Looking at America
From the Editorial Staff of the
New York Times

Published December 31, 2007

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

I did not write the editorial that appears on the left, and yet it could very well serve as a comprehensive summary of all that I and many others tried to warn our neighbors about since before the war.

I have not written in quite awhile... after three years of non-stop letters to the editor, I went back to college to pursue a new career and to regain some equilibrium in my life.

I also stopped writing because I no longer felt that the people I was trying to reach were as unaware of the serious threats to our democracy and our future as they are now.

All that I had to say is now a part of the national discourse, and I really didn't think I could add anything new or say it better than it was being said by people such as Keith Olbermann or Jon Stewart.

Now that the 2008 election year is upon us, that may change.

Then again, it may not. I am still extremely disheartened that after so much irrefutable evidence has come to light of the blackest evil done in our name by this government, people can still ignore it, or worse, trivialize it and accept it as the status quo.

Some have worried that we will be remembered as the generation of Americans who, like the "good germans" of the 1930s, ignored the all-too-obvious signs of evil from within. I think we will be remembered far worse than that. Because as I said, we aren't just being willfully ignorant or turning a blind eye... we're looking squarely at the evidence of mass murder, kidnapping, torture, theft in the billions, outrageous deceptions exposed daily, and we are humming.

I'll likely get behind the next big political push to right this sorry-ass ship, but not with the same enthusiasm or hope that I had before. Then I was so certain that if only people saw evidence of the truth, they would act to change it. I know better now.

I don't think it was juvenile naiveté on my part to think that people would react to these assaults on our humanity in the same way as I do. But as GWB might phrase it, I "misundersestimated" the power of fear. That it could be used by this government as a cattle prod for so long.

None of the democratic contenders are addressing this ongoing manipulation, except for Dennis Kucinich, who has the same chance of being elected President as a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. It's a shameful thing to say about the one man who has the courage and honesty to give voice to exactly the way it is, but it's true nonetheless.

Obama has been inspiring and eloquent about the need for change, and he stands as my first choice for a potentially electable candidate. However, none (save Dennis) are talking about restoring transparency to the office of the President, or, as far as I know, a restoration of the balance of powers between the three branches of government. Or have I missed something?

I'm down to just a few "if only"s , and the one I favor most these days is this: if only people could see that the wisdom of the founders - the message writ large in the Constitution - is that we're ALL of us potential dictators given enough power, so let's stop throwing all the blame on the current despot-in-chief, and take on some of it on ourselves for allowing him to get away with throwing away the rulebook.

----- Sean Hannon,

December 31, 2008