Thursday, January 29, 2009

To Investigate the Bush Administration Or Not?

TW: There has been considerable discussion on the left regarding investigation of Bush Era potential "war crimes" in particular related to torture. While strong arguments in favor of such investigation have been made(http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/13/opinion/edlithwick.php). I find the idea ultimately unattractive. Fried in this piece makes a strong case that the high-level perpetrators of the policy have already experienced sanctioning in the form of being voted out of power.

Do folks in the highest level of power get a double standard and/or is a moral hazard potentially created in avoiding actual prosecution for a potential crime, perhaps, but these are not standard crimes. We must move on and we are in a very aggressive manner given the moves initiated by Obama in his first week or so.

Finally Fried makes the point that the torture policy was implicitly supported by perhaps a majority of Americans at the time of the initial policy change. This fact should not be forgotten despite its fallacy of judgment.

From Intl Herald Tribune:
"...Some argue that torture is justified if our survival is threatened, but even apart from the elasticity of this justification, it is flawed because it depends on an equivocation.
Our physical survival is not what is of overriding moral importance (people give up their lives all the time for some higher value) but our survival as decent human beings acting for a decent society. And we cannot authorize indecency without jeopardizing our survival as a decent society.


...It is a hallmark of a sane and moderate society that when it changes leaders and regimes, those left behind should be abandoned to the judgment of history. It is in savage societies that the defeat of a ruling faction entails its humiliation, exile and murder.

...consider what criminal prosecutions would really look like. First, we would have the investigations, the subpoenas, the depositions and grand juries, much of this directed at tripping up the targets, so that they can more handily be prosecuted for the ancillary offenses of making false statements, perjury or obstruction of justice.
Then, we would have the trials themselves - protracted, interspersed with motions and delays, obsessively followed by cable channels filling in the many dull spots with endless commentary from teams of so-called experts, the whole spectacle stupefying rather than edifying the public and doing little to enhance respect for the law. A feast for lawyers and legal junkies, criminal prosecutions would be an embarrassment and distraction for the rest of the society that wants to get on with solving the great problems of the present and the future.


...If you cannot see the difference between Hitler and Dick Cheney, between Stalin and Donald Rumsfeld, between Mao and Alberto Gonzales, there may be no point in our talking. It is not just a difference of scale, but our leaders were defending their country and people - albeit with an insufficient sense of moral restraint - against a terrifying threat by ruthless attackers with no sense of moral restraint at all.Our veneration of the rule of law makes us believe that courts and procedures and judges can put right every wrong. But we must remember: Our leaders, ultimately, were chosen by us; their actions were often ratified by our representatives; we chose them again in 2004. Their repudiation this Nov. 4 and the public, historical memory of them is the aptest response to what they did."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/13/opinion/edfried.php

No comments: