Torture began at the top - LA Times' Tim Rutten

[caraher]

Part of the hysteria over all this that you see in places like the Wall Street Journal editorial pages stems from an anxiety that congressional inquiries, like that of Levin's committee, will lead to indictments and possibly even war crimes trials for officials who participated in the administration's deliberations over torture and the treatment of prisoners.

It's true that there are a handful of European rights activists and people on the lacy left fringe of American politics who would dearly like to see such trials, but actually pursuing them would be a profound -- even tragic -- mistake. Our political system works as smoothly as it does, in part, because we've never criminalized differences over policy. Since Andrew Jackson's time, our electoral victors celebrate by throwing the losers out of work -- not into jail cells.

(from Rutten's new op-ed piece in the LA Times)

So evidently we're to take whether or not to start wars of aggression, torture or commit other war crimes as mere "policy" differences? Those who promulgate such toxic immorality had better pray they don't one day run afoul of someone with the same morality but different politics. This must be a question not of Democrat or Republican, right or left, but right or wrong.

As fired US Attorney David Iglesias told Jon Stewart Monday, “I thought I was working with the Jedi Knights and I was working for the Sith Lords.” It's startling (even to those of us who expect nothing but disaster from Bush and his cronies) just how apt this comparison is.

[JDPriestly]

1. Mr. Rutten, Today we learned that our government not only

tortured prisoners but concealed the torture from the Red Cross. As every mother who has caught her kid locking the bedroom door knows, concealment suggests knowledge of guilt. The administration knew that the torture was wrong. Bush and his buddies are guilty of heinous crimes.

Bush is not the first leader to hide torture camps from the Red Cross. Hitler similarly hid his heinous treatment of prisoners from the world going so far as to create Theresienstadt as a show for that purpose.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/terezin.html

Was Hitler's treatment of prisoners a matter of policy or a crime? At what point does conduct become criminal and not merely a policy choice?

I believe that the "unitary executive" concept of the Bush administration was just an excuse for criminals in the Bush administration to avoid the limits that the Constitution imposes on the presidency. The Federalist Papers show that the Founding Fathers envisioned a strong executive, but intended that the legislature, which must consent to the executive's most important appointments and other decisions and can override the president's veto, be the strongest branch in the government. See eg. Federalist Paper No. 51. History will view the Bush administration as having exceeded its authority and the doctrine of "unitary executive" as a power grab, pure and simple.

The move toward more democracy, more participation by the people in government around the world is the inevitable result of increased access to education for people not born into wealth and of technology that permits individuals to communicate freely beyond local and national borders. The internet gives thoughts, ideas and words wings. Anyone, Indonesian, German or Russian, with just a few years of English can read the writings of Jefferson and Madison and even Montesquieu in translation on the internet.

Slowing or ending the movement toward fast and easy international communication, increased intellectual exchange, increased freedom and less top-down rule would halt the process of internationalization upon which the global marketplace is based. The international megacorporations are heavily invested in globalization. Faced with a choice between allowing more bottom up democratic government and more sharing of political power with the unwashed masses or losing opportunities to profit from expanding markets, I believe they will choose globalization. It's liberalize or perish for them.

Bush's "unitary executive" is a failure. In light of what we are learning about his use of torture and his lies about the evidence of WMDs and Al Qaeda in Iraq before the War, no one is fooled by his trash-talk about freedom and democracy. Sooner or later, Mr. Rutten, there will be indictments and trials, guilty pleas and convictions. Congress is not going to be able to stop the international disgust at Bush's hypocrisy about "freedom."

Ultimately, ordinary people will demand and get more honest government and more say. Bush's "unitary executive" idea is just an attempt to delay the inevitable, one last stab at a little dictatorship. His antics are not surviving the scrutiny of the internet. He is despised around the world, not least in his own country. No matter who the next president will be, Bush is the swan song for the "unitary executive," and its excesses.

[Hekate]

2. I hope you actually sent this to Tim Rutten. He's a thoughtful columnist, on the whole. nt

[JDPriestly]

3. No. You are welcome to send it.