Why We Must Do This

Seven past directors of the Central Intelligence Agency have signed a letter to the President to ask that he overrule the Attorney General and stop the probe of the use of torture by the CIA and other agencies.

First the minor reason as to why they are wrong: The Department of Justice under the Bush Administration was a badge-toting goon squad which functioned at the behest of the Republican party. That is a point which is beyond debate. That prosecutors in Bush's DoJ declined to pursue an investigation is meaningless. Nobody with an IQ above room temperature should be shocked at the idea that the Bush DoJ was not going to pursue an investigation that could end with the then-current vice-president being indicted.

Second, and more importantly: The underlying criticism of war crimes tribunals ever since the Nuremberg Tribunals has been that war crimes trials are "victor's justice", in that you have to be defeated in order to be tried for war crimes. If you win the war, you stay in power and nobody touches you. As the argument goes, nobody sought to try Stalin for invading Poland, Finland or the Baltic nations. Admiral Donitz was sent to prison for ten years because on his orders, U-boats sank merchant ships without warning, yet the exact same practice was carried out by American submarines against Japanese shipping and no American naval commander was ever tried for ordering that practice.[1]

If holding people accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity is to ever mean anything, it has to be more than a legal way to hang defeated enemy leaders. It has to be more than a punishment levied against lesser-rank nations, whose leaders manage to get themselves arrested. Beyond that, the Bush Administration's Justice Department tried and convicted Chuckie Taylor for the use of torture against his own people in his own country. If we are not going to hold our own people accountable for the use of torture, than the Federal anti-torture is a fucking joke.

We have to do this, we have to investigate our own use of torture and, where appropriate, bring the miscreants to trial. If we do not, then we betray our own principles as a nation.

[1]One submarine captain torpedoed and sank a Japanese hospital ship. His boat was ordered to terminate its patrol and return to base. Upon arrival, he was immediately relieved of his command, court-martialed, convicted of negligence and received a letter of admonition, which had no effect on his career whatsoever, as he was a lieutenant commander at the time and retired as a flag officer.