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.