.

Does that matter?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But America is still a nation that’s harboring war criminals and refusing to deal with it. Whether or not war crime prosecutions will rip America apart, the dead and the tortured cry out for justice.

Are the US a nation of men or of laws?

We all know the answer. America has made its decision. Not just in the case of the war crimes, but in the steadfast refusal to investigate and prosecute the widespread fraud that lead to the currently economic crisis.

America is a nation of men.

And the American experiment is dead. It was a grand one, and there was much to love about it. But it’s done.

Bush put a bullet in it, Obama decided to bury it, and the fact that most Americans don’t care is what signs the death certificate.

Obama refuses to even investigate torture, let alone charge anyone.

Lucas O’Connor cuts to the core problem with Obama ignoring torture:

In the coverage of last week’s tea parties and in attending briefly my local event, I was struck especially by one intellectual inconsistency. The apparently happy coexistence of “Give me liberty or give me death” and “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” You can get into a strained semantic debate to justify those two notions living side by side, but at a core level their sentiments are opposed. Either there are things that this country fundamentally and necessarily stands for or there aren’t.

I don’t think America stands for anything particularly noble at this point. I’d be happy to be convinced otherwise, so if commenters have ideas, I’d like to hear them.

I should add that on the original question I’m willing to bet that within a couple years we’ll find out that whatever Obama may have said about stopping torture, torture has continued and will continue under the Obama administration. Less of it, doubtless, but still torture.

The other point that needs to be made is that a lot of Americans really don’t see anything wrong with torture, as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out:

All of that said, what really disturbs me about all of this, is that most Americans still don’t think torture is a big deal. I think in the case of Bush, particularly after 2004, we–the American people–got the government we deserved. I think Bush said a lot about who we were post-9/11. I’d like to see some exploration into how to make this torture argument directly to the people. Maybe we can’t. Maybe people really don’t care that much. But if we’re wondering why Obama isn’t willing to press forward, I think it’s fair to also wonder why the people aren’t pressing him to press forward.

Enough Americans voted for Bush, twice, for him to get into office. In 2004 they voted for him knowing that widespread torture was occurring. It wasn’t a problem for them.

America, fundamentally, is not a nation of laws. It is a nation of men. If you’re important enough, you will not be held responsible for whatever you do—whether that’s lose trillions and destroy the economy, start an illegal war based on lies, or torture. That’s just the way it is. Obama and Bush, between them, have made this point crystal clear.

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Torture

American Experiment RIP

What Obama’s Refusal to Investigate Torture Reveals About America