Since I continue to be confounded by the current Administration’s insistence that enhanced interrogative techniques qualify as torture, and I agree with conservatives’ insistence that their employment remains legitimate, if not compulsory, in dealing with terrorists, I’m sure I will at least equally confound my readers when I insist that the architects of said policies—I include Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, and I exclude those at Justice who crafted the policies/justifications—should sit the dock and face a trial that will rival the spectacle and the obvious blatant partisan rancor that attended the Clinton impeachment.
It seems as if Obama’s Justice Department will actually spare the country this ordeal, probably because it would be perceived—rather accurately—to be grossly overreaching, aside form the fact that the spectre of national security will hang over every aspect of the proceedings. Additionally, it’s unlikely that any truly Constitutional violations occurred, at least to the point that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, I would like to see the aforementioned “Fab Four” in the dock for various, if inherently contradictory, reasons.
First: lying about the nature of the war. Not specifically about WMD in Iraq, thought that’s a whole other can of worms. By declaring that “you are either with us or against us”, and then enlisting countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as erstwhile allies, the conducting of the entire “War On Terror” became a treasonable exercise in effect, if not intent.
Second: attempting to fight the war on the cheap. If we were truly fighting a “War”—which even the Pentagon realized was limited before the change in Administrations—a draft would have been instituted. The fact that one wasn’t indicated one of two things: either a) the “War”—wherever it was being conducted—was not as compulsory as the Bush Administration was declaring it to be, or b) they put their political fortunes ahead of the nation’s. You don’t “go to war with the Army you have”; you find a way to get a better one, even if it means you have institute a draft, rationing, or higher taxes.
Third: placing the Administration’s political fortunes ahead of the nation’s. One can trace this all the way back to a September 20, 2001 editorial in the Wall Street Journal exhorting the Bush Administration to use the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to link the conservative agenda to the war effort and force the country to accept it.
Fourth: Abu Ghraib. Again: I have no sympathy for the “victims” of “torture”; I’ve been clear about where I stand on that. However, what occurred there, more than any other incident in Iraq, was indicative of the war effort complete lack of professionalism and competence, especially in terms of the criminal level of political tone-deafness. What Abu Ghraib did was further highlight all of the clandestine activity needed to give us an advantage, which of necessity made it harder to keep clandestine. The Administration couldn’t keep its mouth shut even before then.
One could plausibly claim that I am advocating the criminalization of political failures, and I strengthen the hands of our enemies by publicly placing the former Administration on trial for protecting our country. No; I am advocating that whichever Administration fighting a war can be held accountable for confusing the prosecution of said war with their political entrenchment. The Bush White House’ own spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said “people have to watch what they say and watch what they do”, but that rule didn’t seem to apply to the Bushies.
Republicans and conservatives would no doubt publicly decry the shame of their erstwhile standard bearers being treated like common criminals; even Clinton didn’t face imprisonment. However, conservatives have to realize two things. One, as I’ve detailed in my numerous “Republi-Karma” posts, they created this political climate of hyper-partisanship in the mid-1990’s and it would simply have reached its logical if absurd, conclusion with a criminal trial. Two, the series of political disasters starting with the failure to plan for the Iraq occupation thru Abu Ghraib, Katrina, the 2006 elections and the economic meltdown have robbed them of any credibility. That, in the end, may be the biggest betrayal of all: there are conservative principles that are sound—and, because their champions are without credibility, will be impossible to implement.
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