Will There Be Justice After Bush?

The Center for American Progress Action Fund released its "Change for America," a blueprint to bring our country back from the depths of Bush-Cheney lawlessness, incompetence, cronyism, corruption, opaqueness, profiteering, and hypocrisy. Click here to read the table of contents of this newly released book, a real collaboration by some of the best progressive minds in America. The Center for American Progress, for those of you who might not know, was started by John Podesta, who is currently leading the Obama transition team. Podesta served as Bill Clinton's chief of staff during the very difficult years 1998-2001.

Reading through the table of contents, and you can download ten chapters for free, one comes across the section on National Security Policy. Within this section is an overview: Public Diplomacy Can Help Restore Lost U.S. Credibility contributed by Doug Wilson, former congressional director and senior advisor at the United States Information Agency. Wilson also served as principal deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Defense, is co-founder of the Leaders Project, and a member of the board of directors of the Howard Gilman Foundation.

What is missing from this new book, developed by one of Obama's most trusted advisers, is a section that demands holding the Bush-Cheney administration accountable for its lawlessness, incompetence, cronyism, corruption, opaqueness, profiteering, and hypocrisy.

In the December 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine, Scott Horton, an international human rights attorney from New York, sets out the case why it is essential that Obama initiate a domestic inquiry into the outgoing administration. If you don't ordinarily buy Harper's, you can access a pdf of the article by clicking here.

In contrasting the Bush-Cheney administration to presidencies past, Horton explains, "This administration did more than commit crimes. It waged war against the law itself."

Admittedly, although "no prior administration has been so systemactically or so brazenly lawless," "it is no simple matter to prsecute a former president or his senior officers."

What are the crimes? They are beginning to sound familiar, but no less despicable: voter suppression; dismissal of professional justice department attorneys; illegal hiring of professional staff within various departments based on religious and ideological beliefs; use of federal offices for political schemes; wartime contracts to substandard and thieving vendors; spying on churches, peace groups, political protesters, anyone with a "funny" name or "foreign" accent. A preemptive war started on manufactured evidence, signing statements that undid Congressional legislation. And torture, rendition, more torture. Misuse of the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department into a Dick Cheney and David Addington cabal that shut out policymaking and professional assessments from ever reaching the President to inform his decisions.

The United States, although its law has served as the framework for the International Criminal Court, headquartered in the Netherlands, refused to accede to the jurisdiction of that tribunal. Foreign courts might try to prosecute Bush and Cheney, if they ever step foot outside the United States, but those courts cannot undo the damage wrought to the image and prestige of the United States of America.

Only we can do that. Only Americans can repair that damage. But there is the looming threat of pardons, last minute or otherwise, to prevent prosecution of anyone except for Bush himself. And since Harry Truman claimed executive privilege years after he left office, refusing to answer questions posed by Congress, there is some sense that Bush might claim the privilege well beyond January 20, 2009 himself. And a truth and reconciliation procedure like we saw in South Africa doesn't fit this situation, where power needs to be redistributed once again into a balance of power among the three branches of the federal government--executive, legislative, and judicial--according to function not party or ideological loyalty.

Scott Horton suggests an inquiry, a Warren Commission or Kerner Commission, with a full mandate, findings, and recommendations. Take a while to wade through this document. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but we need to begin to think about how to restore our legitimacy as a country governed by the rule of law.

The excitement people felt working for Obama was the offer of empowerment. Now that we have the prospect of "adults in leadership" again, as superbly stated by Bill Maher after the election, we have to act like adults, too, and learn to read difficult and thought-provoking concepts so that never again do we allow our government to be so lawless, so anti-democratic, and so painfully destructive to the entire planet.