Without taking a position here on
whether waterboarding is moral or tantamount to torture or
whether torture, however it may be defined, is a useful means of
intelligence-gathering, the rush to investigate and possibly
indict former Bush administration officials for doing their
jobs is beyond disturbing.
This vindictive, malicious push to pay back the architects of the
War on Terror for making a good faith effort to defend America is
being driven by pundits such as the increasingly nutty
Andrew Sullivan, law professor Jonathan
Turley, the George Soros-funded real-life subversives at
the
Center for Constitutional Rights (which is headed by Che
Guevara apologist Michael Ratner), and the left-wing pressure
group MoveOn.org. They all want Bush administration
officials investigated in connection with the advice they offered
with respect to enhanced interrogation
techniques.
Not only is this wrong as
David Frum points out, it's incredibly dangerous. In
America, we resolve policy differences through elections. We
don't use the legal system after officials have left office to
prosecute them for doing their jobs.
That's un-American.
The
Wall Street Journal summed up the situation well:
Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that
any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington
ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their
antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison
into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.
Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic
politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time,
and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to
change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on
which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the
U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new
Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy
disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or
Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension
of political power.
If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has
framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal
jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him
how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs
the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited
investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered
their best advice at the request of CIA officials. [...]
Going after Bush-era lawyers is madness. If these witch trials
come to America, the country will never be the same again.
