Power Line Blog's wingnuttiest wingnut John Hinderaker is capable of writing blog entries that vary from the embarrassing to the laugh-out-loud ridiculous to the outrageously offensive, but he wrote a short entry yesterday that actually touched on some wisdom - yet it seems he didn't realize the wisdom he communicated:
Still, President Obama and his party may achieve another objective by publicly making this kind of threat: deterring Republicans from serving in public life. For many Republicans considering whether to accept an appointment to government office, the prospect that they may be subjected to criminal prosecution if the next administration is Democratic could well tip the balance in favor of remaining in private life.
Oh, you're so close to finally "getting it," John... More on the flip.
Replace "Republicans" with "criminals" (and if you want to be non-partisan, "is Democratic" with "respects the Constitution") and Hinderaker would be exactly correct: A primary objective of prosecuting those responsible for turning what was a capital offense when committed by the Japanese in World War II into official American policy is to deter those who might come later from trying it again -- or better still, from showing flagrant disrespect for the law and for human rights again. Better still, to deter those inclined to do so from ever seeking public office at all.
Hinderaker chose to make this about Republicans and Democrats, however, going so far as to suggest that a Democratic DOJ prosecuting Republicans from the previous administration is a persecutorial conspiracy. He even dismisses the gross violations of our laws and treaties by instituting policies allowing, indeed mandating torture as "[writing] a legal analysis with which the current Attorney General disagree[s]", even as new reports emerge indicating the torture was authorized in part to help create evidence of a Saddam-al Qaeda collaboration.
But then, if he does represent the views of most in the Republican Party with his handwaving of these criminal and immoral acts as a mere policy disagreement, then perhaps the undedited form of his comment is, in fact, accurate. If, in fact, Republicans see nothing wrong with violating our laws and treaties and shocking the conscience by authorizing torture against our prisoners, then they do have no business seeking a position within the echelons of federal power and the rest of us would be well served by keeping them far away from the same.
If, on the other hand, Republicans in the mold of my late great-uncle Lynn Paulson or radio host Stephanie Miller's father, the late Bill Miller (both participants in the prosecution of war crimes in Nuremberg) emerge, who embrace human rights and the laws and treaties of this country, then how will the DOJ's prosecution of those who embraced neither deter them from seeking public office?
In the end, Hinderaker's position betrays exactly the same mindset that allowed the Bush administration to disregard the law and the Constitution: that a President and his administration have carte blanche to do what they like and the only recourse the rest of us have is to vote them out. That accountability for criminal behavior is nonsensical; criminal behavior is impossible because the administration controls what the law is.
And that mentality must not be allowed to prevail. Accountability and justice must find those who are responsible for this black mark on our nation's history. And the biggest reason is because, as Hinderaker unwittingly articulated, we want to deter the next act of disregard for our Constitution from happening in the first place.