Ending the blood loss

One of the most self-defeating strategies of the Bush Administration (and there are many) was the choice to use torture on suspected and confirmed terrorists. The rationale makes sense and in the fear driven circumstances in the days after 9/11 it is pretty easy to reason most of us would also have demanded that all available methods for securing the country would be used. With no quarter or mercy given to thoser who would be willing to inflict such harm and damage to our nation.

Yet it is precisely this antiquitated thinking that has driven the Bush Administration into so many of its follies. It's mistakes in Iraq were often drawn from the assumption that Iraqi's were just americans with different skin, wanting to embrace a world of consumerism and freedom if only the big bad dictator was removed. Likewise for torture, in a previous era it may have worked, or at least given the country an edge without any negative side effects. Bush and especially Cheney simply were repeating the wisdom of past era's, as Matthew Parris, a former UK Conservative MP explains:

The fate of his predecessor George W.Bush was to test almost to destruction the theory of the limitlessness of American wealth and power - and of the potency of the American democratic ideal too. With one last heave he pitched his country into a violent and ruinous contest with what at times seemed the whole world, and the whole world's opinion. He failed, luminously.

But maybe somebody had to.

We live in a substantially different world to that of the 50's and 70's, despite the fact, the International Relations system still accords power to the same countries in relatively the same order. International Institutions command the legitimacy for the making of war for much of World Public Opinion, and the International Media are able to broadcast into every home in the world, sympathetic and opposed the actions of each administration, including when they walk "on the dark side"

With all this in mind, it is very heartening to learn today that the incoming Obama Administration has appointed Leon Panetta to head the CIA. Via Atrios a op-ed from Panetta last March

Our forefathers prohibited "cruel and unusual punishment" because that was how tyrants and despots ruled in the 1700s. They wanted an America that was better than that. Torture is illegal, immoral, dangerous and counterproductive. And yet, the president is using fear to trump the law.

America is not only better than that, it is the anthesis of the modern nation. It, (far more than the french revolution I wager) introduced the modern idea of nationhood and the practice of nations to the world, and whilst burdened by a unspoken demand that it protect all people everywhere, it has constantly been at the forefront of the progress in Human Rights, Democracy and peaceful governance.

The Bush Administration tried, one last time to resist this push, to resist the slide into the post-vietnam world where governments are always accountable for the acts of their soldiers in distinant battlefields, and the legitimacy of any action is always up for public debate. This is a world that places many constraints and ties on a nation, even one as Gulliver sized as the USA. And whilst the ropes may not always hold (think invasion of Iraq by US without UN approval), the rope burn from the old ties is still apparent on this giants wrists and ankles.

One last time the Bush Administration pushed the old way of thinking ahead, hoping to resist the new worlds pressures. No administration after this will ever be so foolish. With the appointment of men like Panetta, we can be hopeful the Obama Administration is well aware of this lesson and the world it is about to lead.


* Postscript - If you are interested in the issue of torture and its perniscious effect, Jane Mayer's 'The Dark Side' is by far the best account of the Bush Administrations crimes, and my pick for best Non-Fiction book of 2008.