Numbers 14:18:
The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.
The ancient Hebrews believed that when one among them had sinned, the entire community sooner or later paid the price. I suggest that we are now learning the wisdom of that insight as we watch the consequences of our many and unprosecuted crimes against humanity unfold. Words like “sin” and “evil” do not come easily for me, because of the extreme fundamentalist religious traditions of my family of origin. Still, I find no alternatives when describing formal policies of kidnapping, abuse, and torture. I suggest that we Democrats, led by Barack Obama, compounded that evil and sin when we, for whatever reasons, chose not to prosecute the perpetrators of this evil.
GITMO remains open, despite the campaign promises of Barack Obama. The primary reason it remains open is that the prisoners who are left share two distinctive characteristics: (1) they are genuine bad-guys who have done terrible deeds and are eager to do them again, and (2) they were tortured by US authorities during their confinement. The latter means that if any of these prisoners is brought to trial in any first-world nation, the charges against them will be immediately dismissed because of their torture while confined. No other country will have them — and so they remain illegally imprisoned without trial and with no hope of any change.
This week, we watch Iraq spiral back into chaos. With both Iraq and GITMO, a new administration is being hurt by the actions of its predecessor. A new generation of Americans are today experiencing the effects of the misdeeds committed a decade ago. I suggest that we are all experiencing in our time the kinds of consequences that inspired the ancient texts from millennia ago.
Dick Cheney rose from the dead this week and co-wrote (with his daughter Liz) an appalling op-ed piece for the WSJ. No, I will not link to it here. This man should be incarcerated for war-crimes. He should be writing pieces describing his gratitude for being imprisoned for life rather than executed — the US prosecuted and convicted WWII-era war-crime defendants for issuing the same orders. Those defendants were executed by firing squad or hanging.
Mr. Cheney and his ilk (other criminal conspirators like Paul Wolfowitz) have been all over the media this week making these grossly immoral claims. These are unrepentant war criminals, emboldened by the lack of resolve shown by the rest of us. Rather than cowering in shame, they continue to smear their slime. President Barack Obama should have insisted that these war criminals be prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated (if found guilty) for life. Instead, he — and we — we did nothing.
We can and must do better. Actions — and inactions — have consequences. Our continuing attempt to ignore that reality in our government and governance will only hurt us — to the third and fourth generation.
Certainly not in terms of the casualty count, thank God, but in terms of the ripple effects this will have down the road. Vietnam was waged and lost during an unprecedented time of American economic and political power, we were able to rebound rather quickly, pursue detente with the Russians and Chinese, and eventually rebuild our military quickly enough to win the First Gulf War.
But fighting a two front war for nearly 14 years has drained our ability to respond to other crises, it has pushed our military to the breaking point, this war has produced far more maimed and mentally injured veterans we have a responsibility to care for for years to come, and instead of destabilizing a peripheral region we have destabilized the economic epicenter of our oil based economy.
The consequences, in human, in capital, and in geopolitical terms will long outlive the architects of this war-who bizarrely-are still listened to with regularity instead of being castigated as the pariahs they are.
One could easily make the case that the Vietnam War included an ample collection of war crimes for which prosecution was both warranted and absent. Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, tried to bring them to tribunal with no success.
That was followed by the Iran-Contra pardons which set a terrible precedent. So by the time we come to Afghanistan and Iraq, we arrive at a point where war crimes are only punished politically. And rarely even then.
Had the Obama Administration prosecuted Bush Administration officials for war crimes, it would have been hugely controversial and a deep distraction from everything else the Administration wanted to accomplish. Certainly neither a McCain Administration nor a Romney Administration would ever have pursued such crimes; a Palin Administration might even rejoice in them. It’s as if we need some non-political entity with prosecutorial power or maybe an international body.
For right now, it looks as if a determined Administration can continue to waterboard suspects with relative impunity, and nothing — not even law — is going to change that.
Many Americans, including politicians, were very happy about the World Court when it was pursuing obvious bad-guys in far-away places. Funny how that changed as our own culpability became more obvious to us.
I tend to agree with you — since the US has created a structural inability to control our own war criminals, an international body like the World Court becomes increasingly necessary.
I wonder how long the rest of the world will tolerate our structural inability to investigate and prosecute our own war crimes. One lesson of the “war on terror” is that our mighty arsenal is not going to help us if the rest of the world comes to the conclusion that America is, in fact, more evil than good.
I suggest that to the extent that we continue to waterboard suspects — especially European or Asian suspects — we will hasten the imposition of external authority.
Technically, they’re built into our system. But as digby once observed, when Republicans discourage the President from closing Gitmo, the opposition party is encouraging him to abuse his power. It’s out of whack.