Why it matters

And why all of the folks defending the indefensible are wrong. James Fallows sums it up very well:

Nonetheless I contend that a full process of American self-examination and accountability will make a tremendous long-term difference in international views of the United States. Even among those who at the moment don’t know that there is any controversy going on within the United States.

For as annoyed as foreigners may get with America and Americans, there have been two saving graces in the world’s opinions of our country. One has been its permeability. Anywhere you go, someone has an uncle or cousin in America. The other, less openly stated, has been a belief that at some point there are rules in America. Long periods may pass when the rules are ignored. Big boys may bend the rules in their favor. Some offenses are never made right. And so on. But in the end, the American system is supposed to recognize injustice and respond — including with public accountability for even the mightiest figures. It has this in common with the British and some other systems — which is what Gandhi relied on in knowing he could “shame” the Brits. For all the increases in liberty within China over the last generation, this is a striking difference with the world’s currently-rising power. No one expects China’s current leadership to conduct a “truth commission” about the Cultural Revolution or Tiananmen. But people finally expect America to apply its own rules, even against its own people. Fulfilling that expectation is not sufficient for restoring America’s image international standing. But it is necessary.

So even though most of the world’s population has no idea of what is in the torture memos or of what will happen because of them, in the long run the Administration’s decisions will have a significant worldwide effect. Being true to the world’s idea of America does not (in my opinion) crucially turn on prosecuting individual CIA or military interrogators. Instead it depends on full clarifying disclosure of the reasoning that led to these practices — thus, maximum disclosure of the memos — and full examination of the decisions that public officials made.

You cannot take a position on the moral high ground-stating how you are the good guys-unless you actually stick to that position. It is why I always hate it when people crow about we “liberated” 50 million Muslims. Forcibly trading one corrupt Muslim government for another is not liberation.

If you want to jump off the moral high ground and say we are forcibly exercising our national interest, well that’s another matter. However if that’s the case, why stop at these techniques? It doesn’t matter anymore what you do.

However, you cannot have it both ways.