Oppose Bush Prosecutions? Here's What You Therefore Also Believe.

It cannot be emphasized enough that those who are arguing against criminal investigations for Bush officials are -- whether consciously or implicitly -- arguing that the U.S., alone in the world, is exempt from the laws and principles which we've been advocating and imposing on other countries for decades. There is simply no way to argue that our leaders should be immunized from criminal investigations for torture and other war crimes without believing that (a) the U.S. is and should be immune from the principles we've long demanded other nations obey and (b) we are free to ignore our treaty obligations any time it suits us.

It's just as simple as that: one must embrace both of those premises in order to argue for a bar against criminal investigations. And that's particularly true for those who argue that Bush officials should not be held liable for what they did either because (a) DOJ lawyers said it was legal and/or (b) Congress provided retroactive immunity to the torturers. As documented below, those are two of the most common and most universally discredited excuses in Western justice.

That fact may not lead anyone to change their minds about investigations and prosecutions, but those who are arguing for immunity for Bush officials ought to at least be honest and admit that they don't care about our treaty obligations and the principles we spent decades advocating for others because those rules -- for whatever reasons (e.g., we're special; we have too many other important things to do; we're the strongest and so nobody can make us do anything) -- don't apply to us. Those who oppose criminal investigations and prosecutions should acknowledge that this is what they believe (or at least are willing implicitly to embrace). Why pretend otherwise?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/19/exceptionalism/index.html">More here...