With the Iowa caucuses rapidly approaching, Washington is embroiled in a new scandal from the first term of the Bush administration. Namely, the Village is going to have to grapple with the issue of torture. There is no question that this debate doesn’t reflect well on either party, nor on the Washington Establishment. And that is fine by me. The last thing I want is for voters to go to the polls thinking there is anything in Washington worth salvaging. There isn’t.
But, quite naturally, my view is not going to be shared by the people that are actually in Washington. They are going to try to figure out a way out of this dilemma. They have failed the nation in nearly every regard since the first plane flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And if the Democrats have mostly incurred blame for cowardice, it should surprise no one that with cowardice comes a certain level of complicity. The Republicans wanted to torture people. The Democrats didn’t want to get called soft on torturing people.
Now we have a great big mess with Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib, and renditions, and torture, and obstruction of justice, and contempt of Congress, and so on.
Frankly, the best solution would probably be for Bush to come clean on what he authorized and throw himself on the mercy of the electorate. He could just say that he went too far in an excess of caution, and that the buck stops with him. We could probably forgive him…at least we could forego impeaching him or prosecuting the people that followed his orders.
We might even tolerate some extensive pardons. But that is very unlikely to happen. And if the president is not going to accept blame and responsibility, we have little choice but to treat his crimes as crimes. Torture is, after all, a war crime. It’s illegal, as is destroying evidence and lying to federal prosecutors and judges. I know the Village desperately wants to avoid holding people to account for these crimes, but we have a little thing called the rule of law and people’s rights. We can’t just jettison them because they make us feel bad about ourselves.
I know Watergate made us look bad…at first. But in the longer view it was probably the finest example of the American system working correctly in our history. In the long view, it was a shining example for the world. Did the Village want to go through that at the time? No. It was mortifying.
The one thing I am pretty sure of? This scandal is going to help the Washington outsiders in the primaries.
