How important is it to remember how awful Bush was as a president? For example,
(1) how important is it to prosecute ever member of the Bush administration who committed a crime, from violating the prohibitions on soliciting campaign contributions while during work hours from a public office to violating the convention against torture?
(2) how important is it to continue to raise public consciousness about his failures from everything to blogging about new revelations that show it to picketing his house and places where he gives speaking engagements?
Is stuff like this valuable, or is in better to just be constructive?
7 comments:
I think you have to balance it.
On (1):
For the government to engage in it is probably enormously unproductive--so much so that it is probably a dereliction of duty.
I don't think I ever expressed support for going after Gore for making campaign calls from his offices... I seem to recall thinking that requiring him to go cross the street to make three calls was a waste of his 24-hour on-call kind of job. On those grounds I guess things like the minor campaign calls things shoudl just be ignored.
Violating torture bans is still not clear to me one way or the other and I wonder how long that could drag out in the courts. Perhaps also not worth it, ultimately. I hear a lot of, "...and it doesn't yield accurate information anyway..." as if that is taken as a given. I just don't know that I think this is settled. So much of it, in fact, is unsettled that I worry we could tie ourselves in knots for decades over it.
On (2):
His approval rating is below "random bad guy you've barely heard of". I don't know that we need to help people feel like we have to put him behind us. I mean what would consciousness-raising look like? Tell people "Hey, you shouldn't like George Bush so much, he did a bunch of bad stuff."
"Oh really? Like what? I hadn't heard."
I say leave it and move on. I mean better than the ironically named MoveOn.org.
The reason to prosecute crimes is the same as any crime: deterence & retribution. Hatch Act, that was what I couldn't remember.
The PR idea would be to make sure there was no future confusion as a result of spinmeisters. It is dangerous in a democracy when failed policies are forgotten; or worse, transformed in the public consciousness to be successes.
You might be right that it isn't worth the effort, that is just where I'm coming from in asking the question.
On 1) I think that a conscientious Justice department should review the more significant allegations, and to the degree that in arguable crimes were committed, they should be prosecuted. (I'm thinking in particular here of the most pernicious crimes like the Monica Goodling/Bradley Schlozzman types).
Where I am really conflicted is the torture thing. It seems cut and dried that they broke the law, from my very limited knowledge. So who do you prosecute? The CIA personnel who poured the water? Their supervisors? They have a legitimate "this was legal policy" defense, so you kick it up to the Sec of Defense or DNI, who will point out that it was authorized by the President. Are we going to retroactively prosecute the President? It would seem wrong to punish the executors of a policy while letting its authors go about their lives. But the notion of -- what? Impeaching Bush after he has left office? Prosecuting a retired President? Just seems absurd and unproductive. But dammit -- we tortured people! I really want accountability! But I don't think we'll ever get it, unless you take the small satisfaction that a democratic president, a 19-seat advantage in the Senate and a 79-seat advantage in the House are some small and indirect measure of accountability.
On 2) The Bush Legacy Foundation is already in action and in ten years they will be arguing with a straight face that Bush was almost as awesome as Reagan. That's already begun. I think it's worthwhile countering the BS as it flows, but beyond that I don't think there's much value to continuing to defile the Bush legacy.
I think I agree with Liam. There seems to be enough cause to at least have someone look it over and consider cost/benefit. I would make the bar really high, but I think it bears considering.
Jim, as we've discussed before, I am not 100% settled on the torture front, I just am not so sure what happened was wrong, or maybe what I mean is that I'm not 100% settled that what we did was indefensible.
Well, I'm 100% settled on torture, but I don't know that what we did was torture, nor do I know what exactly was authorized and by whom.
There was an investigation into prosecuting Clinton for perjury and he was forced to be deposed in a civil deposition while in office. So, we've already passed on the question of whether it is unseemly to prosecute a former president. Again, I seriously don't know if Bush really committed a crime.
I think the Bush Legacy Foundation (did you make that up?) is dangerous and it may be worthwhile to have an organization actively campaigning to have him declared the worst president in history. What he did to our country is a big deal. And we should not do it again.
Let me clarify: I am 100% sure that I don't know what torture is.
Defining "torture" seems like a problem that would run into a "sorite paradox" situation. Briefly, an example of a sorite paradox is this: you have a heap of sand, and start removing grains one at a time. At which point do you stop having a heap? Closely related to Xeno's paradox, and to the "I know pornography when I see it", I think that the definition of torture is fraught with complications and multiple possible interpretations.
However, there is an accepted definition of torture used by the UN and NATO, and that was clearly what was violated/superseded by the Bush policy. Although I agree with Liam's sentiment of seeking some retribution, I realistically don't think we'll get beyond Obama's current repeal of the torture policy. The main reparation that needs to happen now is on the world stage to rebuild our reputation.
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