Why We Cannot Have The Future We Want Until We Deal With The Past We Have

Dear President (Elect) Obama,

I am writing to you regarding the importance of investigating, exposing, and likely prosecuting former officials of the Bush administration at all levels. You have stated that you want to look forward to the future and create a new, open, and accountable government rather than dwelling on the darkness of the past. My point is that in order to create that bright hopeful future and make it last, we have to act decisively now to prevent the past from repeating itself in the future, which it is wont to do if we refuse to learn its lessons.

Nearly forty years ago, President Richard Nixon was brought down by the Watergate scandal. The picture that emerged from this and subsequent investigations was of an administration that believed and acted as if it was above the law. Nixon authorized illegal wars (Cambodia, Laos), and authorized massive domestic spying operations (COINTELPRO for example). Yet while he was removed from power, he and most of his cohort never faced legal consequences for their actions. About twenty years ago, high officials in the administration of Ronald Reagan, including George H. W. Bush, covertly subverted the expressed will of Congress by supporting murderous terror squads in Central America and supplying weapons to an enemy of the United States (Iran). And for these treasonous acts, a few wrists were slapped, and the remainder of the perpetrators were allowed to scuttle away to the shadows only to return in 2001 with fewer scruples and inhibitions than before. Nixon is gone, Bush 41 is playing golf, and Bush 43 is desperately trying to polish the turd that is his legacy, but the pattern of the past is clear: sunlight will scatter the cockroaches momentarily, but unless they are stamped out and utterly eradicated, they will come back when darkness falls again. Each Republican administration since Nixon's has been an amplified echo of the previous one. Not only do the roaches come back, they come back smarter, stronger, and more insidious than before.

The lesson that the conservative movement learned from Watergate was that the President really was above the law, and the bigger the crimes, the more traumatic any legal action would be, and the less likely for it to occur. Sadly, they were good students. If we do not teach them a different lesson now, they will be back sooner or later. Our democracy barely survived eight years of George W. Bush, it will not survive the next echo.

In order to accomplish the investigations, indictments, and prosecutions of Bush administration officials, it must be made clear to the American public, and indeed the world, that this is not about politics, but about crime. This is a serious law enforcement matter and should be treated as such. Additionally, using the law-enforcement meme should help you with your "look to the future" message as well: law enforcement is necessarily about the past, as one cannot prosecute crimes until they have been committed. Now that we know they have been committed (both Bush and Cheney have admitted on television that they approved "harsh interrogation techniques" that all civilized societies, including this one (formerly), consider torture), justice demands that they are prosecuted. Please direct your attorney-general to set up an independent counsel with broad, enforceable subpoena power to investigate and and prosecute the terrible crimes of the Bush administration. I and many Americans that feel as I do will thank you, the Constitution (if it could talk) would thank you, and many generations of Americans not yet born will have the opportunity that you and I have had to be born into a society where all are equal under the law.

Crossposted to Change.gov