"Today is a good day"--some further comments

It's more than appropriate that, just as I started this post, John Adams' musical tribute to the victims of September 11, "On the Transmigration of Souls," began playing in my iTunes.

The tone of my previous post notwithstanding, I have a mix of feelings about the killing of bin Laden. I'm not alone in this; Aaron over at Zunguzungu sums them up well.

I would much prefer that Obama continue to find more peaceful means to demonstrate his presidential bona fides, and that his political and policy opponents see those means as valid. I'm not at all happy that this event has justified or vindicated, in the minds of some, the use of torture to obtain intelligence. It in fact appears to be the case that torture didn't produce the information that set this operation into motion (more here--and, as final proof, here's Donald Rumsfeld saying torture didn't yield this information--on Newsmax, no less). Still--just as Aaron and others have noted--do we really want to codify actions of this sort as justice? As exempla of American values?

I admit to being an optimist, though, especially where this president is concerned. Maybe this event's extreme nature will give Obama some future leverage in debates concerning how to prosecute terrorism cases: He can point to this event in his arguments with the chest-thumpers that he's no wimp but that, by the same token, we neither can nor should go tearing around the world shooting bad guys or, for that matter, jail all of them indefinitely without trials (preferably civilian ones). He's not afraid of going after these people, he can now say; why are all of you so willing to act from a position adopted out of fear? That's right: call them cowards. Point to the facts that our civilian trials, for all their coddling of the accused via acknowledging their rights, have thus far been far more successful in convicting and imprisoning terrorists than the allegedly less-coddling military courts have, and that we already have convicted terrorists in prisons in this country, not one of whom has even tried to escape. Etc., etc.

Maybe, in other words, as many have suggested, Obama can finally begin to get us out of this defensive, cowering crouch we've been in for the past 10 years.

I for one would really like to stretch my legs a bit. Maybe you don't know it yet--it's hard to remember, after so long, what that would feel like--but you probably would, too.

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An open letter to President Obama

UPDATE (April 21): Perhaps things aren't quite so bleak on this front after all. But the letter's argument seems no less true to me.

Below the fold (to spare the uninterested) is the text of a letter I have sent to the White House in response to the news that the Obama administration will not seek to prosecute the writers of the Bush administration's "torture memos."

I feel compelled to express my dismay in the strongest possible terms that the current administration will not seek to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the ordering, writing and implementation of the so-called torture memos. It is a matter of national and international law and treaty that the United States, at the highest levels of the Executive Branch, was in deliberate violation of the law as a result of the production of these memos. Moreover, I understand that this administration, in its refusal to investigate and prosecute those responsible for these memos, is ALSO in violation of those same national and international laws and treaties.

These facts transcend politics and, despite the understandable desire to avoid a protracted and painful examination of these matter, it is not at all clear to me how this decision aids the United States in restoring its standing in the world as a nation that abides by the rule of law--which no one is supposed to be above . Not only did the Bush administration seriously compromise our nation's moral standing as an advocate of human rights with its adoption of torture as a legally-sanctioned and -rationalized option, this decision by the current administration essentially tells the world that, despite its public statements declaring outrage and repugnance with regard to these memos and what was done in their name, they do not merit more than these verbals slaps on the wrist. This can only have the effect of rendering torture the very thing its proponents strongly imply: that its use is a matter of policy and thus permitted according to the whim of whoever happens to be President, rather than a crime against human dignity and decency of the most odious sort as, again, declared in numerous domestic and international codes and to which our nation is a signatory and has in the past insisted that other nations be judged by. The application of law thus becomes arbitrary, at best; at worst, not investigating and prosecuting clear, undisputed laws is the worst sort of precedent for the Executive Branch--that branch of the government tasked with ENFORCING THE LAW--to be setting.

We are better than this. This--the actions of both the previous administration and the current one (it is extremely difficult not to see this administration's decision not to prosecute as anything other than tacitly aiding and abetting the actions of the previous one; hence this administration becomes complicit with the actions of the past one)--runs completely counter to our nation's history, from before the time the United States was even a nation, in fact, given General George Washington's directive to his soldiers to treat British prisoners humanely. I did not loudly and proudly support Mr. Obama's candidacy because I entertained any possibility that an Obama administration would make a decision like this. But I say that not out of partisan ire directed at the Bush administration but out of a love and admiration and respect for our nation's hard-won reputation in the world as an advocate of the principles of human rights and the rule of law. That reputation suffered serious damage under the previous administration, and I'm very sorry to say that I simply cannot see how this decision in any way begins to repair that damage. I daresay that, as far as I can tell, it may only make that damage worse.

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On justice and bitter, bitter irony, Part III

Via Andrew Sullivan:

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see [in the above translated directive written by Gestapo chief Müller], are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

Go read the rest. There's a disturbing picture, but the reading is (or should be) more disturbing by far.

And no, we're not Nazis. That is precisely the point of calling your attention to this. Yet here we are: same methods, and even the same euphemistic phrase for describing them. Explain with an easy conscience and a straight face to someone, anyone--our friends, our enemies, our children--how our duck differs from the Nazi duck.

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