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Opinion Another Attitude Obama must put Constitution above agenda Dick Cheney has admitted to war crimes. He did so on national television. The snarling former vice president's continuing fear-mongering and ambitious spin of the issues may reflect a growing unease with where an investigation of the Bush administration might lead.
The Obama administration is also in violation of the law. Attorney General Eric Holder has asserted unequivocally that waterboarding is torture. The Convention Against Torture is U.S. law and requires criminal investigation of serious allegations. There's really no doubt at this point that the law was broken. Yet this administration continues to sidestep and mince its words, standing on a theoretical high ground of principle. But so far, Obama has failed to pursue one of the most basic components of his oath of office, to uphold the Constitution and law of this land. This reluctance or failure risks bleeding onto this administration the same stain that will forever color anything to do with George W. Bush. And in the bigger picture, if democracy is to survive — much less thrive — we must be more willing than our recent rather sorry record would indicate to uphold the rule of law. This is not an ad hoc decision, the attitudes of the Bush administration aside. Are we committed to the responsibilities of free people willing to accept the risks and uncertainties that upholding uncompromised principle encumbers us with? Or are we to succumb to the siren's song of demagogues, tyrants and petty politicians who promise safety or prosperity if only we yield to their whims, and ignore their transgressions? Cheney is utterly shameless. Only a human so separated from decency and any sense of humanity must maintain such a posture in order to inhabit his own skin. But there do appear to be some cracks now that lawbreakers from the Bush administration have little but Obama's collusion standing between them and a courtroom. Condoleezza Rice was fascinating to watch last month when she returned to Stanford in some kind of junket to burnish her post-administration image. She was confronted with an organized campus protest over her part in the Bush administration's war crimes. The usually steely, composed, well-prepared former national security adviser and secretary of state commenced delivering parsed, legalistic pronouncements on what she knew and how she knew it that were worthy of a Bill Clinton performance. The guilty parties knew what they were doing. After one session over torture techniques and the ongoing efforts to subvert laws both domestic and international, no less than former Attorney General John Ashcroft was heard to remark that they were not going to be kindly remembered for all of this. It's understandable from a political standpoint that Obama would try to avoid having his agenda sidetracked or diverted by a Watergate-style investigation. But having political preferences and ideological agendas trump the rule of law is exactly what lands us in the compromised position in which we find ourselves. Democrats aren't exactly pushing the envelope for truth and light because there were briefings given about all of this. We'll simply never know how accurate or complete they might have been. We do know that after a briefing of the leadership in early 2003, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, was so alarmed by what she had heard that she wrote to the CIA's general counsel to express "profound" concerns about waterboarding and to ask if it had been personally approved by the president. After John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban captured in Afghanistan, was duct taped to a stretcher for days in an unheated, unlit shipping container, Justice Department attorney Jesselyn Radack, was so concerned about his treatment that she tried to intervene. After raising questions about the administration's adherence to law and due process, Radack resigned under pressure as Justice Department legal ethics adviser, she was put under criminal investigation herself, possibly as the source for a leak to Newsweek, which published e-mails the department said didn't exist, and she was added to the government's "no-fly" list. This, dear reader, is what the rule of men looks like unfettered by accountability to those they represent and serve. In 2006, the Bush administration pushed the "Military Commissions Act" through the Republican-controlled Congress. It included the attempt to grant broad amnesty or immunity against actions brought under the Geneva Convention against anyone in the U.S. government. That certainly extends to the top levels we hear so much from. Apparently not so much for the lowly "grunts" who singularly stood for prosecution over the horrors of the Abu Ghraib prison. One of the chief prosecutors of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, Benjamin Ferencz, stated George Bush deserved prosecution for war crimes no less than Saddam Hussein. He's right. Polling continues to show overwhelming belief among the public that these crimes should be investigated. Cheney may want you to believe it's about politics. But that's the refuge of a scoundrel continuing to evade responsibility for his crimes. William H. Seewald: Longtime Amarillo resident and columnist. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: June 4, 2009 |
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