Michael Kinsley: Where This Buck Stops

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043003301.html

Where This Buck Stops
By Michael Kinsley
Friday, May 1, 2009


So you're through torturing people. And you're never, ever going to do it again. You're not that kind of country. What on earth were you thinking? And what is the best way to put it all behind you?

The United States is far from the first nation to misbehave, regret it, make itself this promise and then face this kind of question. The question might be about things far worse even than torturing a few terrorism suspects. But the possible answers still boil down to three: (1) forgive and forget; (2) forgive but don't forget; and (3) don't forgive and don't forget.

Option One is off the table. In a genuine advance of civilization, some variation on a "truth commission" has become almost mandatory as proof of sincerity when the good guys (or at least when different guys) take power. President Obama frankly longs for Option Two, saying (with some justification) that he needs to worry about the future, not the past. But many Americans feel that prosecuting the perpetrators is required for reasons of catharsis or "closure." They also remember being told from their youngest days that no one is above the law. Why should torturers, of all people, be forgiven?

Most prosecution enthusiasts aren't all that thirsty for the blood of the CIA bureaucrats who actually conducted the torture of suspected terrorists. Their anger and desire for retribution are aimed at the Bush administration officials who ordered the torture of suspected terrorists and those very near the top who knew all about it and apparently approved (or did nothing to stop it), especially the Justice Department lawyers who wrote those fatuous memos claiming that practices such as "waterboarding" were actually within the law.

The trouble with this desire for retribution isn't that it goes too far. The trouble is that it doesn't go far enough. There is another group -- a large one -- that stood by doing nothing while Americans grabbed people off the streets of foreign countries, took them to other foreign countries (because we don't allow this sort of thing in the United States!) and tortured them until they said whatever our government wanted to hear. If you're going to punish people for condoning torture, you'd better include the American citizenry itself.

Sixty-two million of us voted to reelect George W. Bush in 2004. That was more people than had ever voted for a presidential candidate up until then. (In 2008, Obama got 69 million.) Unlike 2000, Bush's 2004 victory was solid and unambiguous.

snip//

Indignation comes cheap in our political culture. Polls give the impression that the proper role of voters is to sit like a king passing judgment on the issues as they pass by like dishes prepared for a feast. "No, I'm not in the mood for waterboarding today, thanks. But I think I'll have another dab of those delicious-looking executive-pay caps." Prosecuting a few former government officials for their role in putting our country into the torture business would not serve justice or historical memory. It would just let the real culprits off the hook.

[katandmoon]

1. So this is the new meme? We're all guilty? Fuck that. Go fuck yourself, Michael Kinsley.

[babylonsister]

2. So you voted for Bush? If so, I guess he is talking to you. nt

[soryang]

3. Start erecting the guillotines now

Torturers on the right, investment bankers on left. Lawyers repudiating due process, Eighth Amendment and international treaties first in line.

[grasswire]

5. what are you, Shakespeare?

First, kill the lawyers? :-)

[Psychic Consortium]

4. What part do the American people play in one of the saddest chapters in US history?

It is a question that must be asked.
And answered.

[babylonsister]

7. Thank you. I do believe that was the point of this article. nt

[Psychic Consortium]

8. You are welcome. nt

[DaveT]

6. Kinsley puts his finger exactly

on what has been bothering me about all the anger at Obama for not ordering his Justice Department to move toward prosecution of the individuals who tortured and the higher officials who ordered it.

This line of thinking is ripe for cute little reversals such as you see on this thread, but the truth is a little more difficult to grapple with than just saying right is right and wrong is wrong. I don't even agree with Kinsley's assertion that the 2004 election was "solid and ambiguous" -- but the more significant reality about America is that the war against Iraq was a crime in and of itself and almost all of our institutional leadership bought into the basic premise that it was good and justifiable to start a war because because some other country was building "weapons of mass destruction" -- weapons like we have been stockpiling and using for many, many decades.

Our media and our politicians all led and the rest of us either followed or stood idly by as we collectively launched a war of aggression based on a theory of geopolitics that was ruled to be a war crime at Nuremberg.

Obama has to be very careful with his political mandate. He has to lead us back toward our intermittently followed ideals. I'm not even sure if he is up to it -- as talented as he is.

Launching a series of criminal prosecutions that the right wing would scream bloody murder as being pure politics would lead to nothing but trouble.

It is easy to say, so what?

But I am far more interested in staving off the chaos of economic collapse than in the abstraction of "justice." Call me whatever name you want to call me, but we have a long way to go before a substantial political majority in this country favors any kind of "justice" that rebukes ourselves for acting like such morons after September 11.