From Friday's Show, first, the liberal response from Mark Danner--what was once the standard liberal response, and then the conservative response from Bruce Fein--what was once if not quite the "standard conservative response" at least the canonical conservative response: it's the rule of law, stupid!
BILL MOYERS: The President had a press conference on Wednesday night in which he was asked two questions about torture. If you'd been there, Mark, what would you have asked him?
MARK DANNER: I would have asked him to get out in front of the country this whole debate about torture. Why it was done. Whether it really protects the country. What we've lost and what we've gained. Because I think the losses have been very, very great.
But until the country is convinced and understands how great the losses have been, and parts with the notion that torture is necessary to protect us, we still are going to be having this continuing debate about torture as a necessity to protect the country, which I think is very harmful.
BRUCE FEIN: I would have asked him, since he's agreed that what was done was torture, and that the United States criminal code makes torture a crime. And there's no national security exception, no exception if you get useful information. And because we had impeached, in the House Judiciary Committee, a former President, called Richard Nixon, for failing faithfully to execute the laws. How he can justify not moving forward with an investigation when we have a former President and Vice President openly acknowledging they authorized water boarding, what he has described as torture, is a crime.
Or in the alternative, if he thinks that there are mitigating circumstances, and there's body language suggests that, then he should pardon them like Ford did Richard Nixon. And the reason why the difference between a pardon and non-prosecution is important, is because a pardon requires the recipient to acknowledge guilt. That there was wrongdoing. There was a crime. Just forgetting and sweeping it under the rug suggests this wasn't illegal.
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| A pardon, in my opinion, would simply not be enough. After all, our headlong slide into wanton presidential lawlessness began with a presidential pardon. But at least Bruce Fein is perfectly clear on the law, the legal implications, and the responsibility to uphold the law.
That President Obama--a constitutional lawyer, for gosh sakes!--is so blind to all this that he'd probably get a "C" at best in a course that Bruce Fein might teach on the subject, should be a cause for outrage on our part.
But, after 30 years of more-or-less continual outrage, our social norms have been perhaps permanently reset, so that presidential lawlessness is now no big deal. We simply won't do it again. Sort of like naming a post office after a prominent anti-Semite, perhaps. A minor embarrassment, not to be repeated. Nothing more.
And it's that resetting of our moral norms that's at the heart of America's decline, just as it was at the heart of the decline and fall of Roman Empire--a decline that began, in fact, when Rome first became an empire, and left its status as a republic behind.
We crossed that line quite some time ago--in 1950, with the signing of NSC-68, at the very latest.
Obama has clearly signaled that there will be no rethinking of torture (we won't do it again--well, so he says, but we won't actually think about why did it in the past or why we won't now), much less rethinking of the "war on terror" (rebranding, si, rethinking, no), much less rethinking the Cold War--even though al Qaeda, and hence the "war on terror" came directly out of the Cold War, and our full-fledged transition to imperial status.
Does that even begin to convey how incredibly small-minded our politics has become? The most lofty aspirations aren't more than half a standard deviation away from the Tea-Baggers.
Our Founding Fathers, OTOH, are light-years away. Bruce Fein, poor soul, is in the wrong solar system here. |
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