The Light of Law and Principle

Hartford Courant columnist Colin McEnroe's piece from yesterday contextualizes the dramatic shift from the time when America that didn't torture, that was beyond reproach for behavior that struck against human consciousness to now, when our administration defines torture down and clear instances of abuse are explained away with a chimera of national security. McEnroe writes of the way it used to be:

I don't remember when, as a kid, I first comprehended the idea of torture. But it was a tale told, always, about the Other. Nazis, Japs, Viet Cong. Do you know what they do to their captives? The Emperor Ming had Buck Rogers strapped to a board. James Bond would get loose before SPECTRE could torture him.

The very word "atrocity" had kind of a foreign ring. Atrocities. They do those over there. Later it was El Salvadoran death squads and SAVAK.

Much of our identity as Americans comes from the clear moral stances arising from our leadership at Nuremberg and through the Marshall Plan, when we as a nation made commitments to the rule of law that set the tone for how we expect all people to act towards each other. McEnroe looks at the Bush years and specifically the ongoing debate about what constitutes torture and whether we can raise the bar on torture high enough to say (straight faced or not) that America does not torture. He reminds us that we don't have to acquiesce to this immoral, anti-constitutional slouch the Bush administration and their cohorts in the Republican Party are leading us towards.

I'm 53 now. I'm the American Dad, with his mouth hanging open while the people who run this country try to convince us it's OK to be monsters, just because we're fighting monsters.

It's not. Bush, Cheney and the willing souls they have enlisted ... these people are not especially American. They would have functioned pretty well in the Gestapo, the Japanese Kempeitai, the Salvadoran paramilitary, the Khmer Rouge. They would have found pretty good jobs with the shah of Iran or with Pinochet, and they wouldn't have had to change much of their thinking. The enemy is bad, and you do what it takes to preserve yourself against them. No principle, no law trumps that.

Do you think that way, too? Or are you with me and Nance and Armitage? As I said, I'm 53. My snow fort is gone. But somebody stuffed my boyhood head with ideas about freedom, justice, equal protection under the law, inalienable rights, honor. And those ideas still light up, faintly, like the remembered fireflies of hide-and-seek on Wells Road. Those ideas are my American glow.

This is key. Not only is the behavior espoused, protected, hidden, and reaffirmed in secret by the Bush administration wrong, it's un-American. Standing up to it takes nothing more than the recognition that we are moving in a direction that fundamentally changes who we are. The rights and protections enshrined in the Constitution are our nation's DNA. Allowing it to be altered risks fundamentally blocking the chances of America returning to the position of moral leadership of McEnroe's youth. But standing up now and saying "no" to torture, "no" to lawlessness, "no" to excusing illegal behavior, we can defend our Constitution and rally to the side of the rule of law. That means opposing retroactive immunity, voting against Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general, and reversing the Military Commissions Act. That's what Senator Dodd is doing now in the Senate. And that's why if Dodd is elected, we'll have a President who will honor the Constitution.

read more