By Dennis Loo
The following posting by Will
Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News’ website on April 14, 2008 is worth looking
at carefully, especially for Obama’s remarks about the White House’s
torture policies. My comments follow Bunch’s posting.
Bunch’s post:
Tonight I had an opportunity
to ask Barack Obama a question that is on the minds of many Americans,
yet rarely rises to the surface in the great ruckus of the 2008 presidential
race — and that is whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute
officials of a former Bush administration on the revelations that they
greenlighted torture, or for other potential crimes that took place
in the White House.
Obama said that as president
he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to “immediately
review the information that’s already there” and determine if an
inquiry is warranted — but he also tread carefully on the issue, in
line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide.
He worried that such a probe could be spun as “a partisan witch
hunt.” However, he said that equation changes if there was willful
criminality, because “nobody is above the law.”
The question was inspired by
a recent report by ABC News, confirmed by the Associated Press, that
high-level officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and former
Cabinet secretaries Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld,
among others, met in the White House and discussed the use of waterboarding
and other torture techniques on terrorism suspects.
I mentioned the report in my
question, and said “I know you’ve talked about reconciliation and
moving on, but there’s also the issue of justice, and a lot of people
— certainly around the world and certainly within this country — feel
that crimes were possibly committed” regarding torture, rendition,
and illegal wiretapping. I wanted to know how whether his Justice Department
“would aggressively go after and investigate whether crimes have
been committed.”
Here’s his answer, in its entirety:
What I would
want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General
immediately review the information that’s already there and to find
out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that
because we don’t have access to all the material right now. I think
that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated.
You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what
was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because
I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.
So this
is an area where I would want to exercise judgment — I would want to
find out directly from my Attorney General — having pursued, having
looked at what’s out there right now — are there possibilities of genuine
crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it’s important–
one of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally
is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise
to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about
impeachment at town hall meetings and I’ve said that is not something
I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment
is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances.
Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously
broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge
forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody
above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.
The bottom line is that: Obama
sent a clear signal that — unlike impeachment, which he’s ruled out
and which now seems a practical impossibility — he is at the least
open to the possibility of investigating potential high crimes in the
Bush White House. To many, the information that waterboarding — which
the United States has considered torture and a violation of law in the
past — was openly planned out in the seat of American government is
evidence enough to at least start asking some tough questions in January
2009.
End of Bunch’s posting.
My comments:
- Bunch asks for and
expects too little from Obama. He wonders if Obama as President
will look into whether Bush et al have committed crimes. He
should be asking why Obama as a US Senator and Presidential hopeful
refuses to impeach the criminal Bush gang now! - Bush admitted on April 11, 2008 to ABC News that
he approved of the torture. The criminals have been caught red-handed
and have confessed! Where then is the need for investigations?! - Obama continues
to rule out impeachment on the grounds that impeachment is “reserved
for exceptional circumstances.” If launching an immoral and illegal
war based on conscious lies that has caused the unnecessary deaths of
between 1.1 and 1.3 million innocent Iraqis, the deaths of over 4,000
Americans, cost each and every American family to date $120,000, instituting
a monstrous policy of torture, shredding the Bill of Rights and major
elements of the Constitution, including the right of habeas corpus,
carrying out the felonious act of violating FISA and first secretly
and now openly spying on every American, savaging FEMA and the Army
Corps of Engineers” budget, leaving New Orleans open to disaster,
and failing to come to its aid in a timely fashion are not exceptional
circumstances, then what pray tell, is? - Obama continues
to claim in relation to the Bush White House’s policies that his differences
with them are over their competence, rather than their criminality: “one
of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally
is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise
to the level of criminal activity.” Was the deliberate lie taking
us into Iraq principally a question of being “dumb?” Is the main
problem with torturing people daily and murdering people in custody
that it is “dumb?” What does this say about Obama’s values? Obama
continues to play this game in part because he wants to be president
and knows that the people who run the show won’t stand for a candidate
who calls out Bush and Cheney for crimes against humanity. He also continues
to claim that his differences with Bush et al are primarily over tactics
because he does in fact share overall similar objectives
with the Bush cabal. You want to ask yourself: do you share those objectives
too? Do you believe that it’s right for the U.S. to carry out unprovoked
aggression upon other countries and carry out mass murder? Is it right
for the U.S. to threaten and to attack Pakistan and Iran, as Obama has
stated he is for:
Sen.
Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told “the Chicago Tribune on September
26, 2004, ‘[T]he big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures [to
stop its nuclear program], including economic sanctions, which I hope
will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point … if any,
are we going to take military action?’ “He added, ‘[L]aunching
some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to
be in’ given the ongoing war in Iraq. ‘On the other hand, having a radical
Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse.’ Obama went on to argue
that military strikes on Pakistan should not be ruled out if ‘violent
Islamic extremists’ were to ‘take over’,” Joshua Frank wrote January
22, 2005, for Antiwar.com.[1] (From Sourcewatch.org.)
Is this the kind of country
that you want to live in, one that acts like the Godfather on a global
scale?
- If you pay close
enough attention to what these candidates for president are saying,
doing and not doing, there should be no surprises about what
they will end up doing when one of them becomes president. If they have
tolerated outrageous and obvious criminality to go on all of these years
when they have had both the power to speak out about it and to stop
it as public officials (if necessary, through filibuster), If they have
looked the other way when tyrannical measures have been explicitly instituted
before the country and the world, then why should we expect them
to do something differently once they become president? - People need to stop
grasping at straws and engaging in wishful/magical thinking. We need
to wake up and smell the coffee. Bush et al are criminals and the pretenders
to the throne are all complicit in crimes against humanity. This isn’t
mere rhetoric or based on speculation and inference. It’s a palpable,
inescapable fact. The only way that justice will be done – so long
overdue – is if the people act as an independent political force –
speak out, protest, shut down the military recruiters, step forward
and urge others to declare themselves, create a different political
dynamic and an entirely different political pole, wear and spread orange
– the color of resistance – daily! The Bush regime has earned the
people’s wrath. Let’s give it to them! This path, while difficult,
is the only truly realistic path. The other paths are guaranteed
to fail as they are nothing but will o” the wisps. The basis for actions by the people,
on the basis of the moral high ground, to catch fire is powerfully present.
We have seen inklings of this in, for example, the February Berkeley
protests against the Marine Recruiters. But this path of the people
must be taken up for its potential to be realized:
“Concerning
all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: the
moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too”
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” –
Goethe
It’s
up to each of us to make an individual decision to act.
Dennis Loo is an awards winning sociologist,
co-editor of Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney,
Cal Poly Pomona Associate Professor of Sociology, WCW National Steering
Committee Member, Declare It Now originator.