It was a good week for America. The release of four odious torture memos on Thursday was an important step towards healing one of the most severe of the many wounds Bush the Younger inflicted upon our government. Thursday also saw the publication of a story in The New York Times reporting extensive, and quite likely ongoing, NSA abuses of eavesdropping authority on American citizens. Taken together the two disclosures, one voluntary by the government the other ferreted out by the Times, are a stark reminder of the healing yet to be done and also the progress that has been made.
Authoritarianism runs through all societies; mature and stable democracies such as ours have powerful safeguards in place to guard against it and these two stories are crystal clear reminders of what happens when those safeguards are weakened. Recall that the horrifyingly un-American Patriot Act of 2001 and its subsequent revisions fall under this category. The Patriot Act didn’t materialize in a frenzy of typing on 12 September 2001. It was cobbled together from existing proposals that, absent a national panic, were too intrusive or too expansive to have made it through even a Republican Congress.
Obama has begun to unravel that tangled mess, but it isn’t going to happen overnight. Aside from what appears to be his very short sighted decision on the state secrets privilege (though admittedly not all the facts are in on that one) he’s done an enormous amount for civil liberties and justice in this country in just three months. Glenn Greenwald, the internet’s premier civil liberties advocate and a man who was right pissed at Obama over the state secrets thing, summed up just how impressive this is:
I think the significance of Obama’s decision to release those memos — and the political courage it took — shouldn’t be minimized. There is no question that many key factions in the “intelligence community” were vehemently opposed to release of those memos. I have no doubt that reports that they waged a “war” to prevent release of these memos were absolutely true. The disgusting comments of former CIA Director Mike Hayden on MSNBC yesterday — where he made clear that he simply does not believe in the right of citizens to know what their government does and that government crimes should be kept hidden– is clearly what Obama was hearing from many powerful circles. That twisted anti-democratic mentality is the one that predominates in our political class.
In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done. American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security. When is the last time a President did that?
This is all the more head spinning coming hot on the heels of a president and his minions who spent most of the decade pursuing these mad policies and lying about it in public. Without the awesome stonewalling powers of the Executive Branch the ugly realities of a government that dabbles in lawless surveillance and torture are beginning to see the light of day. Politically that is tremendous because anyone advocating for a return to the old ways is now waging an uphill battle full of uncomfortable questions like whether or not it’s torture to repeatedly slam a bound man into a concrete wall. Reactionary lunatics like Dick Cheney and Michael Hayden can slur these disclosures all they want, but they can no longer do it behind a smokescreen of official euphemisms that conceal the bloody realities of their actions.
Unsurprisingly, a Washington Post poll taken right at the inauguration indicated that not only do a large majority of Americans oppose torture under any circumstances, but that most of us want the policies of Bush the Younger investigated. And that was before the gory legalistic details became public. The onus is now on Congress to begin investigations which are going to be as ugly as they are vital. We aren’t there yet, but things are going in the right direction. John Conyers is on it:
“If our leaders are found to have violated the strict laws against torture, either by ordering these techniques without proper legal authority or by knowingly crafting legal fictions to justify torture, they should be criminally prosecuted,” Mr. Conyers said in a written statement.
Amen to that and godspeed. A good day like Thursday deserves a little praise and if Conyers gets his way there will be more of them.
