This is a reply to Matt Stoller's very interesing missive. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (I'll call them TRCs) are extremely controversial mechanisms even in the context they were designed for -- the aftermath of massive, large-scale and systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international human rights.
A vile as the Bush Administration is, as deep as its contempt for the rule of law might be, it is difficult to place it in the same league as apartheid South Africa, Pinochet's Chile, or the civil war in Sierra Leone (to name a few places that have had TRCs).
Below the fold, I'll try to get at why even a massively re-engineered TRC wouldn't be appropriate for the US
To summarize my reasoning: TRCs are primarily a tool of victor's justice, and their viability depends on the destruction of the political clout of the oppressive regime. We won't have that here. Furthermore, neither of the outcomes traditionally produced by TRCs would have an impactr in the US given the social and political dynamics that got us into this mess in the first place.
Bush's approval ratings are, deservedly, in the basement and frantically searching for lower ground, but I think it would be a big stretch to claim that the conservative, evangelical, and neoconservative movements will collapse so utterly that their leading figures will be forced to accept a process that puts them on the same footing as Charles Taylor or Pol Pot. TRCs have to be mandated by law, but aren't rooted in the constitutional foundations of a country the way, say, a judiciary is. That makes them more fragile than other mechanisms of accountability, even (arguably) consensual. To the extent that the targets of a TRC in the US were able to activate even a shadow of the RWNM, they would turn any potential TRC into a partisan spin-circus.
The primary outcomes of a TRC are a) creating a historical record; and, b) giving the victims a chance to be heard, to tell their story. The way I see things, creating historical record is not the issue. There are shelves of books, reams of newspaper articles (ok, half a ream at least), and terabytes of blogs chronicling the abuses of this administration. There is a lot we don't know, but there is also a lot we DO know, and not enough people seem to care. That apathy would doom a TRC.
The victims part is more interesting, very intriguing at least as a thought experiment. Usually when we talk about victims in the TRC context, we mean citizens of the country whose human rights were egregiously violated. By which I mean extrajudicial executions, disappearance, rape, ethnic cleansing, genocide, torture, silenced free speech, etc. This administration has indeed done some of those things, just not primarily to US citizens. To the extent that our human rights have been violated (and they have), the results are not as immediate as a dead b or broken body. How does one walk into a TRC office and share her story bemoaning the loss of her privacy due to NSA wiretapping, or her nervousnes walking around without the protection of habeas corpus? On the other hand, what would be the implications for a US TRC where the witnesses offering testimony were mostly non-US citizens (and probably mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan)? That opens up a lot of questions about to whom our government is and should be accountable. Care to share your thoughts on the latter question (or any others) in the comments?