Friday, November 28, 2008

Of little interest soon

Can't we hold torturers accountable and still find out the truth? - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine

By the sounds of this article, an Obama administration is not going to try to prosecute Bush administration figures over their involvement in counterterrorism policies. (Assuming that they even can if the expected presidential pardons are made.)

They will instead hold a 9/11 style commission.

This prospect annoys many liberals as being too soft on Bush and co, but surely they should see that if indeed Obama is "tested" by more terrorism against Americans (and the Indian attacks are giving us a taste of this), public interest in how many people might have faced a waterboard under a Bush administration is going to be very, very low. (There is also going to be the distraction of a very severe recession.)

In other terrorism related stuff, John Quiggin takes the opportunity to make a statement of the obvious about a phrase which I thought had long gone out of use by all but the most stupid anyway:
As the cycle of war and terror has gone on, it’s become increasingly clear that the kind of easy evasion involved in slogans like “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is no more tenable than the bogus arguments for war put forward by Bush and his followers.

No comments: