Democrats Are Still Fighting Against Bush

The U.S. Senate has made a request for the CIA, the U.S. intelligence agency, to declassify information. This is related to the brutal interrogation methods the CIA used during George W. Bush’s administration. It is suspected that the intelligence agency has not quite disclosed everything on a thorny topic that has inspired many films, from the more paradoxical “Unthinkable” to the more realistic “Zero Dark Thirty.” For now, the CIA is responding quite evasively, insisting that it will be a little longer before it discloses all the materials that have been requested. We only have part of the documentation leaked to the press, from which we can deduce that the CIA lied to President Bush about the methods used to wrest information out of the alleged al-Qaida terrorists. However, pointing out many errors, the CIA contests the veracity of these unconfirmed reports.

The majority of the committee led by Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California, voted for the declassification request, but it was not a unanimous or easy vote. In fact, the committee was divided along party lines, with Republicans constantly convinced that it was all “a waste of time,” as the conservative Sen. Saxby Chambliss put it. Feinstein, on the other hand, saw it as a matter of principle, asserting that “the report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never be allowed to happen again. This is not what Americans do.” Feinstein stated that the report has shed light on “major problems” in the way the CIA heads its operations through its secret prisons and interrogation program. “This … shows why oversight of intelligence agencies in a democratic nation is so important,” concluded Feinstein.

But is it really worth the trouble or actually just a major waste of time? The 2012 to 2013 period was the year of American intelligence scandals. An ambassador was killed in Libya. Journalists were bugged because of an ongoing hunt against whistleblowers in the media. Edward Snowden, the defector, revealed the trawling of user data across the whole world, intercepted in theory either through telephones or the Internet. And there is still a whole lot to find out about how drone operations get carried out against al-Qaida cells across all fronts in the “war on terror.” Therefore, the Senate Committee on Intelligence would have a lot to work on and ask for details on from the federal government. [Like] most recently, how did the CIA manage not to discover even the preparative steps preceding Russia’s sudden attack on Crimea? Yet, the most recent inquiry of the California senator’s committee asks for a recent episode in U.S. history to be declassified. Checking on intelligence activities is fine. Checking on their history, however, is the work of historians and archivists. For now, politics has other things to tend to.

The overwhelming suspicion is that Democrats are still fighting their same fight against George W. Bush, beyond the usual bounds, five years and three months after the end of his last term in office. The fight against terrorism comprised a trauma for progressive America, equally or more shocking than 9/11. That past episode in history persists, and so they keep rubbing it in with “intensified” interrogations, an indisputable method that has never actually caused the death of those subject to interrogation and has in turn led to the discovery of nearly all al-Qaida points of contact, including Osama bin Ladin’s courier (and therefore indirectly even to bin Ladin’s assassination itself).

Today, terrorists get killed indirectly, with drones, abroad, certainly without undergoing any legal proceedings, even causing hundreds of civilian casualties. But we still want to talk about Guantanamo, secret prisons and waterboarding?