How much more evidence do we need before it becomes undeniable that torture is officially sanctioned by the Bush regime? Clearly, it was a policy decision to encourage torture of prisoners -- nothing else can explain why the Pentagon repeatedly ignored notifications from a wide variety of sources: the Red Cross, the F.B.I., even its own internal auditors. Alberto Gonzalez's musings on how torture could be legally justified were not just abstract exercises, but were (as we would expect from the White House Counsel) justifications for existing policy.
Torture is what the Pentagon wanted, and it's what the Pentagon got. And it's still going on.
People have said, rightly enough, that future one paragraph encyclopedia entries on Bill Clinton will highlight his impeachment and its sordid underpinnings. Historians will no doubt make much of the fact that many Americans seemingly didn't mind Clinton's behavior, with some pointing to how it signified the diminished moralizing fiber of the country.
Likewise, it now seems virtually inevitable that, decades hence, the first lines in potted histories of the Bush regime will mention its sanctioning of torture as a scandal to the core values the country. Likewise, historians will make much of the fact that many Americans seemingly didn't mind the regime's behavior, with some pointing to how it signified the diminished moral fiber of the country.
Remind me, which is the party of "values"? The one that gives torturers a free pass, or the one that gives philanderers a free pass?
3 comments:
Zak, in a word: no. Their lack of resistance makes the Democrats feckless -- accessorites during and after the fact. But they are not the originators and perpetrators of the crimes.
Gonzalez... yes, a typo, now corrected. Thanks, Aaron.
I agree with you, Zak, that the Democrats on the Hill are complicit. But they're not "just as" complicit (your original question). And I don't know of any Democrats who have *actively defended* the Bush regime's support for torture, whereas there are quite a number of Republicans who have.
There are erros of omission and there are errors of commission; the latter are virtually always worse. And virtually all the errors of commission in the post-9-11 pursuit of terrorists have been commited by Republicans. (This is partly a byproduct of the fact that the Republicans hold power; I buy the argument that the Democrats would have done [and would do] the same if they held power. But the fact is that they don't hold power and therefore they have not had the opportunity to commit the same crimes as the Republicans -- opportunities the Republicans have eagerly seized.)
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