From Projecting to Prosecuting - UPDATE I, UPDATE II

Today, Greenwald made an astute point:

Bush-defending opponents of investigations and prosecutions think they've discovered a trump card: the claim that Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller and Jane Harman were briefed on the torture programs and assented to them. The core assumption here -- shared by most establishment pundits -- is that the call for criminal investigations is nothing more than a partisan-driven desire to harm Republicans and Bush officials ("retribution"), and if they can show that some Democratic officials might be swept up in the inquiry, then, they assume, that will motivate investigation proponents to think twice.

Those who make that argument are clearly projecting. They view everything in partisan and political terms -- it's why virtually all media discussions are about what David Gregory calls "the politics of the torture debate" rather than the substantive issues surrounding these serious crimes -- and they are thus incapable of understanding that not everyone is burdened by the same sad affliction that plagues them.

I think that is exactly right. People who see everything through a leftist or rightist worldview can't imagine that those calling for torture prosecutions can have good motives. They literally can't imagine it. Here's a blogger who personifies this trait.

Let me be crystal clear. I don't want Bush administration officials prosecuted because they are conservatives and I'm a liberal. I want them prosecuted because they and I are Americans and our law rightly requires their prosecution. I want them prosecuted because our failure to prosecute them will set a precedent that practically guarantees that torture will become our official policy sometime in the future. I want them prosecuted because it is illegal for the justice department not to prosecute them. I want them prosecuted because our refusal to prosecute tells the rest of the world that we don't care about our international obligations, and that any agreement they may have with us is worthless if we come to believe that keeping our promises is inconvenient.

Perhaps most of all, I want them prosecuted because their actions were monsterous and their legal machinations, including their misuse of the Office of Legal Counsel, seriously compromised our constitutional order. I also want them prosecuted because they repeatedly and effortlessly lied about what they were doing for years and years.


Call me crazy (my blogger friend called us "feces flinging gorillas" and "insane," which is just as good), but those seem like pretty good reasons to me. Moreover, let me say for the record that any Democrat, liberal, socialist, etc., who had anything to do with authorizing American torture should be prosecuted with equal vigor.

And to leave no doubt - I hereby call for the prosecution of the King of Morocco

Joe H.

UPDATE I

This challenge is a slightly modified version of an argument Andrew Sullivan made on his blog. I'm sure he won't mind me repeating it.

Suppose you were captured by an enemy, thrown into a dark and windowless cell, strung from the ceiling by shackles for many hours at a time, kept awake for weeks on end, thrown headlong against a plywood wall for thirty times and waterboarded 183 times in one month (six times a day, each and every day).

Could you emerge from that ordeal and say, with a straight face, "I wasn't tortured!"

If not, don't ever tell me that the Bush administration didn't torture and commit war crimes.

UPDATE II

Well, what do you know. It turns out that we EXECUTED Japanese soldiers after World War II for waterboarding.