"Looking Ahead" or Overlooking Crimes Against Humanity? Aaron Leonard

[Demeter]

http://www.nyunews.com/opinion/columnists/looking_ahead_or_overlooking_crimes_against_humanity-1.1482603

I am a little stunned. I have been watching the news and listening to all the chatter about the scandal surrounding Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the alleged impropriety of people like Bill Richardson and Tom Daschle.

Watching all this, I’ve been thinking, “Somewhere in Texas, former President George W. Bush is clearing brush in perfect peace.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney is likely out duck hunting in Wyoming, as if he has every right to be walking around free.

Like we are supposed to forget their crimes...

Well, perhaps Obama can “look ahead” past all that, but I don’t think it ought to be true for the rest of us. Doing so effectively enshrines such behavior. The stain of it stays, and even if the U.S. government did not engage in such things again — and not renouncing it heightens the possibility that it will — it still becomes part of the overall ideology of what is acceptable. As John Ashcroft of all people noted when discussing the specifics of torture with his colleagues, “History will not judge this kindly.” I don’t think this waits on history. There is a need now to stand against this.

Of course there is the view that there are more pressing matters. This is what the Democratic Party has been pushing in one iteration or another for years. Remember Sen. Chuck Schumer voting to confirm Attorney General Michael Mukasey even though Mukasey wouldn’t state the obvious: that waterboarding is torture? Or Speaker Nancy Pelosi taking “impeachment off the table” in the face of some of the most impeachable crimes in the history of the U.S? Their logic was: This was necessary for the Democrats to get back in power.

If these issues are ignored to get Democrats into power, it shouldn’t be surprising that they ignore them once they have it. That is the Democratic leadership, but what about the rest of us?

[pleah]

1. K&R Good questions.

Don't the majority of Americans want prosecutions? I thought they did. Are we going to be ignored, again?

[acmavm]

2. Yes the majority of Americans want investigations. To many like myself,

this issue will determine our continued support and membership in this party.

We are just waiting.

[pmorlan1]

3. Speak Out Now

Thanks for posting this.

All of us have a responsibility to make sure our government upholds the rule of law. If we remain silent, President Obama has no help from us to resist all of those who would have him sweep these crimes under the rug. If you care about accountability and the rule of law, Now is the time to speak out.


http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

[unblock]

4. people can muster up outrage of someone having 14 kids, but not over all the damage shrub has done?

no one wants to "look ahead" when it comes to the rest of us. try getting out of a murder accusation or an affair or a parking ticket or tax error any other legal or moral wrong by saying we should all just "look ahead".

obama's reluctant on this matter highlights once again the inherent problem of having the executive branch involved in prosecuting crimes of the executive branch. notwithstanding that it was a different administration, the new administration has a motive to avoid a precedent of investigating the previous administration.

not that republicans would honor any tradition like that if it helped any democrats....

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[puebloknot]

6. After VE Day in 1945, we managed to hold the Nuremberg trials ...

... while also authoring and executing the Marshall Plan.

Now tell me, with all the resources we have today, why can we not do likewise now?

My blood boils when I thinks that my father and his fellows, who landed at Normandie and then fought in the Ardennes, for the explicit purpose of defeating fascism, are to be honored by the total breach of everything they stood and fought for. Mr. Obama, the jury is still out on your character and your intentions. I want to trust you on this matter of war crimes. Give me a reason! Unless we've put another king in the White House, you do not have the authority to deny justice to us all!

[salguine]

7. Maybe it's time for a few hundred thousand people to march on the Capitol and the White House.

The surest way to make sure you're unheard is not to say anything. It's one thing to discuss it among ourselves. The only way our government ever hears the people is for the people to become confrontational. They never do the right thing because it's the right thing to do; they usually do the right thing because they're forced to by an angry public.

Maybe this is where the organizing for the March for Prosecution begins?

[chill_wind]

8. Potent reminders. And a lot of inconvenient truths.

"Such as the criminal neglect in August 2005 when over 1,300 people died during Hurricane Katrina. You remember Katrina: Cadavers floating in flood waters on prime time TV while Bush was on vacation, and Condoleezza Rice was shoe-shopping on Fifth Avenue.

And the torture of prisoners sanctioned at the highest levels of government. Contests were held in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to see who could scare the naked prisoners so badly by siccing dogs on them that they would urinate themselves. All this courtesy of policies and procedures initiated by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and Donald Rumsfeld.

There was the detaining and kidnapping of people the U.S. government wanted to torture in what were called “extraordinary renditions,” sending them to Syria, Egypt and Uzbekistan among others.

(..)

There was the spinning of the “weapons of mass destruction” myth as the causa belli for war in Iraq, with its staggering human toll and no end in sight. You remember Condoleezza Rice’s famous proclamation: “But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” It was a lie."

K & R.