About Me

My photo
Variously, a film/video editor, programmer, author, teacher, musician, artist, wage slave

20 July 2009

Prosecute Bush's Criminal Cohort

To read the posts of Harper's Scott Horton in his quest to bring to justice the numerous perpetrators of crimes, particularly torture, committed during the recent Bush administration is an exercise in extreme frustration. Few can argue that such prosecutions would only be of academic import or would be little more than a partisan witch-hunt. The United States, after all, is a signatory of the various Geneva Conventions outlawing torture and the Constitution gives such international agreements that we agree to the same force as our domestic laws. The argument that the perpetrators were "only following orders" and cannot be held responsible is without merit, as established during the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War Two. Although a certain degree of national discomfort would doubtless accompany the prosecution of torturers and those responsible for formulating torture policy, it would be far less disruptive than friends of the potential defendants self-servingly predict. The objective is not to open a legal circus to persecute out-of-power bureaucrats, rather, the trials are necessary to prove that laws apply to everyone, high and low, that the illegalities of the past eight years were an aberration, and that we, as a country, must reassert our allegiance to lofty principles and show that our actions are guided by them.

No comments: