Yesterday buhdydharma asked that people send copies of a letter to Senator Leahy regarding his Truth Commission. I thought that, rather than add one copy to the hopefully thousands that were sent, I would finish one that I'd been working on and send it instead.
Note: Punctuation has never been my friend, so constructive copy editing is welcome, but since I already said up front that it's not one of my strong suits, falmes and derision could be skipped, thanks.
Dear Senator Leahy,
I normally have great respect for you but, that said, I disagree profoundly with your position on this 'commission' and your stated goal of 'finding out what happened and why'. I believe that it is utter nonsense, nothing more than political theater and the antithesis of useful process.
We know what happened-Multiple laws were broken. In as flagrant and egregious an example of abuse of power as this country has ever seen. The only questions are how many and to what extent. What exactly would merely confirming that do? And how exactly would we keep it from happening again? More laws? Nonsense.
We know why it happened- The perpetrators didn't believe that they would be held to account for their actions.They were building on the misdeeds of previous lawbreakers who had gotten away with it. And Congress, for however many reasons, failed miserably in its oversight responsibilities as a check against executive overreaching. The perpetrators are putting forth the idea that we elect kings who are above the law, not presidents who are subject to it. And they are betting that the Republicans were able to sufficiently sully the concept of justice, to so muddy it with partisan vengence during the Clinton Administration, that no one else will be able to extricate it and make it clean again. I disagree. We managed it at Nuremburg, we can surely do it here. There is no reason that we cannot find honest, unbiased investigators and prosecutors to do justice.
And finally, we very well know how to keep it from happening again- Prosecute the lawbreakers as any other lawbreakers so that those who come after will be deterred from breaking the laws by the knowledge that their positions and their connections will not protect them from being held responsible. And the perpetrators themselves will be barred from ever being in a position to reoffend. Congress and the DoJ are just being squeamish about the necessity. And the only reason we are avoiding this responsibility is because of the positions of the offenders. This is unAmerican. It is a total repudiation of the principles of the rule of law. It is a slap in the face of our ideals and the foundations of our country.
The world didn't take responsibility for doing the right thing after WWI and so we had WWII. It took Nuremburg to set things right. We didn't take responsibility for pursuing the relatively minor wrongdoing at Watergate and ended up with Iran Contra, and still swept it under the rug so it came back, bigger and more egregious in Iraq, and Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo. We cannot afford the next iteration and the compounded interest on our refusal to apply the rule of law equally to all citizens. Each successive wave of wrongdoing has broken higher on the beach than the one before. We would be worse than fools, we would be irresponsible, willfully blind fools not to recognise the pattern. In order to protect our country’s future, we HAVE to put the boundary back where the Constitution and the law says it belongs and show unequivocally that we WILL defend that boundary around our principles, ideals and laws against all comers, foreign or domestic.
Some maintain that cleaning up this mess is looking backwards or is in some way seeking vengence. Again, nonsense. How many of the offenses that you prosecuted in your career were current or hadn't happened yet? All prosecutions are of past actions. In pursuing justice and enforcing our laws we are looking forward, we’re looking forward to what will inevitably happen if we once again ignore and childishly hide from our responsibility to uphold our laws and ideals. The status quo of ignoring such egregious lawbreaking is absolutely unacceptable.
For our children and grandchildren we are looking ahead to protect the Constitution and the future for them, as the Founders did. And it requires that we set and reinforce boundaries. We know much, but certainly not all of what happened during the Bush Administration: Laws were broken. We know why it happened: They had no fear of being held to account for breaking those laws because others before them had not been. We know how to prevent it from happening again: Follow and enforce our laws, defend our Constitution, punish the lawbreakers, not as a vengeful act but as a natural consequence of their freely chosen actions and a deterrent to the next generation of potential lawbreakers, who will come. We know what will not work: Sweeping it all under the rug and ‘moving on’ as was done with Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc. Or making more toothless laws that will be broken with the same attitude of being above any law that was so abundantly in evidence this time. Or leaving oversight to those who can be swayed into turning blind eyes to the need of seeing that blind justice is done. We need to powerfully reinforce the fact that we elect presidents, who are subject to the law, not kings who are above it or perceive themselves to be so.
And lastly, I firmly believe that you and many others sell the American people short. I believe that if unbiased investigations are done and the truth in its entirety is placed before the American people, I believe that, not as in Watergate but as at the end of McCarthyism, the sterilization of sunlight and transparency will burn out the infestation and will allow the good, honest majority of people to see what was done in our names and we will be appalled, disgusted and turn our backs on the wrongdoers and support appropriate measures against them. I don't believe it will divide the country as many do, I believe that it will bring most people together and reinforce our principles and our faith in the foundations of our country. After the recent elections, I have renwed faith in America and I hope that you find it too.