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What might the president be expecting from us?
What an attendee will learn:
--In April, Obama faced down very strong pressure from, among others, CIA director Leon Panetta (not to mention Panetta's four immediate predecessors) against releasing four Justice Department memoranda setting forth "approved" torture techniques. Why?
--Obama was quite aware at the time that the court-ordered release of the explosive findings of the CIA Inspector General's investigation was imminent. It would add to our knowledge of how heinous the CIA abuses actually were -- and from the horse's mouth.
What did Obama expect -- or at least hope -- would happen once those damning findings were made public?
--Attorney General Eric Holder, reportedly "sickened" after reading the CIA Inspector General report and facing growing pressure to hold accountable those responsible for the deaths and torture of detainees, has now authorized a preliminary investigation.
This is precisely the fateful step that Dick Cheney and the corral of "anonymous" intelligence sources favored by the Washington Post have been agitating so strongly to prevent. The danger, as they see it, is that the whole ball of twine will unravel and that people will end up with prison terms or even worse.
Are Holder and Obama willing to run that risk? What are they likely to do, or avoid doing, if they conclude that most Americans don't give a hoot about torture carried out in their name?
--Cheney's current gambit is to make it crystal clear that he is not going down alone; that -- as he told Bob Schieffer -- it was his boss who "signed off" on waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques. The former vice president is betting on Obama not having the stomach to pursue a former president for crimes that the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) trivialize as "policy differences."
Conflicted though he may be, President Obama did take a solemn oath to ensure that the laws of the land are faithfully executed. What would give him the political support -- and the courage -- to ensure that justice is pursued, this time not exempting rotten apples at the top of the proverbial barrel?
--What about the "just-following-orders" excuse, which was summarily dismissed at the post-WWII Nuremburg Tribunal? Does Obama's and Holder's curious willingness so far to accept that defense bespeak a preference for letting the torturers off rather than run the very real risks of bringing them to justice?
Is it not the case that men and women instinctively know that it is wrong to abuse the person of another human being? But what about fear of the consequences of disobeying an order?
There, at least the Nazi torturers had a stronger argument. They could expect to be shot in the head, whereas CIA operatives and contractors might expect to receive a bad fitness report. Do Obama and Holder really think they can hold to the view that "just following orders" is an adequate defense? Should we acquiesce in that?
--The entire civilized world cooperated after WWII to ban torture. Our own tradition goes back to Patrick Henry who insisted that the "rack and the screw" were artifacts of the Old World and needed to be left behind there. And Gen. George Washington strongly insisted from the outset that, whatever the practices of the English, torture was not to be tolerated in the new American army. Where are the Patrick Henrys, the George Washingtons, of today?
--How is it that the issue of torture, an intrinsic evil in the same moral category as rape and slavery, has gotten divorced from the realm of morality and been given a completely different focus; i. e., does torture "work?"
Torture does not provide reliable information; but that's not the main point. Why is it that religious leaders, by and large, cannot find their voices? Why do they take the course of least resistance, adopting as their model the cowardice of the institutional churches of Nazi Germany? What are the implications for us?
