S.O.P.

I think Errol Morris is one of our great filmmakers. I've been watching his latest, Standard Operating Procedure, about the war crimes at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Not a movie it's easy to get anyone else to watch with you. It's not Morris' best, but still fascinating, penetrating, as always - and, apparently, it has made it past the first round of cuts for Oscar consideration.

After speaking with a former solider who spent a year in prison because of his presence in some of the photographs taken at the prison, although he committed no acts of abuse, this exchange takes place:

Investigator: If you were in the pictures while this stuff was going on, you were going to be in trouble.
Morris: Big trouble.
Investigator: If you make our president apologize to the world, I would say so, yeah.

That sort of says it all in terms of the actions taken after the scandal broke. It was much less of a problem that the torture occurred than that it was made public and embarrassed George Bush. Now, writing in the Washington Post, a former interrogator with Special Forces in Iraq points this out:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

There are many voices calling for a reckoning, saying that the officials responsible for America's war crimes, specifically torture, must be held accountable. Scott Horton's is one such voice, in his piece for this month's Harper's, "Justice after Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration." He makes a number of useful suggestions for how such a prosecution might be carried out and offers South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a possible model.

I believe that the Bush administration ought not be above the law. I believe that some of its members (I'm looking at you, Rummy) ought to be prosecuted for war crimes. If you agree with my first statement, then you will be hard-pressed not to arrive at my second statement, assuming you have the capacity for reason.

But it ain't gonna happen. This is the sad place we are today, as a nation. The fog is lifting and we find ourselves broke, out of work, exhausted, morally bankrupt, deeply depressed international criminals, with all of us to blame. We can't face it and we won't face it.

President Obama will simply not be willing to spend any political capital on pushing for the truth and reconciliation we crave but haven't the strength to seek for ourselves. So we will merely try to slough off this disastrous presidency and these terrible years and go on and, hopefully, never speak of it all again. It's a family shame, hidden away for another generation to bring to light, after we're gone.