The more I think about all these torture revelations, the more I come to the realization that the blame for this is spread so far and wide, between parties, agencies, departments, leaders, and the compliant media, that we all deserve condemnation. I stopped my life and made huge financial sacrifices to speak out against my government. And it cost me a lot more than money. Most people did little or nothing. Once you start assigning blame, where do you stop?
Obama is right when he says we lost our moral bearings. He’s helping us to regain them. I think what we need is some focused, concrete, measured process. The emphasis should be on restoring and strengthening our separation of powers and our oversight. Congress needs to exert its power of investigation, including its subpoena power. The OLC lawyers need to be disbarred and/or impeached. The Justice Department’s independence from the White House has to be reasserted. The Freedom of Information Act needs to be strengthened. The Office of the Vice-President’s constitutional role must be clarified, including which branch they belong to and what their reporting requirements are. The CIA’s then-top management, including George Tenet and John McLaughlin need to be investigated right along with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their underlings. The psychiatrists that devised the torture procedures must be investigated and decertified. The psychiatric and medical personnel that took part in torture should be barred from future government employment and contracts, and ideally they should be decertified as well.
But the corruption of basic morality that was caused by the combination of 9/11-induced fear and the fear-based leadership of the Bush administration (color-coded terror charts, anyone?) was so systemic, that it’s hard to find the beginning and end of legal culpability for the war crimes that were committed, not to mention the illegal invasion that was launched.
There has to be some kind of limitation of accountability based on some sensible criteria, or we’d never stop prosecuting people. I don’t know how you find the right balance, but I think the most important thing is that the steps that are taken are steps that help strengthen our government for the future.
We can’t have an executive that doesn’t honor congressional oversight authority, or a vice-president who claims he is fourth branch of government. We can’t have a Office of Legal Counsel thinking they can legalize anything the executive wants to do without consequences. And we can’t have government employees who don’t trust what the OLC tells them. And we have to make sure that no executive ever again thinks they can ignore habeas corpus and torture people.
Some measures of disclosure (shame), accountability (prosecutions, disbarment, impeachment), and legal clarification (court rulings, legislation) are going to be necessary. You tell me what the right balance is.