“Open confession is good for the soul.” – Scottish proverb
Media commentators have been atwitter these days with excellent metaphors for the like-clockwork arrival of new scandals from the Bush administration practically every week. My personal favorite was from the New York Times’ Frank Rich, who invoked “The Godfather Part III”: “Just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in.”
With the latest revelation that Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have known about the CIA’s waterboarding practice as early as 2002 and done nothing to expose or stop it, the torture debate has come crashing back full force. Despite Obama’s best attempts to simply leave it in the past, bits and pieces have consistently leaked out from various sources. Like it or not, we are going to face this entire sordid history one way or another.
Many are worried that a fact-finding commission to determine exactly how this was allowed to perpetuate for so long, and who is directly responsible, will result in a lot of public outrage and a distrust in government not seen since the Watergate scandal.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what we need. It’s a fact that we are more often prompted to act out of anger than contentment. You don’t see people parked outside of city hall chanting about how much they love urban renewal nearly as often as you see people taking to the streets to protest anything from environmental destruction to police brutality.
Others worry that focusing on torture that happened in the past is going to distract from the manifold problems plaguing the United States today. But current problems are not solved by trying to ignore past ones that remain unresolved. It would be far better to get this over and done with than let new revelations continue causing increasingly shocking firestorms-of-the-week.
Right now, the Republican side seems to be under the impression that if there is any investigation, it will be solely focused on what Pelosi knew and when. This would be a mistake. While I make no attempt to minimize the seriousness of her hypocrisy if it turns out Pelosi knew what was going on so early in the game, she is very obviously not the end-all of this debate. There’s already been enough finger-pointing aimed at the top of the heap.
A March article in The Washington Post quotes many ex-intelligence officials who claim the authorization to use waterboarding and other “enhanced techniques” came from the upper echelons of government. Many say that the pressure came when their star prisoner Abu Zubaydah didn’t give hard evidence or intelligence after his initial confession of involvement with al-Qaida.
“They couldn’t stand the idea that there wasn’t anything new,” an official said. “They’d say, ‘You aren’t working hard enough.’ There was both a disbelief in what he was saying and also a desire for retribution – a feeling that ‘He’s going to talk, and if he doesn’t talk, we’ll do whatever.’”
What lies at the core of this debate is acknowledging the sins of the past. Then, only then, will we move past them; confronting a rough chapter in one’s history is far more healing than simply ignoring it. If we get our past mistakes out in the open and hold those responsible accountable for them, they will no longer be something of which we must be ashamed. Instead, they will become an example of how Americans can learn from their mistakes and ensure that they aren’t repeated.
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Confessing our sins
Daily Emerald
May 25, 2009
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