Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

10 December 2014 • 20:45:27 MST

Obama wishes the torture debate would just go away

After the Senate released its censored by the CIA, but still damning, report on torture yesterday, President Obama released a statement reminding the nation that immediately upon taking office, he had ordered an end to torture. That statement included this passage:

But one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better. Rather than another reason to refight old arguments, I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong — in the past.

But Obama, reports Peter Baker at the New York Times, is avoiding issuing a judgment on whether useful information was obtained through torture:

Even as Mr. Obama repeated his belief that the techniques constituted torture and betrayed American values, he declined to address the fundamental question raised by the report, which the committee released on Tuesday: Did they produce meaningful intelligence to stop terrorist attacks, or did the C.I.A. mislead the White House and the public about their effectiveness?

What Obama refused to say, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) did, getting to the heart of the matter in remarks he delivered on the floor of the Senate:

What might come as a surprise, not just to our enemies, but to many Americans, is how little these practices did to aid our efforts to bring 9/11 culprits to justice and to find and prevent terrorist attacks today and tomorrow. That could be a real surprise, since it contradicts the many assurances provided by intelligence officials on the record and in private that enhanced interrogation techniques were indispensable in the war against terrorism. And I suspect the objection of those same officials to the release of this report is really focused on that disclosure – torture’s ineffectiveness – because we gave up much in the expectation that torture would make us safer. Too much.

Holding the torturers and their enablers to account for their evil deeds is not refighting old arguments. It’s justice. Without an accounting, our nation never can put this behind us. Torture is illegal, and, to put it charitably, of little or no value in obtaining reliable and useful information. Those who engaged in it after 9/11, those who gave it their blessing, and those who turned their heads so they just wouldn’t see, knew from the start it was illegal, morally depraved, and contrary to American values. They must not be allowed to go to their graves knowing they got away with inflicting great harm on both individual human beings and the United State of America.

Obama wishes this discussion would just go away, and he’s doing his best to wish it away. It’s politically inconvenient. Therefore, if there’s to be an accounting, he intends it won’t be on his watch. But holding the guilty to account is the responsibility of the nation, and the duty falls on the current government and its leaders, no matter how much they want to abdicate their obligations.

How might accountability be provided?

The legal scholar Edwin Chereminsky, writing in the Los Angeles Times, believes that those responsible should be prosecuted:

Torture is a federal crime, and those who authorized it and engaged in it must be criminally prosecuted. On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 499-page summary of a report that describes the brutal torture carried out by the U.S. government and its employees and agents.Such conduct is reprehensible, but it also is criminal. The only way to ensure that it does not happen again is to criminally prosecute those involved.

I agree, but neither Obama nor anyone else in his administration has the stomach for that kind of confrontation with a rogue spy agency and the politicians who sanctioned its criminal acts. They want a de facto amnesty for the malefactors.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, recommends a perverse accounting and assignment of guilt: pardoning those who tortured, and those who enabled and protected the torturers.

But let’s face it: Mr. Obama is not inclined to pursue prosecutions — no matter how great the outrage, at home or abroad, over the disclosures — because of the political fallout. He should therefore take ownership of this decision. He should acknowledge that the country’s most senior officials authorized conduct that violated fundamental laws, and compromised our standing in the world as well as our security. If the choice is between a tacit pardon and a formal one, a formal one is better. An explicit pardon would lay down a marker, signaling to those considering torture in the future that they could be prosecuted.

Mr. Obama could pardon George J. Tenet for authorizing torture at the C.I.A.’s black sites overseas, Donald H. Rumsfeld for authorizing the use of torture at the Guantánamo Bay prison, David S. Addington, John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee for crafting the legal cover for torture, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for overseeing it all.

Romero’s distasteful proposal may be the only viable option left for a formal assignment of guilt to the guilty. Obama could issue the pardons before 1200 EST on 20 January 2017. Will he have the moral courage and historical wisdom to do so?