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Guest column: Prosecute Bush for his crime: Allowing torture

By Steve Lombardi

Today we are reprinting with permission a guest column by an Iowa attorney. I have long advocated that the Bush Administration's policy of the end-justifies-the-means is wrong. This piece by Mr. Wilson makes a very good argument in the area of sanctioning torture.

Guest column: Prosecute Bush for his crime: Allowing torture

By: Jonathan Wilson, attorney with Davis, Brown, Koehn, Shors & Roberts

Des Moines, Iowa

One of my favorite Far Side cartoons features a guy with a paint brush in front of his house. He's painted on the house, "House," on the fence, "Fence," on the bewildered-looking dog, "Dog," and on a beleaguered tree, "Tree." With his brush still dripping with paint, he says, "There now, that should clear some things up around here."

The mid-January testimony of Eric Holder, then nominee for U.S. attorney general in the Obama administration, was just such a moment. He stated the obvious clearly and without reservation: Waterboarding is torture. Pure and simple. No equivocation. None of the ifs-ands-or-buts previously uttered by the Bush lackey, Attorney General Michael Mukasey. It was true, as every human being in touch with reality has known for decades, if not centuries. It was nonetheless refreshing. It needed to be said by someone about to have responsibility for prosecuting crimes. But it creates a dilemma.

By stating that simple truth, Holder may have painted the administration into a perplexing proverbial corner. Torture is illegal under the laws of the United States and under international law. A crime. A serious crime. A crime that has been committed in the name of the United States. A crime that cannot be ignored. A crime that cries out for prosecution and time in the slammer.

We've all heard it before, and we're starting to hear it again, that we should be forward-looking; that it profits us not as a nation to dredge up past wrongs; that we should be moving on from the ugly past. But that's the old way of doing things. That's the traditional good-ol'-boy ploy. Calls for ignoring what's happened in the past usually follow statements during a crisis or unfolding events that there's no need to assign blame at that time; there will be plenty of time later for assigning blame and holding people accountable. It happened after the Sept. 11 attacks, it happened with the ill-conceived "preventive" war against Iraq; it happened with the Katrina debacle; it happened with the financial meltdown; and it's happening with the unapologetic criminality of the Bush administration.

Obama promised something different. His most difficult first test will be to decide whether the same old free pass will once again be given to members of the establishment fraternity, or whether the rule of law really will be allowed to operate unimpeded. Not a tough choice philosophically, but a truly tough choice politically for someone who wants perhaps too much to be popular, and who (it's an understatement to say) has a lot of other things on his plate.

But, as Obama aptly observed when rival John McCain suspended his presidential campaign to "solve" the financial crisis, "The president is supposed to be able to do more than one thing at a time." One reason is that a president has lots of people helping, such as a chief law-enforcement officer. The president is not expected to do that himself.

It might be justice, even poetic justice, for the Department of Justice to actually hold Cheney and Bush accountable. Especially Bush, who, as the consummate insider, turned railing against the establishment into an art form.

Bush, in his final address to the nation, tried to paint his conduct in the most favorable light, claiming that what he did was keep the nation safe from another attack. But when the light is shown on that "defense," it is nothing more than claiming that the ends justify the means. We know that's indefensible. When we, as a people, buy into that philosophy, the rule of law is lost, the Constitution is rendered meaningless, our individual freedoms are held for naught, and we become indistinguishable from the terrorists who hold that same view.

Consider this: Torture is a serious crime, in this country and internationally. Serious crimes should be prosecuted no matter who commits them. Those who commit them should answer for them. When they're done doing so here, they should, in the name of Noriega and Pinochet, in the name of Nuremburg, be extradited for criminal prosecution abroad - the ultimate "extraordinary rendition."

Reprinted with permission.

For more reading on the end-justifies-the-means concept read the following blog entries.

American Politics - What can a sewer plant controversy teach us about democracy?

Goldman Sachs Redefines Greed - Trial Judges and Juries Need to Take Note

Texas Tort Reform Message – Go west young man; go east or north, but go.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on March 25, 2009 (boomark / email).