not in our name
It's been a long time since I really talked politics, largely because I can never seem to find enough time to sit down and focus my thoughts and say something thoughtful and cogent. However, last night my Facebook feed displayed an article that so thoroughly pissed me off that I actually stayed up an hour late to construct a reply. (Yes, this is me.)
The most relevant parts of the article:
This [the knowledge and complicity of the Congress, media, and populace in general] is part of what makes applying a criminal justice model to those most directly responsible such a bad idea. The issue we need to come to terms with is not just who in the Bush administration did what but how we were collectively complicit in their decisions.
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But pursuing criminal charges would be too hard legally and politically and too easy morally. Prosecuting Bush and his men won't absolve the rest of us for what we let them do.
The biggest problem with Weisberg's article-which is essentially composed entirely of problems-is the logical leap from positing collective social responsibility to concluding that we therefore should not be prosecuting those directly responsible. That does not follow. That does not, in fact, make any sense.
Rarely, if ever, is a crime committed in which society as a whole is not complicit, yet I somehow doubt that Weisberg would appreciate if a person who had, say, beaten and robbed him were not tried, the would-be prosecutors instead suggesting that we all contemplate our collective complicity. (Needless to say that if Weisberg's loved ones-or anyone named Weisberg or Cohen or Smith-had been tortured, he would never have written this article.)
Speaking of collective complicity, he doesn't grasp that too well, either. It is true and bears stating that Congress knew and essentially looked the other way and that many, uh, "liberal" media commentators outright endorsed torture. This does not, as Weisberg seems to think, make us all equally complicit.
The ACLU has been mounting continuous legal challenges since this first leaked. Democracy Now! has been covering these stories extensively. Millions of people staged protests or contacted their representatives and expressed their outrage and condemnation. That is not complicity.
Yes, those of us who pay taxes and didn't either leave the country or attempt revolt (somehow I can't see Weisberg endorsing insurrection, though) are inherently complicit, but that is not the same as being Complicit. Weisberg carelessly paints us all with the same brush-from Alan Dershowitz to Amy Goodman-which is totally disingenuous.
And for all this, he never even explores how we are supposed to address our collective culpability and moral lapse. (It would behoove Weisberg to examine the complicity inherent in writing such an article.) Because, ultimately, this article is nothing but a weak attempt to create a moral façade for something that is strategic and amoral. Centrist Dems are against the prosecutions because they have the potential to politically backfire, not because they are committed to tearing at their hair and shouting mea culpa. Trying to frame this as a moral imperative is ugly and low.
(Also, the Japanese Internment analogy is just pointless.)
As a sane/humane alternative, I suggest this:
The best defense against holding Bush officials accountable for torture is that September 11 freaked out the entire country and that we can't judge their actions by the standards of how they look "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009," as Obama's intelligence director puts it. This argument would carry more weight if Republicans had changed their thinking on torture and could be expected to follow the law the next time they won the presidency. Alas, they show little sign of intellectual progress.