As the American torture story continues to metastasize like the foul cancer that it is, no one seems quite sure what to do when it comes to the thorny yet vital issue of putting a close to this dishonorable period. Other than not prosecuting the low-level CIA officers who were, in the famous formulation, just following orders, the White House hasn’t staked out a clear position. Congress seems to be all over the map; though it usually is so that comes as no surprise. One thing is clear: the increased scrutiny that began with Mark Danner’s Red Cross piece in the 9 April New York Review of Books has elevated the story to levels of public attention it hasn’t seen in five years (when the first harrowing photographs from Abu Ghraib became public). That outcry reached a public conclusion with the conviction of the lowest of low hanging fruit and a White House stonewall effort that was second to none. Something of similar magnitude will be needed this time. The big difference is that this White House doesn’t want it to just go away for the sake of going away. Rather, this White House seems willing to see it through to the end, provided that it goes away for six months to a year while it focuses on other things.
Barack Obama is, here in the spring of 2009, heavily politically invested in getting two major domestic pieces of legislation passed: health care reform and energy/carbon reform. Obama and those around him also appear cognizant, in the way only master political operatives with access to the real inside information can be, of just how politically fraught cleaning up Bush the Younger’s torture mess is going to be. Those of us in the audience were given a taste of that this week with this bombshell revelation from McClatchy, “Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link“. The story begins:
The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush’s main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Saddam’s regime.
The use of abusive interrogation – widely considered torture – as part of Bush’s quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.
And just like that we find ourselves a little bit deeper down the rabbit hole dug by Bush the Younger and his cadre of fanatical incompetents. There is a forehead slapping obviousness to the above story that is quite humbling. Anyone paying the least bit attention has known for years that a) the government spent a lot of 2002 and 2003 attempting to manufacture a non-existent link between Iraq and al-Qaeda and b) that was about when we start torturing people as a matter of policy. Line up those two facts next to each other like that and it couldn’t be more apparent that the next logical conclusion is that torture was used as part of that manufacturing process.
(Imagine what little sense that must have made to the prisoners. This would be like an American prisoner of 1942 Imperial Japan being asked, repeatedly and under torture, about secret American connections to Nazi Germany. It would make so little sense, be so transparently insane, that, at least at first, you’d probably think it was some kind of trick.)
This is the latest revelation about the depths to which the Bush Administration sank (it will not be the last), but what hasn’t yet been remarked upon is the fantastic expansion of the political calculus that comes with it. Cleaning up their moral cesspool was never going to be easy, but what this latest development makes clear is that even those of us who long assumed the political costs would be significant grossly underestimated them.
The genesis of the Iraq war, from its earliest rumblings through the October 2002 Congressional vote and right up until the bombs started to drop, was one of the most shameful and dishonorable periods of American politics. One would not be surprised to see people fifty years from now shake their heads about it the same way we do about the McCarthy era. So while our shiny new President was opposed to the war from the start, the same cannot be said for much of the staff of his Administration (starting most prominently with his Vice-President and Secretary of State) and large swaths of his party. When one brings torture and surveillance into the mix things get even dirtier on the Democratic side. Those are wounds no savvy Democratic operator wants to reopen, particularly with not one, but two enormous legislative battles looming.
The health care and energy bills are both major overhauls to longstanding American problems and they represent threats to existing orders which are powerful, entrenched and well funded. Passing either one of them in a form that amounts to more than window dressing would be a legislative achievement unequaled in perhaps forty years. Not only are they of tremendous importance when it comes to policy and outcomes, but if they do succeed they will also strengthen Obama politically.
When looked at from his perspective, the fights over health care and energy are battles he can ill afford to lose. If they fail, or if they pass in toothless forms that will not show obvious benefits to ordinary Americans, Obama will be exposed as weak, just another pretty boy in a long line of empty suit reformers. On the other hand, extending health care to millions of Americans and retooling the economy in such a way as to prevent (or at least mitigate) global warming while creating untold numbers of new jobs will have enormous benefits, for the 2010 midterm elections as well as Obama’s own re-election in 2012. Those are not petty concerns.
As a Friday article in the Washington Post made clear, Obama’s decision to release the four torture memos was not arrived at lightly, nor was it done without significant internal objection. An Administration concerned purely with politics could’ve easily kicked the decision down the road and made the ACLU force its hand in court, if only to buy itself a few precious months to work on other things. But they didn’t do that, they made the right call and the country is better off for it.
Obama isn’t opposed to prosecuting these violations of the law; if he were he wouldn’t have released the memos. But he is aware of just how enormous the political costs are going to be (witness the right wing noise machine going to ludicrous speed the last ten days or so). As important as it is that the architects of American torture face justice, preferably in the form of a jury being asked to render a verdict, it can wait. It’s not as though “prosecute now” and “prosecute never” are the only two options; let John Conyers and Patrick Leahy chew on things for a while, they’re only going to shake even more shit loose. Come Thanksgiving and Christmas the men responsible for one of the greatest disgraces in American history will still be guilty, and the evidence of their deeds will still be there. In the interim the pressure must be kept on, but for political reasons it’s entirely understandable and defensible for Obama and his people to want a clean shot at heath care and energy first.
The thought of these flagrant crimes going unpunished simply because the perps were high government officials is enough to make one physically ill, and postponement carries a real danger of letting them walk. But it may not be an avoidable danger; recognizing that and digging in for the long haul is likely the best course of action.
