Legal Jeopardy For American Torturers Here and Abroad?
A Q & A Session With An Expert on the Issue, Philippe Sands
By JOHN W. DEAN
Friday, Jan. 23, 2009What Will The Obama Administration Do?
As all who have followed this issue know, President Obama hedged after he was elected as to what he may or may not do. So too did his Attorney General nominee. After Eric Holder declared waterboarding to be unlawful, no one on the Senate Judiciary Committee truly followed up as to what he was going to do, but it appears they are going to now press him on that point.
My question is how can the Obama Administration not investigate, and, if appropriate, prosecute given the world is watching, because if they do not, other may do so? How could there be "change we can believe in" if the new administration harbors war criminals – which is the way that Philippe Sands and the rest of the world, familiar with the facts which have surfaced even without an investigation, view those who facilitated or engaged in torture?
One would think that people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Gonzales, Yoo, Haynes and others, who claim to have done nothing wrong, would call for investigations to clear themselves if they really believed that to be the case. Only they, however, seem to believe in their innocence – the entire gutless and cowardly group of them, who have shamed themselves and the nation by committing crimes against humanity in the name of the United States.
We must all hope that the Obama Administration does the right thing, rather than forcing another country to clean up the mess and seek to erase the dangerous precedent these people have created for our country. A first clue may come when Holder resumes testifying.
When I look at my own conflicted response, it’s not about whether Torture is right or wrong, and it’s sure not about some agreement with the Bush Administration’s policies. It comes down to the day I saw those towers fall down in New York. It made me crazy, that day. I still have trouble watching it or seeing pictures of it. And I wasn’t in charge of what to do about it. We have a term in Psychiatry and Law, Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity [N.G.R.I. for short]. As unforgiving as I feel about the Bush Administration for their crazy responses, particularly going to war in Iraq, I feel some compassion for their agony after 9/11. Had they chased Bin Laden into Pakistan and hunted him and the rest of Al Qaeda down, risking war in that country, that would’ve been fine with me.
Things that argue against my N.G.R.I. thoughts are that they acted in secret, they didn’t change course when Abu Ghraib broke, they didn’t recant when given a chance, and that we re-elected them. If they were crazy, why did we still re-elect them? It’s an indictment of America as well as Bush and Cheney. The other thing is that the world hasn’t gone after Osama Bin Laden. He’s guilty because of insanity. But, that’s a parallel issue, not relevant in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld case.
As for "What Will The Obama Administration Do?" If Obama is the person I think he is, he will leave that to the Department of Justice where it belongs. We’re so used to having a "King" that we’ve forgotten about the Separation of Powers and the Rule of Law. It’s not Obama’s decision to make.
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