The Unforgiven

I took the picture above 5 years ago in Rome. It is a stenciled image of an Abu Ghraib torture victim. As I toured Europe that summer, I saw photos everywhere of Muslim captives tortured by Americans, the type of photographs that would be considered "distasteful" in our media.

The whole world knows, and has known for 5 years, that Americans tortured prisoners under direct orders from the Bush administration. This is not up for debate. This is an established fact of historical record which has been irrevocably proven by the recent memos released by the Obama administration.

President Obama has chosen to release the documents which prove the government's sanction of barbarism. I suppose he deserves credit for that. But he has also stated that there will be no prosecutions, speaking of "healing", or of avoiding "persecution". This raises several problems.

Firstly, since when does the president of the United States decide which crimes will be prosecuted in this country? Does the president not swear to see that the law is "faithfully executed"? And is torture not against "the law"?

The idea that Barack Obama has the authority to decree who is beyond the reach of criminal prosecution is one of the thousand points of tyranny to which we are exposed daily and which go unnoticed, unremarked upon.

In MY country, the facts decide who is prosecuted, not the president. But I realize more and more than I don't live in MY country. The country I live in is no country for old men. I just never thought I'd be so old at 29.

Secondly, if prosecuting crimes would deprive us of "healing", why do we prosecute ANY crimes? Do we let murderers walk free in the interest of not "digging up the past", in the interest of seeking "healing"? Do we tell the murder victims' families, "let us focus on the future"?

In actuality, "healing" only comes when justice is attained, or at the very least aggressively sought. Obama aims to do neither.

Thirdly, since when is prosecuting someone for a crime akin to "persecution"? Did we "persecute" Timothy McVeigh? Did we "persecute" Ted Bundy? No. We prosecuted them.

Fourthly, how far does this blanket amnesty extend? There are two types of culprits. There are those with blood on their hands, and there are those with ink on their hands.

Those with blood on their hands, the Americans who physically committed the torture of captives, are entitled to the oldest defense on record (because the only TRUE defense, which is self-defense, is so purely self-evident that it does not NEED to be on record): "I was only following orders".

While we should be wary of this defense, it is sometimes meritorious, and there are considerable extenuating circumstances in this case. I am not comfortable at this point with the idea of prosecuting the torturers. Not because they are not guilty, but because they are far less guilty than others.

Those with the ink on their hands, the "lawyers" at the "Justice" Department who wrote the legal authorizations for illegal acts, are more guilty than the torturers in this case. These are the people who should be prosecuted first and foremost, and who President Obama should never have defended.

That a domestic and international crime against the Constitution and humanity itself was authorized and committed by the Bush administration is firmly in the realm of objective fact. We tortured. The Royal We. Our Government. It happened.

The question now is what laws are enforced. The question now is whether prosecution of government's crimes are called persecution and therefore avoided. The question now is why we have 2 million people in jail for stealing cars and selling marijuana, but no government officials in prison for ordering the animalization of human beings?

This has nothing to do with George Bush or the Republican Party or any other person or things so trivial and temporal. This is about who we are. This is about what we sweep under the rug and what we confront.

We swept slavery under the rug in 1776. We got the Civil War. We swept civil rights under the rug in 1865. We got a century of segregation. If we sweep torture under the rug now, what do we expect?

Why is Germany so peaceful and prosperous today? Because it confronted its sins. Why is Russia so dysfunctional and disconcerting today? Because it refused to do the same. Which course will we choose?

Self-introspection is horrifying, but only if we don't believe in our own worth. If we do believe in our inherent goodness and promise, introspection is liberating rather than horrifying. Most people never come to this realization. Most countries never do, either.