Reading diaries and comments about the issue of accountability for torture it's hard not to notice a few things:
- a lot of kossaks care deeply. Great! We need an organized constituency to fight for fundamental constitutional values.
- commenters waste a huge amount of time discussing and arguing about things that just aren't true. Examples below the fold.
- We're arguing about Obama's motivations and ignoring an enormous political opening which, if we are aggressive, can put overwhelming pressure on Obama to do the right thing.
The purpose of this diary is to encourage those who believe in the need for accountability for torture to stop hyperventilating, get over the fact that Obama is not, by himself, the vessel of a utopian revolution, get focused and fight like hell.
Here is what we actually know about the politics of torture in the wake of the release of the OLC memos last week.
First of all the bad facts:
- Obama has ordered Guantanamo closed, but it isn't yet.
- Obama has not rejected "rendition." To the contrary, he has asserted his right to kidnap whomever he pleases.
- Obama has argued strenuously in court that he can take anyone he kidnaps to a place where they have no rights at all, that Bagram is, as Guantanamo was under Bush, a legal black hole in which our government is free to do whatever it wants with whomever it kidnaps with no recourse to US courts.
- Obama has NOT outlawed or abandoned torture. He has required that all interrogations comply with the army field manual, but even that order contained weasel words and more importantly, as the Center for Constitutional Rights and the magnificent Valtin have pointed out, the current version of the Army Field Manual contains loopholes that allow torture. Those loopholes have not been closed.
Pretty depressing, huh? Looks like our President (for whose campaign I pulled my 13 and 11 year old sons out of school for five days to canvass in a red state) has stage managed some PR tricks to make it look like he was changing the policies of what Scott Horton at Harper's calls the Bush Administration dictatorship but is actually maintaining both the powers and the practices of his predecessor.
Well, that sucks.
Now some other facts:
- Obama released the OLC memos over the vitriolic opposition of CIA officers past and present, the right wing and the beltway pundit class. We should not underestimate the courage required to do this, nor the level of political capital necessary to expend to get it done.
- Nobody has been granted immunity from prosecution. Deep breath, repeat after me, Nobody has been granted immunity from prosecution. The President and his Chief of Staff have made extremely disappointing public statements to the effect that they don't believe people ought to be prosecuted, but that is not the same thing as formal pardons or actual grants of immunity. Several avenues are open to prosecution, and as Digby and others keep pointing out, the decision to prosecute rests with Holder, and the decision on whether or not to appoint a Congressional truth commission rests with Congress, as does the possible impeachment of Jay Bybee, the torture judge. The politics of accountability, whether it be through DOJ prosecutions, a special prosecutor or some independent commission, have not yet played out. The fact that Claire McCaskill would even hint that Bybee should be impeached demonstrates that the political situation is fluid.
- The Spanish Court HAS NOT BACKED DOWN. Despite the fact that a heavily rec'd diarist has now written two handwringers about this fact, it's not a fact at all. Spain's attorney general said in public that he didn't think the lawyers should be prosecuted, and prosecutors recommended not prosecuting, but it isn't their decision to make. It's the investigating judge's decision. The judge who referred the case to prosecutors for their recommendation has rejected that recommendation, and the case is now awaiting assignment to a judge who may or may not push forward.
And by the way, most commenters are focused on the wrong quote from the Spanish prosecutors. It's terrible, and wrong, to say that the lawyers shouldn't be prosecuted because they weren't there. But this:
"If there is a reason to file a complaint against these people, it should be done before local courts with jurisdiction, in other words in the United States," he said in a breakfast meeting with journalists."
can help those of us willing to fight build pressure on Obama. Every day that goes by, Obama makes himself more complicit in these crimes. He knows this -- the language of the treaty and of Article VI of the Constitution (treaties are the supreme law of the land) is very clear. And that creates a very powerful political dynamic that benefits progressives who have the energy to get off their asses and actually do something to try to defend the victims of US torture and hold the torturers accountable.
Consider this: Most policymakers believe we have a difficult long term struggle to convince individual Muslims and Muslim-dominated states that the US seeks to be a fair partner in development and policy, and peel away politically active Muslims from extremism. The President of the United States went on global televisionwith a message to the Mulsim world of a new partnership and a new attitude from the United States.
Obama's actions have put al-Qaeda on the defensive. They have responded by arguing that Obama is just a different face for Bush's policies.
If our President's policy in the Muslim world is to be effective, he must disprove the assertions of al-Qaeda and other extremists that he's the same as Bush. If, over time, it becomes clear to people around the world that US policies have NOT changed, and that we're still rounding up hundreds of people in Iraq and Afghanistan and kidnapping dozens more off the streets of countries all over the world, torturing them, denying them due process and using phony national security secrecy arguments to keep the truth from the light of day, all of Obama's kind words and dazzling smiles will be worthless. Obama's policies will have no more success than Bush's, both in terms of public relations and the attempt to concretely reduce the number of people who are so mad that they want to blow us up. Everyone who reads these blogs knows that dissident intelligence professionals that our torture policy is a massive boost to terrorist recruitment.
This political/policy dynamic overseas opens up a huge opportunity through which to drive a campaign to eliminate torture and fully restore the rule of law. But we'll have to fight Obama just as hard for it as we fought Bush.
Because in this context, it doesn't matter whether Obama is a slick, sly, corporate politician who has hustled progressives into voting for him, or if he's really a progressive genius playing seven level chess while we lesser beings choke on our checkers.
It.
Just.
Doesn't.
Matter.
If he's a sellout slickster, we have to beat the crap out of him to get him to do what he should want to do. If he's a clever progressive genius, we have to beat the crap out of him anyway to give him cover to do what he secretly wants to do. It doesn't matter -- the way forward for us is the same.
What does matter is whether or not we have the energy, courage and confidence to seize the opportunities in front of us. We've been through 8 of the darkest years imaginable, but in many ways, they've also been 8 extremely bright years.
A network of courageous lawyers and their torture victim clients, human rights activists and journalists, including the handful of real investigative mainstream reporters (Hersh, Mayer, Danner, Priest) and a cadre of whistleblowers within government, and officials in other governments have worked their asses off to expose this awful wrongdoing. They've been backed up by thousands of rank and file activists here and abroad, and millions of voters who voted for Obama in part on his promise to establish the rule of law in the US once and for all.
Truth has fought back and gained an initial triumph over lies. The public has turned its back on the phony war in Iraq, and rejected the party of the President who prosecuted it. Sure, many Democrats were complicit in the thing, and yes, Obama's first 100 days have involved more PR than substance on this issue. But let's not forget that those most identified with torture have been exposed and removed from office.
Accountability is the next step. Why in the world would we expect that to be easy? There are a long, tiresome paralysis-of-analysis list of reasons to just give up. Ignore them.
Here's a list of all the things I can think of to actually DO to make accountability for torture a reality. I hope commenters will add more.
- Sign the Impeach Bybee petition at Firedoglake.
- Write, email or call your member of the House of Representatives and demand that s/he support impeachment of Bybee.
- CC Rep. John Conyers (D-MI, Chairman, House Judiciary Committee) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) when you do it.
- Document and publicize the black hole at Bagram by
- Writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper outlining how Bagram is just as bad as Guantanamo, and how Obama needs to make real change and hold torturers accountable.
- Reaching out to local vets of the war in Afghanistan in your community. Find out if any of them served at Bagram. Veterans of interrogations have already been crucial in exposing the US torture regime. We always need more brave soldiers willing to stand up and tell the truth.
- Making contributions to the organizations doing the work documenting torture and defending its victims, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights (apologies to all the others doing great work for no links).
- Contact the UN Rapporteur on Torture and thank him for turning up the heat on President Obama.
If we all do what we do best, we can win.