The Crossed Pond

I know I ought to stop quoting Andrew Sullivan—it’s already worn thin with a few readers. But on the issue of torture, there’s none better. Because Andrew, unlike most pundits, absolutely realizes the ridiculousness of calling the matter a partisan debate.

I’m confounded and perplexed by the people, including the President, who want to just “move on”, or the majority of the apologists who decry investigation into the matter as partisan shrillness, but whose own rampant partisan tribalism, their own desire to circle the wagons, has led them so far down the road of defending the indefensible that they’re now, of all things, defending the right of the American president to capture and detain, with no oversight, whoever they want, and torture them, not because torture works or because it isn’t immoral, but just because. What’s more, they’re not only defending it, but somehow trying to cast it as patriotic. If you had told me, at the age of 20, that by the time I turned 30 not only would America institutionalize indefinite detention and torture, the shining city on the hill, but also be trying to demand that the executive branch of the government not be constrained by “laws”, and that in the mainstream political debate, the principle issue supposedly dividing liberals and conservatives is whether they opposed torture or not, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have thought you were mad. I would have found our present to be a dystopian fantasy. And yet, here we are.

In any case, Andrew Sullivan, I think, understands the stakes better than most, with his crossed pond perspective. His critics will surely take this to be “hyperventilating”, or whatever the buzzword is now for giving a fuck, but he seems to me to be about the only major figure in this debate who is not taking what America stands for for granted. To wit:

If I had one belief in politics, it would be that the freedoms secured by the modern West are worth fighting for. Absolutely central to those freedoms is barring the executive branch from torturing people. No power is more fatal to freedom and the rule of law than torture. It is like Tolkien’s ring: no society remains free, if its rulers use it. Its power is banned because it is a solvent to the rule of law, the establishment of truth, and the limits of government. For an administration to secretly and illegally unleash this weapon – against citizens and non-citizens alike – and to demand that it not be subsequently called to account, that it be allowed to get away with it under some absurd notion that it’s too divisive to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes is and was an outrage. Punishing those responsible for war crimes is not “scapegoating”. You know what scapegoating is? It’s throwing Lynndie England in jail for following orders given by George W. Bush, while leaving him to the luxury of a Texan suburb.

The precedent of a torturing American president must be reversed. That means it cannot be allowed to stand.

There is no way the American experiment can continue while legal and historical precedent gives the president the inherent authority to torture. It is the undoing of the core idea of the founding – protection against arbitrary, lawless, cruel and despotic rule. And the impact on the entire world of America allowing this to stand would be profound. The world looks here for moral leadership. Those who endure real political oppression, imprisonment, torture and abuse at the hands of despots look to America for leadership, for guidance, for hope. If America – America – discovers that its own president has illegally tortured and decides that it simply won’t do anything about it, that it doesn’t matter, that it’s too polarizing to restore the rule of law … then what hope do those people have? To whom will they look when they fight far more pervasive tyranny, buttressed by the same absolute power to coerce the truth and break the human soul?

We don’t want vengeance. We want America back.