President Obama faces a growing chorus of criticism from some of his most ardent supporters, mainly over national security issues. Among their complaints: Obama’s decision not to prosecute the Bush-era lawyers whose memorandums provided legal cover for torture, or the CIA interrogators who actually carried it out; his use of the “state secrets” rationale, the same rationale used by Bush, to block the release of additional detainee documents; and his flip-flop on the release of more Abu Ghraib photos.
While I share his supporters’ dismay at these decisions, I sympathize with Obama’s position.
The President inherited a mess of epic proportions on almost every front; dealing successfully with even half of these challenges would earn Obama a place among the nation’s greatest presidents. I am confident that if his plate weren’t so full, he would be willing to take a much harder line against the excesses of the Bush Administration.
Obama is a Constitutional scholar, and is fully aware of the extent to which the Constitution was trampled during Bush’s reign. The argument that Obama makes, that we should move forward and leave the past behind us, is simply not persuasive; even more, it’s insulting to the American people. Serious wrongs were committed in our name, and it weakens the fabric of our country and our moral legitimacy when Obama chooses not to openly and forcefully address them.
But still I have sympathy for the president, and can’t say for sure that if I were in his shoes I too wouldn’t take the course he appears to have chosen.
Obama is bent on passing universal healthcare and serious climate change legislation, both of which, even with large Democratic majorities, are going to require grueling political battles in the Congress. The President has obviously calculated that he’d rather invest his political capital in these endeavors than focus on issues (like torture) that have the potential to turn into media circuses and suck the life out of his larger domestic agenda.
He’s probably right that the media, especially the right wing media, would disproportionately cover any sort of “truth commission” or public hearings on Bush-era officials. It is easy to envision the media full of complaints about Obama’s “witch hunts,” and the President obviously wants none of this.
Obama believes that the best interests of the country are better served by advancing his domestic priorities than by prosecuting the Bush-era officials responsible for war crimes and for tarnishing America’s standing in the world. While many can reasonably disagree with his choice, I don’t think it represents a cynical “move to the center” or political triangulation. Obama is simply making what he thinks is the best of an awful situation.
It is ironic that the architects of the worst foreign policy and domestic disasters of the past 60 years may escape accountability exactly because they created such a huge mess. But that is the reality as Obama sees it, and we need to accept it, at least for now.
Jason Scorse