Of course, I'm going to argue no, that Andrew Sullivan is no more the king of America than is Barack Obama or George Tenet or Eric Holder or any of hundreds of other people claiming to be. But nobody other than the king or queen of the USA could overrule the Constitution and place particular people and categories of people above the law while keeping everybody else under it. Let's take a look at Sullivan's recent Atlantic article:
Americans want, and need, to move on from the debate over torture in Iraq and Afghanistan and close this tragic chapter in our nation's history. Prosecuting those responsible could tear apart a country at war. Instead, the best way to confront the crimes of the past is for the man who authorized them to take full responsibility. An open letter to President George W. Bush.
By Andrew Sullivan
Dear President Bush,
Now, I, for one don't want to move on from talking about torture and murder and aggressive war and political prosecutions and illegal propaganda and death squads and stolen elections and warrantless spying, etc., I want to move on from the actual things themselves. Most of them are still around because they are not being prosecuted. Far from tearing apart a country, creating one in which we are all under the same set of laws would bring us together. And how exactly are we a nation at war? There is no war on our soil or threat to it. Most families have no members engaged in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The cost of the wars is being shoved off on our grandchildren. Just about the only sense in which our country is at war, other than the devastation being imposed on other countries and a relatively small number of US familes, is the consistent use of claims of war as a justification for domestic abuses. OK, maybe there's one other sense in which we are at war: Sullivan is experiencing the sort of delusional thinking that can follow battle. Bush take responsibility? Think about those words for a minute.
We have never met, and so I hope you will forgive the personal nature of this letter. I guess I should start by saying I supported your presidential campaign in 2000, as I did your father's in 1988, and lauded your first efforts to wage war against jihadist terrorism in the wake of 9/11. Some of my praise of your leadership at the time actually makes me blush in retrospect, but your September 20, 2001, address to Congress really was one of the finest in modern times; your immediate grasp of the import of 9/11à ‚¬"a declaration of warà ‚¬"was correct; and your core judgmentà ‚¬"that religious fanaticism allied with weapons of mass destruction represents a unique and new threat to the Westà ‚¬"was and is dead-on. I remain proud of my support for you in all this. No one should forget the pure evil of September 11; no one should doubt the continued determination of an enemy prepared to slaughter thousands in cold blood in pursuit of heaven on Earth.
So, as of 2000, Sullivan had zero ability to judge political candidates and/or had never read Molly Ivins. Should this past record of deadly misjudgment commend his opinions to us now? As of 2001, Sullivan believed a crime constituted a war, and as of 2009, following the disaster created by that pretense, he still thinks the same thing. Following the slaughter of 1.3 million Iraqis, Sullivan still holds out as potential justification for abuses, the supposed existence of an enemy prepared to kill "thousands" of Americans. And Sullivan is -- through it all -- still proud of having supported Bush, or so deep in a deranged fantasy about winning Bush over that he's willing to tell him flattering lies.
Of course, like most advocates of the Iraq War, I grew dismayed at what I saw as the mistakes that followed: the failure to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora; the intelligence fiasco of Saddam's nonexistent stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction; the failure to prepare for an insurgency in Iraq; the reckless disbandment of the Iraqi army; the painful slowness in adapting to drastically worsening conditions there in 2004à ‚¬"06; the negligence toward Afghanistan.
A coordinated campaign to deceive a nation about the grounds for war is an "intelligence fiasco"? Preparing for the resistance of the Iraqi people would have improved the supreme crime of aggressive war? Escalation in Afghanistan, too, would have improved that criminal and aggressive war? When Sullivan reads about mass murderers on the domestic scene, does he complain about their mistakes or their crimes? Think about exactly what Sullivan would like Bush to apologize for, and to the people of what country Sullivan wants such an apology addressed. Then ask yourself whether giving up the deterrence of major crimes in the future is a price worth paying for such an apology. Then remember that we are talking about a man who does not apologize and is as likely to apologize as Sullivan is to admit that the peace movement was and is right.
These were all serious errors; but they were of a kind often made in the chaos of war. And even your toughest critics concede that, eventually, you adjusted tactics and strategy. You took your time, but you evaded catastrophe in temporarily stabilizing Iraq. I also agree with the guiding principle of the war you proclaimed from the start: that expanding democracy and human rights is indispensable in the long-term fight against jihadism. And I believe, as you do, that a foreign policy that does not understand the universal yearning for individual freedom and dignity is not a recognizably American foreign policy.
My favorites among Bush's toughest critics have no use for this slimey defense. If what has been done to Iraq is not a catastrophe, what -- other than perhaps an embarassing TV appearance for Sullivan -- could be? Bush did not from the start claim to be expanding democracy. He pasted that over the missing WMDs and ties to 9-11. But it was hogwash, and the state of democracy and human rights in Iraq is no more secure than in the United States. Bush believes in basing foreign policy on freedom and dignity? Can Sullivan possibly mean for even Bush himself to believe that line? Should someone throw a shoe at Andrew? I'm not sure what else would snap him out of this.
Yet it is precisely because of that belief that I lost faith in your war. In long wars of ideas, moral integrity is essential to winning, and framing the moral contrast between the West and its enemies as starkly as possible is indispensable to victory, as it was in the Second World War and the Cold War.
What, pray tell, is moral about framing a moral contrast between "the West and its enemies" and who is this pair of clowns (Sullivan and Bush) to tell me who my enemies should be and what's wrong with their morality, and then to identify them with the peoples of entire continents?
But because of the way you chose to treat prisoners in American custody in wartimeà ‚¬"a policy that degraded human beings with techniques typically deployed by brutal dictatorshipsà ‚¬"we lost this moral distinction early, and we have yet to regain it. That truth hangs over your legacy as a stain that has yet to be removed. As more facts emerge, the stain could darken further. You would like us to move on. So would the current president. But we cannot unless we find a way to address that stain, to confront and remove it.
Nothing could darken this stain further. Torture is a drop in a sea of blood created by aggressive war. But if we can perform the indescribable indecency of accepting that Sullivan simply won't address the crime of aggressive war (a crime that almost inevitably brings torture with it), then Sullivan is perfectly right in how he addresses torture -- or he would be if he were to include the significance of its illegality.
I have come to accept that it would be too damaging and polarizing to the American polity to launch legal prosecutions against you, and deeply unfair to solely prosecute those acting on your orders or in your name.
Damaging to the American polity? Establishing that a president can make laws by signing statements, executive orders, and secret memos strikes me as hugely damaging. Including among those laws the legalization of torture, aggressive war at a president's whim, and warrantless spying strikes me as devastating and, yes, polarizing. We have divided the nation into those who make the laws and live above them, and the rest of us who have no role in making the laws but live under them. Sullivan would not be the first pundit to take this position if what he means to say is that we should not prosecute high officials because the corporate media would take the opportunity to go completely insane. Frankly, I think that's a price worth paying, because we are going to pay it either way. If elected officials continue to take their orders from the corporate media, it will go insane just as surely as if its dominance is challenged. The same goes for the gangs of corporate pawns threatening racist violence at astroturfed media events; if they are what worries Sullivan he should stop and read some of his favorite hard-headed authors on the history of appeasement. But Sullivan (and Doug Feith for that matter) is exactly right that it makes no sense to prosecute Bush's subordinates for crimes he ordered without prosecuting him first.
President Obama's decision thus far to avoid such prosecutions is a pragmatic and bipartisan one in a time of war, as is your principled refusal to criticize him publicly in his first months. But moving on without actually confronting or addressing the very grave evidence of systematic abuse and torture under your administration poses profound future dangers. It gives the impression that nothing immoral or illegal took place. Indeed, since leaving office, your own vice president has even bragged of these interrogation techniques; and many in your own party threaten to reinstate such policies in the future. Their extreme rhetoric seems likely to shapeà ‚¬"to contaminateà ‚¬"history's view of your presidency, indeed of the Bush name, and the world's view of America. But my biggest fear is this: in the event of a future attack on the United States, another president will feel tempted, or even politically compelled, to resort to the same brutalizing policy, with the same polarizing, demoralizing, war-crippling results. I am writing you now because it is within your powerà ‚¬"and only within your powerà ‚¬"to prevent that from happening.
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