Torture

Apparently WikiLeaks has released thousands of documents about the Iraq war, and those documents show, among other things, that the Bush Administration tortured people. A lot. With official knowledge and quite likely complicity. Of course, we on the left are not shocked by this: we've known the Bushies tortured in Iraq for five or six years by now. We were sitting around in 2006 debating whether it made sense to want Bush impeached for his war crimes, given that everyone on the line of succession was also a Republican and just as bad. Then the Pelosi Congress never attempted an impeachment, probably because the Senate would not have convicted, and the Obama Administration had not pursued criminal investigations against the Bushies. Their argument is that in our current time of crisis, this nation does not need a divisive, distracting trial that would only make it harder to solve problems and govern for the future. He has a case, and given that he's accomplished a fairly large amount in two years, I think one should give him a fair amount of credit for that.

But suppose it's January 4th of next year and we are faced with the following situation: we have these thousands of documents that clearly show flagrant violations of statute, Constitution, and international laws, and the Republicans control Congress. What will those Republicans do if they control the House? Well, for starters, it won't be governing for the present or the future. Nothing constructive will happen for two years. Furthermore, they're as likely as not to shut down the government, and almost certain to launch a massive series of "investigations" into things like whether the Obama "czars" are unconstitutional. I would argue that under that circumstance, we already have divisive distracting partisan investigations that are preventing any actual governing from happening. We might as well add one that would be a step toward the rule of law, right?

Now, of course, Obama won't do that. Partly because you can bet that Speaker Boehner would de-fund the Justice Department in an instant if there were the slightest word of torture trials from the Obama people. But also partly because the Administration will very naturally want to enjoy the spectacle of its opponents conducting these show trials and generally making fools of themselves, and will want specifically to leverage the embarrassment that will be the Republican Congress into a nice easy re-election and hopefully taking back the House and holding the Senate in 2012. And having a partisan, politicized, divisive trial of our own doesn't look great on those grounds. I think that honestly, keeping Palin or Romney or Gingrich or whoever out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 21st, 2013 is more important than indicting Donald Rumsfeld, though I don't think it's a clear-cut case: after all, we are supposed to be a nation of laws, not of men. But I think it would be nice if the Obama people could use their two years of idling time to address the rampant trampling of the rule of law that occurred under his predecessor.