By Brigitte L. Nacos
According to Eric Brahm, a “truth commission's main goal is to establish what happened in the past. Truth commissions do not normally have the power to prosecute.” Such a body typically sheds light on human rights violations, war crimes, and hate crimes that were encouraged, blessed, and perpetrated by officials or agents of the very state that creates a truth commission after the offensive practices have been halted as morally and legally wrong. While the need for truth commissions arises typically in the wake of abuses by authoritarian states, such a body would be well suited to investigate and write the complete chapter of post-9/11 torture in U.S. controlled prisons abroad.
Given the pressing problems on his plate, President Barack Obama has reason tell us that it is more important to look ahead rather than be distracted by problems in the past. But there is a way to keep the eye on the ball of today’s and tomorrow’s decision-making without completely ignoring past wrongdoings. The calls for the prosecution of former officials in the White House, Department of Justice, and Department of Defense are justified in the face of the already available evidence, but I prefer the establishment of a truth commission with full access to all relevant information rather than the prosecution of the by now well-known cast of torture advocates and defenders that would widen the divisive partisan and ideological divide.
If we want to learn from the shocking decisions that involved top-officials in the Bush administration and what was revealed to some members of Congress, including leading Democrats, we need to learn the whole truth and let the chips fall wherever they may. Otherwise former administration officials, such as Vice-President Richard Cheney, can continue their propaganda campaign of fear in defense of the utility of torture in bolstering homeland security.
I agree with David Epstein’s take on the liberal media’s cavalier reporting about the Bush administration’s torture record (as we know it so far) compared to their never-ending attacks on both Bill and Hillary Clinton because of the Monica Lewinsky affair. Remarkably, the same moral guardians in the fourth estate who never tired of condemning the sex scandal in the White House have not shown such such an appetite to denounce the Bush administration’s torture policy. Instead, they continue to avoid the “t” word and report benignly about “enhanced interrogation.”
All the more reason for a truth commission.
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