Let war crimes be bygones

We don't need to round up a few Bush-era criminals to settle political scores. We just need some truth, and then we need good train service.

By Garrison Keillor


April 29, 2009 | I sat next to Ted Stevens at a Washington dinner years ago and found him unpleasant in a raspy, cartoonish way, but I was happy to see his conviction thrown out. A muddy case, a friend doing work on the senator's house perhaps in exchange for favors in Washington, and I say, have mercy. Let him go fishing in the cold, clear rivers of Alaska and examine his conscience, as we all do in our better hours, and let us all move on to something more promising.

I feel similarly about the Bush people whom some Democrats want to charge with war crimes. The widespread waterboarding and other acts of torture carried out in secret CIA prisons are no small matter. The free play of sadism on the helpless in the name of national service is not to be ignored. What's needed is a fair and thorough congressional investigation. Subpoena witnesses and lay the whole wretched business out on the public record. Look into the heart of darkness and meditate on it. But don't round up a few symbolic suspects and throw the book at them and let all the others go free. Which is what would happen if we launch a criminal prosecution.

What's needed here is not punishment, but truth. When I hear Democrats talk about "holding them responsible," I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished. The guy they really want to put on trial is the old brush-cutter of Crawford, or else the old grouse hunter of Wyoming. They're the guys who signed off on those memos authorizing torture. The buck stopped at their desks.

Holding the Bush administration responsible for torture would give us some high political drama that would feed the media goat for the next two years and also sap the body politic. The healthcare system would go unfixed, schools would crumble, basic public services would deteriorate, all so that the left could have at the right. I am an old museum-quality Northern liberal, and I know something about the righteousness of my confreres. I've been with old lefty friends who can get emotional about the Haymarket bombing in Chicago and the innocent men railroaded to the gallows, but dear hearts, it happened in 1886. Let's move on.

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2009/04/29/retribution/

compassion and moving forward in general. But until the same standards are applied to all criminals, I'm not comfortable with no prosecutions. Too many victimless criminals rotting in jail, too many criminal masterminds walking free.

.. .as in WHISTLE-BLOWING against ALL the criminal torturers in a court of law. . .

AS WE DEMAND single payer health care. . .

efficient mass transit. . .

ending Iraq-Afghanistan wars. . . et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!

Jeez, I thought Garrison was wiser than that.

Court proceedings would NOT distract liberal agenda AND they would top any Congressional hearings by dealing ONLY with EVIDENTIAL FACTS.

Sorry, Garrison's opinion doesn't pass my common sense sniff test.

:thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:

Given that we are talking about breaking laws, violating treaties, and causing death and destruction.

I am particularly offended by the term "sour righteousness" and no, I will not move on. How callously you dismiss the suffering of real people at the hands of these criminals. It wasn't freakin' 1886, either, it was quite recent.

I'm sure if I waterboarded someone, burned them with cigarettes, etc, or if you did, we would expect people to just point their fingers and say "shame on you" and then move on. Or would we expect that we would be prosecuted? How and why would you endorse a double standard?

If we look at this as a crime done in the past why then we would prosecute any crime as they are all in the past. Garrison, whom I love a lot, is totally wrong on this one. If he had a family member that had been tortured would he be so quick to forget? We should be able to prosecute these people and get other things done at the same time.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5559580

It's an interesting perspective. I tend to be a realist, and I think he's probably right in that we'd never nail the people we really want, Bush and Cheney. There are too many other people in the chain of command that could easily be thrown under the bus by the Bush administration.

Should that absolve everyone of responsibility? Nope. But then, I also see his point re: opportunity cost.

We wouldn't walk away from the assassination of a president without a thorough investigation. Even if it did wrongly turn someone's name into Mudd.

We ought not walk away from the assassination of our Constitution without a thorough investigation, either.

Let the guilties' fates hang on investigation and enforcement of the law.

Moving-on is well suited to the conflict-averse. Patriots in the US have not typically been characterized as conflict averse.

Why assume that few low-level miscreants will be rounded up and punished while bush & Cheney go free? To make that assumption you must believe that the leaders of the USA are immune from prosecution for any crime committed while they were in office. Of course, we know that this only applies to R executives (see: Clinton - impeached for a blow job).

Garrison also assumes that the goals of finding the truth and prosecuting the offenders are not only mutually exclusive, but that the only choice we have is one or the other. Why make such an assumption? No one would make such an assumption in a murder trial. Otherwise we would give all suspected killers immunity to be sure we "got to the truth" through a confession, no?

No, Garrison is offering up what has shamefully become SOP for presidents and vice presidents in our country - a free pass on accountability and the price that one pays when held accountable that the rest of us couldn't imagine if we received a parking ticket. For some reason, the free pass is reserved only for US government officials who engaged in serious and extraordinary crimes against humanity.

Move on? Are you serious? Are we to think it's normal to move on from the prosecution of war crimes when a jerk like Norm Coleman refuses to move on from an election he clearly lost?

BTW - this country could stand for some high political drama. Call it a Constitutional intervention or shock therapy, but we need some high political drama now more than ever. And we are fortunate - FORTUNATE - that we have no-drama Obama in the WH to take us through a time of high political drama, something rational people would think twice about were the WH occupied by an insane idiot like gw bush.

Here's the message Garrison would send to the world: this country will prosecute a sitting president for receiving a blow job to the full extent of the law and the Constitution, because such an action threatens the very foundation of our nation. Presidents who engage in war crimes? Oh, well, boys will be boys.

law"

That's really it in a nutshell, isn't it!

WHY is it so hard for TOO MANY to understand...

THEY have already established the BASE LINE...surely a BLOW JOB is NOT the most important thing, folks!!!

Tough call, politically speaking

But it should not be a political call, should it?

If we see this as a tough call politically speaking, we have already made a call, and the call we have made will damn us in the eyes of future observers.

"Abolition. Hmmm. Tough call politically. Best to not attack slavery - politically more prudent."

and the people then want no prosecutions, that would be one thing. But without ALL of the facts of the torture program, that is out of the question. Perhaps Garrison has forgotten that there is testimony on record that there were rapes and murders at Abu Ghrahib. Do we really shrug at rape as a tool of war, Garrison?
To those who are torture apologists like Garrison, I make one request. Send your own damn family members to torture school to learn to rape for intel. Send your Grandkids Garrison, or shut the fuck up. This man lives in a buble deluxe, and over the last few years I have felt he'd be better off silent. He writes and I hate his guts, 60% of the time, and his homespun style seems downright snark infested when it comes to serious issues.
So Garrison, let the secret prisons be at Lake Wobegone, let your family be the interogators, mmmmkay? Make that offer, if you are so hot to condone torture, rape and murder. Let your grandkids volunteer, let your State house the 'detainees'. Feel free, Garrison, to put your walk in line with your talk.

the only way we're going to get the truth about all this is from the lower level weasels selling out their superiors to save their damn hides. For example we all saw Attorney General Gonzales lie his damn face off to congress again and again - does anyone think without the real threat of nice long jail sentence he's going to tell the truth?

As far as not getting Bush and Cheney - well if we don't f#&king try at all we? Really Garrison doesn't know this - he's just saying it.

I'm sick to death of this double standard - as long as the right people - people with ties and expensive suits and college degrees they shouldn't be made to face the consequences of their actions - you can dress up the reasons but shit it comes down to insiders get to break the law.

"some animals are more equal than others."

It's not vengeance it's not sentimentality that for example morns the haymarket innocents - it's a sense of justice and at clear eye understanding that that kind of thing continues to happen to day linked with a desire to stop that. And to see that the guilty are brought to trial.

and the last thing - we fucking moved on after watergate, vietnam, we moved on after Iran contra and look what we got - we can't afford to move on until this festering boil is lanced and the diseased tissue cut away from the body politic.

If there are no consequences to the actions of bullies, then their behavior will just get worse.
There is truth that the political cost of this might be high. Maybe wait until after the 2010
election and the Republic party has self destructed, but war crimes are war crimes, and
the consequences of not punishing them, will be the repeating of them.

I've not agreed with Garrison.

I'm thinkin' how hard some of us have worked to ensure that young black man (whose name escapes me at the present unfortunately) is not put to death until he's given all due consideration. Garrison says, "What's needed here is not punishment, but truth." What if the truth leads to horrific crimes committed which it inevitably will. We just forget about them??? Our actions have undoubtedly made us less safe over the past near-decade, fer crying out loud.

And how tiring is it to hear that we can't address critical domestic issues while conducting hearings/investigations/prosecutions/whatever at the same time???

:thumbsdown: this time.

That culture doesn't just include torturers, it includes banking criminals, political criminals, economic criminals, propagandists and quite frankly, traitors. By letting the torturers go and just moving on we doom ourselves to unchecked corruption.

"We don't need to round up a few Bush-era criminals to settle political scores. We just need some truth, and then we need good train service."

Sheesh! Excuse me? So mass murder and torture is just fine with you? You think prosecuting these criminals is nothing but political?
The hell with that.
Next we can just forget all the homicides in America and let them be bygones too..and why bother prosecuting the child rappers and murderers? Why..that can also be bygones...who needs the law to apply to everyone anyways?
I got news for you sir...American needs a return to the law and these people are criminals of the worst sort. They knew they were lying us into wars,,,thousands have died and been maimed and you want it to be "bygones"? You sir are just a guilty as the criminals if that is what you believe.
To do anything less than to prosecute these people is insane.

Then let it remain untouched for the next ass-hat ready to embrace it?

With all due respect Mr. Keiller, go pound sand.

I must admit, that I didn't know where to begin to object to Keillor's position here.

Then I thought about it for a few hours... and it dawned on me: There's a reason this man has a good job at PBS -- he's a genius.

Keillor is a genius along the lines of Swift.

Think about it. Deft.

Sorry Mr.Keillor,you are wrong on this one.

The same argument could have been used against the Nuremberg Trials. I am surprised to see this argument from him. By his logic here, holding the Nuremberg Trials would have meant that the Marshall plan could not have gone forward.

I am also surprised to see Keillor dismiss and discount the value of remembering history. I have never seen a "lefty" get "emotional about the Haymarket bombing in Chicago and the innocent men railroaded to the gallows." Too few people even know about that. Should we not talk about it and "move on?"


...

WE HAVE ALREADY ESTABLISHED THE "GROUND RULES" AT NUREMBURG OVER SIXTY YEARS AGO!!!

We CAN'T "ignore" it...

Either you believe in the rule of LAW, or you don't.

Sorry.

or we are not. I'll pick WE ARE a nation of laws. Let the investigations and prosecutions begin.

Once the truth has been exposed, we send some of our best "black ops" guys and gals to the houses of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., throw them on planes (blackout shades and isolating headphones optional) and drop them in the middle of Madrid, with a "heads-up" to the local police. Let the civilized world have at 'em in a court of law.

should have justice given to their families. For the Innocents who survived the Torture performed upon them, Justice should be performed. For the Sake of Justice, Criminals must be convicted. Torture is a Crime against Humanity. Our Country Behaved Horribly, Brother Keillor. Letting By-Gones Be By-Gones can be allowed for some things, but not Crimes Against Humanity!

the truth yes, but also prosecution. We set standards for the world at Nuremberg. We are now reneging on those standards if we let those who, with impunity and, in at least some cases, for personal gain, authorized the use of torture.

I personally believe that there is no small amount of racism and bigotry involved in this current "debate," such as it is. After all, if the tortured had been Western Europeans or of another faith, we would likely have moved posthaste to get the truth out and punish the wrongdoers. The headlines would have leapt out at us and the electronic media would have treated it as a lead story on a daily basis. In fact, that would likely even have been the case in the unlikely event that such policies had been adopted by a Democratic Administration.

We saw the same inaction and posturing with respect to Serb massacres of Bosnian Muslims for years in the early '90s and that inaction and posturing inspired a whole new generation in a new area of the world to hate our hypocrisy. Once the seed of hatred is planted, it is very difficult to uproot. Failure to act against those who authorized and perpetrated these war crimes will act as fertilizer for a pandemic of hatred, no matter how much goodwill Obama may personally engender.

This is not what the America that I love stands for. And Garrison, I am disappointed in you, too.

"When I hear Democrats talk about 'holding them responsible,' I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished.'"

Really? This is what "the victorious lording it over the vanquished," actually wound up looking like.

?

When the Lutherans actually want to get pissed off again, let us know, Garrison. You all have been conspicuously absent for the last 500 years or so of blood shed. But, for right now, I'm all for righteous vengeance.

This is not the America I grew up in! This is not what I understood we believed in.

But, if you old lefties can let the the Haymarket bombing go, then why not the Holocaust, too, right? We'll just let those few "bad apples" serve their time in prison and meditate on the heart of darkness, while he enjoys his retirement from public service on our tab.

If only Garrison had been around when Goering had been contemplating suicide at Nuremberg . . .

Americans, doesn't strike me as a justification for anything, with the exception of reaction.
Do we have to devise our strategies around the strategies of the power-holding fascists?
They rule based upon appeals to fear, striking terror into the hearts and minds of our population.
"BUT 9/11 WAS REAL!!! DO YOU WANT MORE OF THIS!?!"
I don't deny that it was real. I seriously question how we got to that place. That days events have us in a torcherous stranglehold, designed and concocted by fascist neo-cons, who, at a bare minimum, knew those events would take place and let them happen, setting in motion their dastardly plans.
Any strategy for a humane future has to work along at least 2 lines: 1. Keeping alive the possibility of a future in which human beings are regarded as something of value and that we can live upon the earth in mutual respect and in a sustainable way. 2. We must acknowledge the human forces who are working night and day to accumulate wealth and power. In the name of justice, we must hold them accountable for what they have wrought upon the human race, the environment and our collective psyche. It may seem like revenge and can that claim has been and will be leveled. Many will buy into it, the result of years of right wing, fascist indoctrination. Real human beings cry for justice.
Obama's election was a challenge to the powers that be. But those deeply entrenched powers haven't gone anywhere. They are still there, attempting to direct events and policies. Our President must contend with them and so must we.

The Fact of the Matter: Democrats represent the Tyrants that run our world, just like the Republicans as a whole do. They are two heads of the liars and tyrants that run our world. Both are liars and cheats. Both do not serve the constitution nor the people. I lean left, and I admittedly vote Democrat, but the People who really run our world give us two choices, one, the Democrats, fuck us with a kiss, and the other, the Republicans, fuck us with a slap. Both are serving the Fascist Tyrants that brought about Iraq, 9-11, Supply-side economics, Nafta, De-regulation, WTO, the IMF, and all the rest. There are some good politicians, but they are few.

"When I hear Democrats talk about "holding them responsible," I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished."

Put your hands in the air and s-l-o-w-l-y back away from that meth. Are you out of your mind?

At the trial tell the judge that no good will be served by convicting you. What's past is past and as long as you've fessed up, that should be good enough.

When the case isn't dismissed (as you'd hoped) appeal to the general public through the news media. Tell them the same story and see whose side they take.

Garrison, dude, what the hell's wrong with you?

This is one of those subjects that illustrate how the right course of action is somewhere in the middle. On the right, you have people in line to defend both the practices and those who carried them out while they cry "witch hunt". On the left you have those who have waited 8 years to put the screws to anyone and everyone in the Bush administration. A clear testament to the balance in the middle.

Do we really need a series of war crime tribunals right now? Do we not have enough going on? We could spend years and millions of dollars of taxpayer money to prosecute these crimes. The right wing would love to campaign on how much money the administration and congress have spent on their "witch hunt" when we were struggling through a recession, following the horror of the bailouts. The right wing is bruised, broken, and damn near falling off. Let's not give them the tools to mend and rebuild.

So, do we let them walk with only the public knowledge that they are guilty? Our allies could view this as contrary to our platform of change and transparency. We need to continue to rebuild our diplomatic power, and turning a blind eye to these atrocities will not help.

The middle, then. Congressional hearings, with subpoenas for the principals to start. Let's get them to go on record, with the evidence before them, about their roles in this disgrace. Then, when it is determined they were complicit, ban them from ever holding a public office higher than crossing guard. This will ensure that the Rumsfelds and Cheneys don't recycle back into our system, and it also makes a permanent black mark on their legacy. This would also open it up for other countries to take action if they felt so inclined.

This is balanced. No witch hunt, but transparency and public humiliation. It also sends a clear message to those in office that crimes will not be ignored because you are in office.

the only way back. The Only way to become whole again.

phuck that kum by yah crap.

military service; aka "to visit violence on those who would do us harm" during their days of youth. Only when seasoned with age and separated from danger by legions of truly rough men did these cowards bark for war.

These weren't rough men, they were fragile, too afraid to even make a legitimate case for war or to carry one out effectively against those giving us "9/11 jitters." Those memos were written by lawyers more afraid of the coward's bark or in connivance with them. During the course of these past eight years, when I didn't have a good night's sleep it wasn't because of the terrorists, it was because cowards were in charge of the national government.

I also hear the good Germans had most efficient train service during the 30s and part of the 40s, I wonder if they regret not challenging or holding accountable the "rough men" of their day?

Finally, sometimes righteousness is the much needed water; washing the eternal sour taste of institutionalized injustice from our mouths.

<snip>

"Remember that the country was in high post-9/11 jitters when the dreadful memoranda were written by the lawyers whom some Democrats want to haul into court. Apocalyptic visions were afloat of subway bombings, germ warfare, nuclear devices wiping out a major city -- I remember walking around Manhattan and thinking much too vividly about such things -- and in that atmosphere of painful vulnerability, the great bustling city practically indefensible, zealous men might consider desperate measures in the name of security. As Orwell said, "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." I think the American electorate knew whom they reelected in 2004. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform. They ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes."

"Rather than square off in a bloody battle over war crimes, let's return decent train service to the Midwest and test out the German maglev (magnetic levitation) system -- the 360 mph trains -- and connect Chicago and St. Paul-Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Omaha, Kansas City. Let's restore education to the public schools so that our kids get a chance to hear Mozart and learn French."

<snip>