The New York Times has spent the last decade slowly getting around to publishing stories and editorials that would have been good to read earlier instead of the cheerleading that helped the administration's fabricated case for invading Iraq. Like, for example, the year-long delay in letting everybody know in 2005 what it had discovered in 2004 about the Bush-ordered warrantless eavesdropping of Americans inside and outside the nation.
Today, far more belatedly, the Times editorial board took the proper stance on America's torturers. Not just the handful of order-takers far down the chain of command who have already been prosecuted and served their time. But the order-givers:
… any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen. […]
Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments. Because of the Senate’s report, we now know the distance officials in the executive branch went to rationalize, and conceal, the crimes they wanted to commit. The question is whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity for their actions.
Sadly, frustratingly, infuriatingly, that question has already been answered. The Obama administration has proved it has no stomach for going after the torture order-givers. Some argue that appointing a special prosecutor, as the
Times (and the ACLU and Human Rights Watch) propose would be political suicide and have other disastrous consequences for the nation because, as recent polls show, the majority of Americans (including a very large minority of Democrats) are okay with torture under some circumstances.
That majority has let their reptile brains take over. They think torture works and have no problem with it. Eight seasons of 24 and years of being hammered by tough-guy stereotyping by the likes of chickenhawk Cheney have helped confirm them in those views. Consequently, even though many of the naysayers think a special prosecutor would be the right thing to do, the internationally called-for thing to do, they fear the party of any president who undertakes prosecutions would suffer. So, they say, better not even to try.
In making these political calculations, it should be remembered once again, that in carrying out torture, the CIA was not acting as a rogue agency, with a few individuals stepping over the line. Top officials ordered torture and crafted bogus legal arguments to back it up. They killed with their torture. They tortured completely innocent people. And they now roam free, collecting their fat speakers' fees and book advances, and being invited to present their twisted inhumanity on television and in op-ed columns.
It should embarrass every American that the torturers likely will continue to get away with this just as their predecessors have. It should stir profound rage that what these men and women did in our name was to make it riskier to be an American. But the extreme difficulty of prosecuting these war criminals should not stop us from continuing to try to bring the them to account.