Tag Archives: democrats

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We need a truth commission

The problem with torture

It feels strange to have to say this because it seems so obvious but torture is bad. Call it whatever you want – say ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ or whatever – it is still bad. Very, very, very bad. Saying this reminds me of an organization I heard about today (no joke, on NPR) called “People Opposed to Homicide.” Being in DC I have heard of all sorts of associations and whatnot, there is a “Pet Owner Association,” for example, but is there a “People Who Love Murder” group out there? I doubt it.

The idea of moral absolutes can be very tempting. With them you have lots of areas that are black and white rather than grey. My world has only a few of these. I oppose the death penalty. I won’t go into the thousand or so reasons but while making my life easier is NOT one of them (I mean intellectually, it does. Should person X get the death penalty? I don’t care if they are the Green River Killer, Pol Pot, anyone who organized the Rwandan genocide or whoever, the answer is no. I don’t have to think about it anymore.

On face value, the issue of torture is another moral absolute for me. The United States of America should not torture people. Never. Never times ten to the millionth power. We are not the United States of Jack Bauer.

Why?

  1. We undermine all the good we do and represent and create nasty precedent at the same time. We are the ‘good guys’ remember? We trot ourselves out as the beacon of freedom and justice and democracy. We are a force of good and light in the world. A force like this does not torture people. We set an example for everyone else. If we can torture people when we like, so can anyone else. Robert Mugabe is doing bad things to his people? If we let this go he can hold his head up high and say “You know, I was worried about our national security and didn’t know what to do and then I heard about what President George W. Bush did to people he thought we threats and said to myself, now there’s an idea.” And, yes I think that is possible.
  2. It doesn’t work. VP Cheney, who spent most his time in office in I think a cave or some other place has said that the methods they used provided useful information that protected us from more terrorist attacks like 9/11. Now I cannot prove this is not true but what he didn’t say was that this was the only way to get that same – or maybe better – information. Many, many experts in this have said that torture is not a good way to elicit information because a, some people will admit to anything they think their interrogators want to hear to make it stop (count me in that category) or b, the terrorist groups who would have this vital information prepare to be tortured. Al Qaeda tells its members to expect it if captured. PS to all the “24” fans out there, the military actually sent people to LA to ask its producers to stop showing Jack Bauer torture people to save the say. They said it was hurting morale because soldiers were asking “why can’t we do the things they do on TV?” No, I am not kidding.
  3. We don’t torture others to protect ourselves. Let’s not kid ourselves here. We didn’t sign the Geneva Convention because of altruism; we did it because, as Joe Biden put in a Senate Foreign Relations hearing, we don’t want our captured soldiers to be tortured. (ok, I paraphrased)
  4. If we can do it to others, we can do it to ourselves. This is not a thought I came up with, it was what Phillip Zelikow wrote in a memo to Condi Rice when he was one of her advisors. He reiterated the point this week and said that once we use national security as a reason to do this against enemy combatants we risk giving our government the right to do it to citizens. Given that the Obama administration may try to reverse a Supreme Court decision that requires police to stop questioning a suspect when they ask for or have a lawyer until that person is present, I am not sure Mr. Zelikow wasn’t on to something.

The more complicated question is what do we do now? Here is where my moral absolute fails me and my world becomes grey again. This question needs more thought but I have time.

President Obama cannot initiate any actions against the people who made this policy. Neither can Congress. To do so would just add partisan crap to an already sensitive subject. Any attempts by the Democrats to do this would just feed the never ending cycle of political retribution that began with Watergate (and if you think I am the only one that thinks this, ask around). This cannot be about political payback.

We need a truth commission modeled after the 9/11 Commission and similar to those held in Rwanda and South Africa. We need to take the politics out of it and put the justice back in. Seriously, it’s the best thing for everyone.

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Same crap, different week

• Bush admits he made mistakes. Ya think? It’s so good to admit that now. Now, eight days before a new president takes office, you are ready to say you made mistakes. Of course, not for anything that really matters. Was the response to Katrina slow? Not according to Dubya. How ‘bout the economy, “I inherited a recession and I am leaving a recession.” While he finally admitted the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner was not a good idea, he still thinks the war in Iraq was a good idea and considers Abu Ghraib ‘unfortunate.’ Because it happened or because we found out about it? While the White House called today’s press conference the ‘ultimate exit interview’ if you are one of the few Americans out there who will miss George (the) W (rong son got elected) Bush, fear not. He still has plenty of ‘legacy saving’ interviews/speeches on his schedule.
• You voted for Obama, bought the hat, t-shirt, etc. but do you have the commemorative Metrorail pass/smartcard? No? Well, you had better buy one right now because they are going fast. I shouldn’t joke about such seriousness, they probably will go fast. I am still waiting for my Illinois quarter – in color no less – to arrive, what a steal! A quarter only cost me $20.
• Are political pundits like sharks? By that I mean, if they stop talking, do they die? Do they need polls to survive? Was the most important thing about the meeting Obama requested last week of all living presidents, the colors of their ties and/or what they ate? Does anyone really give a shit about that?
• He really likes to work. “I’m a Type A personality…I just can’t envision myself, you know, the big straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt sitting on some beach, particularly since I quit drinking,” Bush said. (from ABC News among other sources.) Yeah, that’s what I have heard about the President who I believe spent more time away from the White House than any other president and on vacay than anyone in 60 years.
• Say it ain’t so, Joe. Sorry, Joe-the-not-really-a-plumber, your 15 minutes ended about, well 15 minutes after they started. First you were an annoying campaign ploy, then a fraud, then a war correspondent and now are considering running for the US Senate? (http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/01/12/ohio-sen-voinovich-to-retire-could-joe-the-plumber-run-for-senate/) Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. Hey, GOP, good luck with that.

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Welcome to 2009

From the news the past few weeks, 2009 looks a lot like 2008. That will suck if it continues.
• Polls = “lies, damned lies and statistics.” One added benefit to Barack Obama’s election would be the cessation of the endless polling the news networks did during the campaign cycle. Wow, was I wrong about that. The polls have shifted from which candidate people support for the 2008 campaign to which GOP candidate is most favored (it’s Sarah Palin right now) to beat Obama and/or how much confidence the public – including the same Republicans who are already lining up to support Palin – has in Obama. WTF? Can’t the guy take office before the snarkiness starts? Apparently not.
• Petty, partisan politics are over. Uh, not in the US. Just as Minnesota says Al Franken won, Norm Coleman and his pals in the Senate vow to fight on. Granted, with an election so close, it’s hard to blame them. It’s how they got the White House in 2000. The other split seems to be in how the GOP machine will respond to President Obama. So far they have released obnoxious and racist videos. When called on the blatant racism of “Barak the magic negro” their response was “it was a joke.” Yeah, so were your response to Katrina, our participation in the ICC or adherence to the Geneva Conventions the economy and your general ability to govern. See, none of us are laughing at those either.
• No, really – everything I do it totally legal. One might think that if one governor is in the newspaper every day over a ‘pay for play’ scandal that if you maybe did the same thing, you might not want to subject yourself to anything that requires Senate confirmation. Poor, silly Bill Richardson. Of course, the adage that ‘those in glass houses should not throw stones’ never did mean much to politicians. Nice.
• Just because I am about to be impeached does mean I lose my rights to govern. Speaking of Governor Blogojevich, he hasn’t actually been indicted on anything. I understand that the ‘appearance of impropriety is worse than the impropriety itself.’ I do but legally he has the right to appoint anyone, who meets the requirements to be a Senator, to the Senate. He could make things easier on Harry Reid, but why should he? He should because anyone he appoints will be tainted and that may make it harder to them to keep the seat in 2010 when they have to run again. A veto proof Senate would be, well, I can’t say how strongly I feel about it because then I would have to list this post as ‘offensive’ but it would be awesome.
• Winter is cold and there is still plenty of war to go around. After 10 days in Florida and too many hours of CNN/the Weather Channel, I can tell you that in the winter most of the US is cold and people still try to kill each other all over the world. Israel is pounding Gaza (and I do blame Hamas for this), conflicts continue in the DR Congo & Darfur and pirates are taking ships off the horn of Africa. Good times.

I know I sound glib here and promise that is not my goal. It’s hard for me not to not be cynical about the state of the world. The US made great progress by electing Barack Obama but we have a long way to go in terms of the rest of the planet, our role in it and what we do within our borders. Democracy does not equal stability and peace. The US is not the only country on earth and political corruption runs rampant. We get the government that we settle for.

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Thank you, Howard

As we all expected, Howard Dean is leaving the DNC in January when his term expires. He is probably one of the only people in politics to stick to a self-imposed term limit. The last person I know of who did that was George Washington. I think he always planned to do this and would have even had Barack Obama asked him to stay, which everyone also knew was never going to happen.

The irony of something rarely gets missed, by me anyway. Here it almost hits you in the face. Howard Dean began the ‘fifty state strategy’ and got a lot of crap for it. This plan helped win the election for Obama. I have heard there is some bad blood between the two men but have not found anything to prove that. It is customary for a president to pick the chair of the party but I don’t feel Dean has been given the credit he deserves. The Nation ran this back in February: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/berman.

I don’t know how President-elect Obama feels about Dean. I am not sure it matters and it would be natural to want someone from his inner circle there. The problem is that Dean rebuilt a party that was in trouble all over the country. His departure, while expected and blah, blah, blah makes me wonder what direction the DNC will take now. Given the recent success of Dean’s plan (in both 2006 and 08) I hope they continue it.

PS. Note to sensible readers, I know everyone just loves the Huffington Post. I don’t. This is because they do not believe in fact checkers. That is important because when they ‘break’ a story it is hard to tell if it is real and they have put stories up that were later found to be false. If you read it on a regular basis, just keep that in mind. You’ll get better breaking news from Drudge.