Justice for Healing: Repudiating Torture in America

[cenacle]

"We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn't about looking backward, it's about looking forward - because it's about reclaiming America's soul." --Paul Krugman, New York Times, 4/24/2009

To shift back from eight years way, way out of power to holding again the reins of governance has, to some degree, befuddled we in the progressive movement. After all, there was no agreement as to how to oppose Bush--nothing more concrete than end his war & jail him, his Cabinet, & Cheney. None of that happened. All left office unhandcuffed; some of these criminals even now natter away on TV as though they have any wisdom or advice to offer anyone.

Obama is not everyone's dream leader yet all but a strange cluster of right wing & conspiracy theory nuts will agree he is so much better than Bush, & that he is slowly restoring the rule of law & practice of both civility at home & diplomacy abroad. Glad to have him, some grudgingly, some thrillingly. Polls show him riding at least 66% approval where his predecessor couldn't get half of that his last several years in office.

Arguments run full gamut over his economic recovery plans yet most agree that green energy investment & healthcare reform are necessary, will happen, & will likely benefit all. And few but the chronically dissatisfied will dispute that exchanging diplomatic gestures with Iran, Cuba, & Chile (Chavez) isn't a good thing. Traditionally, Americans like to negotiate & presume the lead chair for themselves at the table. Big Daddy to the world.

What President Obama does not have, which bothers many, is a prosecutorial bent toward his predecessor's breaches of the law. What I think he is not yet getting is how deep the anger lives for what George W. Bush & his criminal cabal did to the world. From the stolen election of 2000, to the mysteries of 9/11 & the bizarre pursuit of Iraq as prime enemy, to the Orwellian spying structure he erected at home, & a litany of other abuses of power, liberty, decency, & common sense, many of us feel personally wounded, hit hard & low, & often when we see or read the brazen commentaries of Cheney, Rove, Rice.

We ask: why aren't these people & their foremost assistants not in jail? They tortured people as part of building a case to invade Iraq, went in while millions around the world protested, & destroyed the country once there. They spied on Americans, tapped their phones, read their emails, eroded their civil liberties over & over again for eight fucking years.
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President Obama, we have been abused, savagely harmed by these people, & what can one say about their attorneys who sanctioned physical torture of prisoners? We are glad, literally millions of us are glad, that you are in office. We put you there. But no, we're not ready for forgive & forget. Who among Bush's criminals has asked for forgiveness? Who among them has admitted to committing a single brazen wrong?

We are angry and we are unappeased. Millions of us have last our jobs, our homes, our simple trust in each other & in the belief that this country tries to do the right thing.

It's difficult to tell you this. You're trying to save us from an economic depression, from even worse times. You're trying to re-open channels to the world of nations, undo countless damages. You believe a widespread prosecution of Bush criminals for war crimes would divide & divert the country.

In truth, I believed this for awhile, believed your position was unfortunately the best.

Now, I wonder. I wonder about what is not being done now, & what wounds will not properly heal. I wonder if the new world you envision can honestly be built on such bloody soil as exists now in the collective American psyche. I wonder not at your brilliant mind, your caring soul, your capable managerial hands. I wonder if you are simply not brave enough to risk so much for your nation, your world. What I suspect is that you are taking a gamble that the wounds will heal with the better days you are working so hard to bring about. More jobs, better healthcare, a more wise stewardship of the earth.

What I worry you miss is that the human heart is a mystery & never forgets, not only the depths of the pain but the qualities of the healing. There are subtler & grosser ways to recover from an ill. Pills, crutches. Rest, good food. Empathy. Assurances that it will not happen again because those who caused it have been brought to the bar & been made to account, or confess. Admit wrong.

What we're lacking, what we need, is a sense of justice. You are a better man than George W. Bush & his criminals & you have brought us better days already simply by not being him, & by reversing many of his policies & strategies.

What you have not yet done is to wield the full power of the American government to try and, if guilty, punish him & his colleagues. Repudiate finally & fully the bastards who violated the trust we give elected officials when we vote them into office & empower them to govern in our best interest.

Until this happens, President Obama, there will be a soft spot in your high mantle. A feeling that you would do almost anything to uphold & defend the Constitution. A slight lack of heart that will linger as a strange aroma near the beautiful garden you are inviting us all to build up together with you.

You have asked us to be patient, to act with courage, to join together in conjuring by will & sweat these great new days. I am asking you, President Obama, to once & for all let your voice speak clearly & your actions authoritatively to what we are feeling, what you must be feeling too. Even if Bush & Cheney & Rove & the rest never spend a well-earned minute behind bars, speak to how they violated us & how behind your hard, cool pursuit of returning the nation to one of laws, not men, there is a passionate man who was hurt too by these past years, who lets us know clearly, by word & deed, that these men & women are a blight, & their unrepentence clouds over them as clearly to your eye as it does to so many of ours.

Healing is a difficult process. The alternative is worse.

[Senator]

1. Well said. But it's more than just a "soft spot."

His failure on torture means that we are "torturing our way" to any other improvement or solution.

Whatever numbers "go up," our moral standing continues to descend.

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