IQ Test

Taking a break from my allegedly misguided hero worship of President Obama, I have to take exception to the President’s milquetoast stance on investigating and possibly prosecuting the human rights violations perpetrated by the previous Presidential administration. I understand that President Obama is doing his best to try to forge a moderate consensus in American politics and that he doesn’t want to play into the portrait of liberal zealot painted by the “Conservatives”. I also imagine he probably feels there is room for legitimate debate on the limits of Presidential authority and the process of legal “reasoning” utilized to justify many of the actions in question. And above all, he probably doesn’t want to put the nation through the national shame and disgrace of potentially having former Vice-President Tojo, I mean Cheney, dragged off to the stockade.

While I appreciate all of these concerns, it seems abundantly clear that respect for law demands some sort of inquiry. I have heard the plaintive cries of the Bush apologists that we shouldn’t criminalize legitimate policy differences because “that is what they do in Third-World countries”. Well, if somebody were trying to put Bush and his cronies on trail for lying to the American people to manipulate them into supporting a catastrophically idiotic war, they might have a point. If president Obama sought to indict the thankfully former President Bush for bankrupting the country by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and covering up the cost of our wars, then that would probably fall within the area of legitimate policy differences. If we wanted to hang former Vice-President Himmler, I mean Cheney, for promoting the policy of attacking Iraq and depleting the resources necessary to combat Al-Qaeda so that they could continue to rain death and destruction on innocent people throughout South Asia, then it would be a valid point, but all we are talking about is determining if somebody broke the law. We do it all the time; we even have this thing called the “Justice System” that handles these matters.

I keep hearing that the President is concerned about allowing CIA employees who participated in “interrogations” to be investigated and perhaps prosecuted because their superiors told them at the time that what they were doing was not only legal, but necessary for America ’s defense. Well, I guess it would be a shame is these patriotic Germans, I mean Americans, were deprived of the defense that they were just following orders. Ok, maybe I am going a bit too far with that comparison; certainly we want dedicated public servants in the CIA who are willing to take on dangerous and unpleasant tasks in defense of freedom, but this is a simple matter of right and wrong, which as a nation we address through the rule of law. US law and international treaties to which we are a party clearly specify that mistreatment of persons in confinement, even prisoners of war, is illegal. We imprisoned and hung people after the Second World War at least in part for the very acts that the renowned legal scholar Alberto “Solon” Gonzales has argued are legal under American law. Now I have already spent enough time proclaiming my opinion of the twisted logic that says bad things are ok if they accomplish a good purpose and I will not further critique the slippery slope reasoning that has ruined every human impulse towards freedom in recorded history; just know I don’t accept the idea that people who break the law should be absolved as long as they thought they were doing the right thing.

President Obama needs to remember that our nation’s principles are more important than his political convenience or the potential exacerbation of political divisions in America. If investigations are fair and open and any suspected persons are afforded proper due process, how can anyone, Republican or otherwise, complain? On the other hand, if we are afraid to confront our own moral failures, fearful to even ask if crimes were committed in our names, how will our nation retain the moral credibility upon which our power truly rests? Benjamin Franklin told us way back when that “they who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security”. For all President Obama’s fine qualities, he’s not smarter than Ben Franklin.