No Convictions, No Reconciliation

Those politically responsible must be brought to justice.

Those who want a better tomorrow must look ahead, not back.

This brief sentence makes up a large part of American self-image. When Barack Obama promised during his campaign that it was not his intention to look back in anger at those responsible for war and violence, he played that particular keyboard perfectly. Once again, however, America now finds it necessary to re-invent itself.

With this strategy, Obama hoped to gain important Republican support for big projects like health care reform. The deal was that he would forget what they did in the past, and in return they would help him transform America into a better country in the future. Even during the campaign Obama displayed a fine sense of what politicians would consider the right thing at the right time. In order to protect the presidency, naturally, the president was not prepared to attack his fellow politicians.

Despite his policy of having filled in the open graves, Obama is now threatened with being buried in them himself. Pressure continually grows and it is sobering to think that he is just now getting around to appointing a special investigator to look into the CIA atrocities that have come to light, some of which are enough to put the fear of God into some of America’s most ardent supporters. Torture was practiced in the name of the United States to the extent that prisoners’ families were threatened with rape and murder. One’s initial reaction might be that it is unimaginable, and even more so after hearing Dick Cheney cold-heartedly defend such abuses of power, excuses he persists in making even today.

Viewed dispassionately, it is not surprising that such things could happen given the Bush administration’s privatized politics. Liberated from democratic controls and driven by greed for profits, it was easy to establish a system in which basic humanitarian rules played no role.

Whether Obama wants to or not, as president of the United States he bears responsibility for his nation, not only for the present and future, but also for its recent past.

That is why he must dispassionately uncover the crimes committed by the CIA and bring those responsible to justice, regardless of whether or not they belong to his own political party. If Obama truly is serious about starting over from a new beginning, he must call Dick Cheney, the de facto mastermind behind these crimes, to account.