I have not read many of the editorials, op-ed articles, blogs, etc., on the appointment, by Attorney General Eric Holder, of a special prosecutor to investigate possible mistreatment of detainees by CIA interrogators during the George W. Bush administration. I haven’t read them because they are all so predictable that there is little to be learned from them. You know what they say; I don’t need to summarize them or link to them.
What I wanted to say is how I look at this. I don’t know if anybody will agree, but here is how I feel.
First, there were rules set by the Bush administration as to what could be done and what could not be done in questioning detainees. Obviously, there are those on the left who think those rules themselves were illegal and that everybody involved needs to be prosecuted, up to and including Vice President Cheney and even President Bush himself. If that is what you believe, you can stop reading. You won’t come close to agreeing with what I think.
I start from the fact that there were rules. There were things that could be done, and there were also limits as to what could be done. If Attorney General Holder has credible evidence that certain investigators clearly went beyond a reasonable understanding of those rules, then it is proper that there should be an investigation and, depending on what happened, prosecutions.
Please note that I am not talking about violations of some international law that allegedly overrides the rules our government established and that would allow prosecutions of people who did things that were within our rules but were allegedly improper under those other standards. I am talking about people who clearly violated our own rules. If that was done, then we should act. But if what these people did was within a reasonable understanding of the rules in effect at the time of their actions, then they should not be prosecuted now.
But "following rules" isn’t a defense, the left tells us. That is what Nuremberg was all about. You can’t just say "you were following orders". No, I’m sorry. This is not Nuremberg. We are not talking about killing six million Jews. We are not talking about trying to exterminate an entire race of people. We are talking about interrogation techniques, admittedly harsh, used on a limited number of detainees, maybe a couple of hundred, at most, right after the biggest terrorist attack ever on the United States. This is not Nuremberg, and making the comparison is not helpful.
The fact that this comparison is made by some of those who favor an investigation explains some of the concern of those who oppose an investigation. The problem that many of those who are opposed to an investigation have with this whole idea is not that they defend every action taken by every investigator with respect to every detainee. The problem is that they are not sure they can trust the people who have ordered the investigation to actually conduct a fair investigation based a real understanding of not just what we think now, but what we understood then.
They see those on the left who were always opposed to almost any kind of interrogation of detainees, who wanted to give detainees Miranda warnings and lawyers from the very beginning.
But the people who are perhaps even more worrisome are those who have switched sides. Back then they wanted to do whatever was necessary to prevent another attack. They couldn’t understand why we couldn’t "get" Osama Bin Laden, and they criticized President Bush constantly because Osama had not been captured. But as time passed and there was no attacks (on the United States), as memories faded, and, maybe, as the politics shifted, some on the left have forgotten how our nation, how they, felt back then.
The fear of those who oppose Attorney General Holder’s investigation is that men and women who tried to follow the rules six and seven years ago will be prosecuted for doing things that they reasonably believed were allowed under the rules, but that are now deemed unacceptable by people looking at things from eight years of safety, as opposed to the recent memory of 3000 deaths and the very real fear of thousands more.
Unfortunately, the President’s own statements during the campaign last year, and some of the apologies he has felt it was necessary to give about the United States during his overseas trips this year, have fed those fears. Even some of us who accept that there may be a need for an investigation have a very real concern that honorable people, doing what they legitimately thought was allowed and permissible and necessary to defend their country from a very serious threat, will be unfairly judged by Monday morning quarterbacks and second-guessers applying the rules of today to actions of a different and more dangerous time.
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