Would a Pardon for Bush/Cheney et al Serve History and Justice?

Circum-navigating The International Court

No matter where you come down on the recent Torture Report one general shared concern seems to be whether it will precipitate criminal charges from the International Court. There are lots of reasons why people of all persuasions would not want to see this happen.

For this reason I put forward the following suggestion based on these facts:

We were all a little crazy following the attacks of 9-11. Call it what you will: anger, sadness, vengence, temporary insanity, the fact is that almost all of us were looking to even the score in some way and we were not in our right minds with respect to the ideals that we hold dear in America and our place of moral leadership in the world.  

The CIA and others, most of whom acted heroically in the weeks and months that followed; and in the midst of a national tsunami of fear and anger and confusion, stepped up to protect the homeland. They were responding to both the attacks and the blowback from most of the political leadership in the country.

The President and Vice President as well as the Attorney General and Sec of Defense all clearly sanctioned the use of “enhanced interrogation” after 9-11. 

Every serious-minded expert as well as every convention adopted in the last fifty years clearly indicates that the same “enhanced” techniques were torture.

The only member of the United States Senate who has himself been subjected to torture, Senator John McCain,  clearly indicated that we were crossing the line with these “enhanced” methods.

Torture is not a reliable means for procuring reliable information. According to the report, despite claims to the contrary and the loud and loutish protestations of the former Vice President, NOT ONE instance where torture was employed yielded reliable information, While as a practical matter this information is instructive and bolsters the case against torture, the moral imperative should not be overruled by  individual instances and introducing it into the debate empowers those who would use it as a smokescreen to justify the employment of torture.

What all these things add up to is this: For the country that lays claim to the moral leader of the planet, torture is not an option because torture is wrong.  President Obama should pardon former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Gonzalez and former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. 

As Harry Truman said of the Presidency “The Buck Stops Here”. We could spend years parsing and assessing the blame for the use of torture at lower levels but the fact is that all of these people acted on the orders of the President and Vice President as well as the AG, the country’s top law enforcement official, and the Secretary of Defense. It was a dark moment and a dark decision in the aftermath. 

But there were also moments of light in the wake of 9-11. 

To his credit, President Bush, and many other political leaders, stepped forward to make sure that Americans did not let their anger spill over into a broad backlash against our own citizens of the Muslim faith. They spoke out forcefully to remind American’s that this was not about religion and should not cause us to turn against one another in the heat of the moment. It may have been the first time in our history where we did not do so and that alone says volumes about how we have matured as a democracy and as a people. 

As a nation we can’t afford to waste the time and energy that it would take to ferret out and prosecute people who over-reacted in the wake of 9-11, particularly because they did so at the behest of the only people who should have been expected to keep a cool head.  As shameful as the result was, almost everyone can be forgiven if they lost their marbles temporarily in the wake of the attack on 9-11. 

However, some - especially Dick Cheney - never got their marbles back or they never had the conscience to begin with. They continue to insist that we did nothing wrong. 

That can only mean one thing. If we do nothing in response to this report, the day will come again when these people, whether neo-cons or liberals-gone-wild, will be in charge and will sanction torture once again.

By reluctantly pardoning those at the top of the torture pyramid, President Obama can “name and shame” those who should have known better, or worse blithely and cynically used the deaths of our citizens as an excuse to engage in this brutality. He can make a moral choice to call them out without tearing the country apart at a time when we are most vulnerable. Convicting them in effect but not in fact; in the “court” of public reckoning.

Further, he can make the argument to the International community and courts, that his pardon was the final act in a soul searching process of Truth and Reconciliation - which in fact it is.  If necessary, he can use this as the rationale for turning down any attempt to prosecute the former President and the Vice President by the International Criminal Court. 

Most important, it will put future administrations on notice that torture will, at the very least seriously tarnish their legacy and could, in fact, wind them up in an International Criminal Court.

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Wayne King is a recovering politician, businessman, artist and social entrepreneur. He lives with his wife Alice in Rumney, NH.