Democrats need to revive their " long-neglected oversight muscle."

[madfloridian]

That is from a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Sara Robinson at Campaign for America's Future.

She is right. She says our party has "internalized the conservative frame that "accountability" can never be anything but an ugly partisan witch hunt."

The Republicans have framed it that way. They have said that if we try to investigate and hold accountable those in the Bush administration who took us to war on lies, who wiretapped us in the name of security, who wrote about and approved the torture of fellow human beings in a country we invaded....that we will be divisive. Sara is right, we have bought it and swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

The Truth About Consequences

It's interesting to watch the Democrats trying to work some life back into their long-neglected oversight muscle. Thirty years of conservative misrule have muddled Americans' understanding of words like responsibility, accountability, discipline, and punishment to the point where nobody knows that they mean any more—and don't seem to want to know, either. The social conservatives go on and on about the evils of postmodern morality and situational ethics; and on this score, I can't quite summon myself to disagree. It's been as though nobody on Planet Washington ever had a parent who was able to explain right from wrong, or demonstrate the role cause-and-effect plays in the ethical universe. It's like a moral-gravity-free zone.

..."Let's be clear: Our system of laws was built entirely on the liberal model. The objective of a hearing, investigation, or trial is to dispassionately discover the facts of the matter, and make sure that the consequences are as natural and logical (read: fair) as possible. We're not judging your inherent worth, just your actions. We are forbidden from using force, or punishing you just to prove to you that we can. We have a sacred obligation to ensure that the consequences are more or less proportional to the crime. A good chunk of our Bill of Rights is devoted to making sure the conservative notion of punishment—the arbitrary exercise of power for power's sake—doesn't ever become part of our system of justice.

Given that, we need to be very concerned that the Democrats, as the liberal party, have apparently completely forgotten how any of this is supposed to work. These days, when you broach the subject of holding someone accountable, they physically seize up. You can actually see the wave of terror gripping their bodies. Over the past 20 years, they've completely internalized the conservative frame that "accountability" can never be anything but an ugly partisan witch hunt designed mainly to take out enemies and bludgeon the other side with the full fury of state power The idea that such moments might be (and, in fact, very often have been) something noble, fine, cleansing, and healthy for the country is almost beyond their comprehension. Pecora? Truman? Ervin? Church? That was a long time ago. We couldn't possible do that sort of thing any more.

It is as though anything goes now and is not going to be truly investigated. Things come to mind like the Don Siegelman case, the torture memos, the spying on American citizens by wiretapping. Lots more.

Sara ends with this paragraph. She is right.

The truth about consequences is this: There can be no restoration and reconciliation until people are reassured that the outcome will actually matter, that the real story will be told, and that people will be held accountable for their choices. They are also the very definition of justice, and the necessary precondition of freedom. The most important change we need right now is leaders with a quickening sense of liberal discipline—including the self-discipline and moral courage to stop looking the other way.

I think we all know where this play nice don't make waves mentality came from. I remembered that the DLC had come out with a memo about the NSA surveillance program. They advocated that we should just let bygones be bygones...and look forward. It only makes sense that their advice is followed as the ones surrounding the president are from this school of thought.

DLC: "We see no particular value in dwelling on the administration's past behavior."

...."We see no particular value in dwelling on the administration's past behavior. The more important question is how to bring counter-terrorism surveillance under the rule of law in the present and future. The goal must be to give national security agencies the authority they need to stop terrorist attacks, while also providing the oversight necessary to ensure their efforts are effective and do not violate Americans' civil liberties.

..."For their part, Democrats should focus less on hashing over the administration's past behavior, and focus more on working with responsible Republicans to set new and reasonable rules for the new war that began on 9/11. That's the right thing to do, and it will also help Democrats avoid the political trap Karl Rove so publicly set last week.

..."Democrats should take the position that they are happy to give the administration all the legal authority it wants and needs in exchange for accepting responsibility for actual results.

In the end, the war on terror does not require a president above the law, and the rule of law does not require unreasonable restrictions on surveillance.

Speaking of Karl Rove, that is exactly the kind of thing we are allowing to happen by not insisting on accountability. He is all over the media, he is appearing in forums with important Democrats...thus making him look important.

While he is getting accolades, Don Siegelman is pleading for help to keep from going back to jail.

I am afraid that by using the FISA bill to legalize so much of what the previous administration did, that we have effectively made it tough to investigate and prosecute.

...."Think of it. Here was a Democrat-controlled Congress that vowed to hold the White House accountable for its attempts to trample on the Fourth Amendment. And now it has done just the opposite. The danger can't be overstated. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have never hidden their disdain for the niceties of the law, nor have they ever shown any compunction about using the powers of their office to go after political opponents. And now they have the power to invade Americans' privacy with impunity. There will be no checks and balances, no reports to Congress, no accountability. The potential for abuse is frightening.

And the worst part is that those who created the enhanced interrogation techniques, aka torture, are probably going free with no accountability.

Katha Pollitt of The Nation:

I should have been a torturer. You too, reader. Well, maybe not an actual physical torturer, because then there'd be a small chance I'd go to prison like Lynndie England or Charles Graner. My picture might be in the paper doing nasty things to naked men with a goony smile and a thumbs-up. I might even have disturbing memories and bad dreams, because surely, unless one is a sociopath, throwing people into walls and hanging them from the ceiling all day is likely to have its troubling moments. What I mean is, I should have been a member of the torture creative class--a conceptual torturer, a facilitator of torture, perhaps an inventor of torture law, an architect of the torture archipelago, a dissimulator, concealer, denier, rationalizer, minimizer and pooh-pooher of torture. As a word person, I could have come up with circumlocutions to confuse the media, bureaucratic phrases like "special methods of questioning" and "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Yoo, Feith, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and the others are doing well financially and getting credibility still in spite of the fact they developed the torture techniques.

Sara Robinson ended her post by saying: "A government that cannot fairly, honestly, transparently hold people to account—where, in fact, nobody can apparently even imagine that such a thing might be possible—is by definition, no longer a government of laws, because the law depends on a strong relationship between cause and effect.