Memo to Obama: Moving Forward Doesn't Mean You Can't Also Look Back

In one week, the U.S. Constitution will be front and center as Barack Obama solemnly swears to "preserve, protect, and defend" it. Given all that has happened over the last eight years, that oath is not nearly as pro-forma as it used to be.

During his final press conference yesterday, President Bush said that when it came time "to protect the homeland" he "wouldn't worry about popularity." He would "worry about the Constitution of the United States." It wasn't clear, as it hasn't been for most of his time in office, whether his concern was directed at upholding the document or circumventing it.

So as the Obama Years are about to begin, one of the questions facing the new president is what will he do about the transgressions of the Bush Years? Will his promise to protect and defend the Constitution include an investigation into the assaults on it perpetrated by members of the Bush administration?

On change.gov, the website of the Obama transition team, there is a section where people can submit questions and readers can vote on the questions they most want the incoming administration to answer. The top question last week, receiving over 23,000 votes, came from Bob Fertik of democrats.com:

"Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?"

Instead of having Obama respond to Fertik's question, change.gov posted an earlier reply from Joe Biden who had said, "President-elect Obama and I are not sitting thinking about the past... I think we should be looking forward, not backwards."

Picking up the dropped ball on Sunday, George Stephanopoulos directly asked Obama Fertik's question ("the most popular question on your own website").

Obama echoed Biden's reply: "I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards... My orientation is going to be to move forward."

Given the multiple -- and massive -- obstacles looming directly in front of him, Obama is wise not to be driving into the Oval Office looking in his rearview mirror. But I hope he will realize that moving forward and looking backwards are not mutually exclusive. Particularly if he isn't the one focused on the past.

There is no doubt that the economic crisis, Iraq and Afghanistan, health care reform, and the regulation of Wall Street should be the Obama administration's primary concerns.

But that doesn't mean we, as a country, should allow Bush and Cheney's offenses to accompany their perpetrators to a peaceful retirement in Texas and Wyoming.

That's why I am in favor of John Conyers' efforts to create a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties -- a DC version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission created after the fall of apartheid in South Africa. The new Commission would come with subpoena power, a $3 million budget, and the mandate to investigate a host of issues ranging from Guantanamo, to torture, to extraordinary rendition.

The Commission members would come from outside government -- appointed by Obama and leaders from both political parties. So the administration and Congress could continue looking and moving forward while the country avoids falling into the trap of allowing the outrages of the Bush administration to be forgotten or, worse, implicitly sanctioned.

Dawn Johnson, Obama's pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel, has eloquently made the case against turning the page and not looking back:

"We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation's past transgressions and reject Bush's corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation's honor be restored without full disclosure."

This becomes all the more important as Bush and Cheney continue their Polish the Legacy Tour -- aka Lie-a-palooza '09.

During his Monday presser, which he dubbed "the ultimate exit interview," Bush thanked reporters for giving him a chance to defend his record "because I think it's a good, strong record." And defend it he did, standing behind the war in Iraq, his handling of Katrina, the use of Gitmo, and his tax cuts. And he strongly disagreed with "the assessment that our moral standing [in the world] has been damaged."

As for the economy, Bush insisted, "I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime, there were 52 months of uninterrupted growth." Which is kind of like saying the flight of the Hindenburg was fabulous up until the landing.

Cheney has been even more relentlessly on message -- ie pathologically in denial. Say what you will about the VP, the guy is savvy.

Watching him make the exit interview rounds, including his brazenly unrepentant turn with Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, has been like watching a brilliant lawyer defending a clearly guilty client. He has constructed a narrative of what has happened, cherry-picked and twisted every fact to back up his story, and then repeatedly hammered home his rendering of things, refusing to give an inch. His version of what has happened over the past eight years is air tight, iron clad -- and completely wrong.

Among the lowlights from his interview with Blitzer was his demonstrably false claim that the administration "did not base going after Saddam Hussein on any connection with 9/11," his demonstrably false claim that "there wasn't anything the administration did to create that inaccuracy on the part of the [pre-war] intelligence," and his demonstrably false claim that waterboarding "is not torture" because "we don't do torture."

Cheney also has a masterful ability to pass the buck, as when he told Bob Schieffer that the chaos and bloodshed that followed the fall of Baghdad should be laid at the feet of the Iraqi people: "There weren't any Iraqis early on who were willing to stand up and take responsibility for their own affairs." And that torture, which isn't really torture since we don't "do torture," was, in any case, okay because morally creative legal flunkies like John Yoo told them it was: "What we did was authorized by the legal authorities that were to be the source of that kind of advice."

As ridiculous and deceitful as Cheney's closing arguments are, inflicting this much damage to the Constitution then coming up with rationales that allow high crimes to dissolve into Sunday morning rhetorical squabbles requires an impressive level of brainpower. But it's brainpower at its most dangerous -- divorced from judgment, wisdom, and reality.

That's why we can't allow the historical revisionism to stand uncontested.

I am all for moving forward. But we can move forward as a nation that looks the other way when it comes to torture and lawlessness. Or we can move forward as the nation envisioned in the Constitution that Obama is about to solemnly swear to preserve, protect, and defend.

Comments

[Soaringon]

I agree in TOTALALITY with my newly elected PRESIDENT. Chewing up the past like a cow and it's
cud is what the media has done so much of--let us see if we can avoid some of that. We all know over
and over what has been wrong for years and years--Hmm I'm more than ready to see new fresh faces
and actions!

[Geria]

It is troubling to see Biden and so many others enticed by the thought that you can just leave the past behind and "move forward" into what, empty space? The future is based upon what has gone before, and you cannot start fresh without dealing with the past as part of the process of recovery. Think of the Bush legacy as being a huge pile of manure in the center of the room covered by a rug. Everybody denies it is there and thinks they can move forward, but it is a delusion. Bush changed reality for Obama, Biden and all of us, like it or not. Hundreds of signing statements and executive orders have altered reality and unless we examine what has been done, we will fall over that pile. Look at just one Bushian act: the repeal of Section 382 of the tax code. For 20 years Conservatives have tried to change this law which bars wealthy corportion from buying bankrupt companies and using those companies losses to avoid taxes. While the nation's attention was fixed on the $700 billion dollar bailout of the banks, the Bush people made the change. Now if Obama wants the people most able to pay taxes pay more to help with the deficit, Section 382 is on the manure pile to prevent him from doing so. We don't know at this point, how many more obstacles are in Obama's path.

[Geria]

Arianna dear, if you don't take on Bush's assaults upon the US Constitution, you leave the Constitution in a compromised and weakened condition. The Constitution needs to be reaffirmed, and I'm sorry to say, it is among Obama's too numerous responsibilities to restore it. If you wait for another administration, the compromises have time to begin to take on legitimacy and in time will become part of our culture! Do you want torture, government spying on citizens without a warrant, the loss of habeas corpus and the denieal of the right to representation by an attorney if you are labeled an "enemy combatant" to be part of our American heritage? Do want this for your kids?

[dotmafia]

I suspect the real truth of why the Democrats won't push for impeachment is because it threatens to reveal the full extent of their own complicity in the government's abrogation of the Constitution, those set of laws which Bush called 'just a goddamned piece of paper'.

This is not just a conspiracy theory. The evidence of this complicity is there for all to see, but only those who choose not to look with their eyes wide shut will see it.

Their continued inaction will leave a deep and lasting national wound, rippling down to the next generation with unforseeable consequences. It is my opinion that it is imperative for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to do what is necessary in her charge to protect the current, and future, interests of the American people to whom she represents, so that a process of national healing may begin. And this can only start by holding the architects of these crimes in the Bush "administration" accountable to justice. A war crimes tribunal and truth and reconcilliation commission could be, and should be established. Otherwise, history will not look back kindly.

[Geria]

The democrats bear the burden of guilt for not defending the Constitution against Bush's assaults. I cannot count the number of times I have written and called Washington to make them see what they were really doing. Political expediency got in their eyes, and they still haven't seen the truth. Pelosi should resign. She has done more to protect Bush/Cheney from impeachment and further his agenda than any other democrat and she still opposes investigation into the Bush record!

[williamwilliam]

To allow the crimes committed by members of the Bush administration against
American and foreign citizens go unpunished, will signal the official end of this
republic.

Unfortunately, this is apparently what will happen.

The explanation for the Democratic complicity in this attack on The U.S.,
(Obama's FISA vote, Feinsein and Schumer's support for Mukasey, and
Pellosi's public abdication of her duty to impeach the President, to name only
three examples that come quickly to mind), is far from clear.

In fact, its unlikely that, any explanation will ever be brought completely
out into light of day.

Nevertheless, what is clear is that our 'two' parties have had, as
Mr. Cheney might put it, 'other priorities' with regard to the Constitution
and the rule of law at least as far back as Iran/Contra.

In any case, just as our illegal attack on Iraq sent a clear message that
no state without weapons of mass destruction is safe from American
Imperial ambition, our ruthless attack on our own country's moral and legal foundations
will signal to all, that only little people and suckers play by the rules in the 21st century.

And that, is the flowering rot at the root of empire in decline.

[Geria]

What you are seeing in the Bush legacy is not the decline of empire, but its advance What we are losing is our Constitutional republic. European history, for the last 4 centuries, is stretched between two extremes, British-style imperialism and the American democratic republic. The British oligarchs have been attacking us again using Bush and other meatheads as their agents. They want the end of our republic. Don't think of the US as an empire, it isn't. Just because the multi-national corporations want to play at imperialism (globalization) doesn't change the fundamental character of the American political and economic system. To do that, they must work at its destruction with help from high-ranking officials like Bush and theorists like Samuel P. Huntington. Cheney and Bush have done more than any other administration to bring down the republic and render the Constitution obsolete. Obama can't just pretend it didn't happen. The damage is there. It must be repaired as part of the nation's recovery. I'm sorry if it isn't pleasant.

[sacto92]

Should we also go after all the Democrats in Congress that were briefed on the various classified programs and went along?

[freddiefreeloader]

What ever happened to " the buck stops here" All congress did was give him what he asked for, It was Bush who authorized the war of aggression against Iraq, It was Bush who did'nt listen to the U.N. when they told him not to invade Iraq, It was Bush who admitted to authorizing torture. The list of Bush's war crimes and human rights abuses is very well documented.

[TXnative]

No, congress authorized Bush to go to war. Get get the facts straight. Every Democrat, but Obama authorized the war. Don't try to re write history.

[Geria]

Yes, everybody must acknowledge what they have done, even if it doesn't rise to the level of a crime, it is part of the takedown of this country.

[OYea]

When we refuse to look back and heal the collective wounds of the people... THAT is why history just keeps repeating itself! We saw this following the Nazi regime... w've been witnessing this in Gaza... and the very same thing has been going on with the First Nations people both in the US and Canada... and it is high time that we stop pointing the finger at every other Nation and ALL take responsibility for what has been going on right here in the Americas!

http://www.curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1338321#i

http://www.curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1338358#i

http://www.curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1338389#i

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6637396204037343133

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3298545136894406673

When we allow it to happen to others... it WILL eventually happen to US!!!

[Geria]

Look, nobody is after blood. The people of the United States are not asking for wholesale executions, all we want is accountability. That means, the truth must come out, Everybody must face what they have done. If we hide from the truth, we will pay the price of hiding from ourselves; it will all be back at us again. Our domestic enemies are still with us and must be repudiated or they will try again. If you want recovery, you must interrupt the destructive process which is still going on. If you love your country, you will demand of your representatives, that everything be investigated and prosecuted where necessary.

[girlwild]

If they can impeach a president for lying about extramarital sex, then they should impeach a president for shredding the Constitution. Period.

[Bradley Jarvis]

The issue of torture is a real and present threat to both our national security and our national identity.

If our government does not prosecute those who ordered it and those who performed it, then we the people, from whom political power flows in this country, will become complicit in war crimes. Because our laws define our nation, our combined flaunting of them will effectively destroy the country. We will no longer be able to call ourselves "Americans."

Other people will rightly be able to brand us as international criminals, subject to the harshest of punishments. And we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

[mountainweb]

Trying to protray Bush as a war criminal is the height of utter political stupidity. We do not need to split this country along political lines and that is just what it will do. Time the leadership of the democratic party got behind Obama instead of standing in front of him which is what this is.......

[scared4ALL]

So you think letting the many crimes go is sending a good message? Doesn't that condone future administrations to get away with murder? I noticed going to your profile, mountainweb, sorting through the bits of truth and all the evident propaganda that you never have offered a reference, source or link to what you say is truth. Why is that?

[HappyDae]

Well, think of the bail out. Should we reward companies/industries for failure? Doesn't that condone future companies to get away with _________. You fill in the blank: greed, avarice, mismanagement, dishonesty, illegal activities.

Happy Dae.
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Geria]

No dear, the country is already divided. The prosecution of Bush as a war criminal will not divide it any further. What it will do is make clear what is the law and what is the violation of the law and that it all matters! It will establish that no man is above the law, not the president, not anybody. The person isn't important, the Constitution is important!
People do not come together over rhetoric, however brilliant. They don't come together because of passionate urging. An intellectual and emotional process must be gone through to get to the point where the nation can come together authentically. Without the process, it is all just BS! There ain't no shortcut.

[cayuse]

I forgive the Spirit of the man and men, but I do not think we should let history forget, less we forget and repeat that which is not the Laws of Nature and Nature's GOD.

Obama , in the future remember Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul for their ideas and honesty to get at least me seeing the HOPE.

[glockman]

I'll give you Ron Paul, because he absolutely understands (and even talks about!) the Constitution. But Kucinich? Not so much.

I'd still like to see Ron Paul as president.

[Geria]

Kucincich "not so much?" Are you aware that Kuscinich drew up a list of impeachment charges against President Bush that ran to 32 items and that he read it before Congress? That is defending the Constitution, not just talking about it or "understanding" it!

[scared4ALL]

Absolutely in agreement with you on that. I know many are.

[Geria]

Don't forgive somebody before they ask your forgiveness. Bush isn't one damn bit sorry for all the lives he destroyed and all the times he violated the Constitution.

How nice to "remember" how honest Dennis Kucinich was and how everybody just ignored him! Do you think remembering will change the future Bush/Cheney has carved for us?

No, you must deal with the Bush Administration and what has happened to this country over the last 20 years, at least.

[HappyDae]

Words not Wanting
By Tarzana Joe

All poets with a somber task
For certain words, the muses ask
Words which majestic thoughts might border
And put them in the proper order
I, like my fellow poets plead
Muses come and come with speed

For words proclaimed and words repeated
Have thousands of despairs defeated
We the people, when in the course
Revive ideals that all endorse
And even when the way is broken
Renew the dream each time they"re spoken

My pleas the muses must have swayed
Here are the words that they conveyed
Oh, President of drive and youth
The word above all words is Truth
Tell us the truth and please don"t fake it
We"ve shown the world that we can take it
Avoid the clever paths of scandal
Truth is what we want to handle
We won"t accept what spinners sell us
If aliens arrive, just tell us

We hold these truths like precious light
And marching with the Truth is Right
For Truth comes ever, as it must
With that other precious asset, Trust
And Truth and Trust in company
Combine to set all nations free.

I'm Happy Dae and I agree wholeheartedly with Joe, the Poet.
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[scared4ALL]

Me too. Hi Dae & I'm very glad you're happy. I'm not really scared4all anymore. Not since Obama was elected, anyway.

[Geria]

You should still be scared. Alito and Roberts still sit on the Supreme Court. Karl Rove isn't in jail for contempt of Congress and other crimes. Doug Firth, David Addington, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick and Lynne Cheney and other neo-cons are all still around. They can regroup and come back at the United States after Obama is gone. They will do the same things they did before and because the nation hasn't examined what they did under Reagan and Bush I & II, the nation will be taken in by it and the final days of the American republic will be brought about. When you don't deal with your enemies, they come back at you.

[Frenbar]

A truth and reconciliation committee is not the answer.

Should we form a truth and reconciliation committee for Bernie Madoff? He didn't torture anyone or violate the Constitution.

Many of the problems we face as a nation today have one common cause, lack of accountability. Whether corporate executives gambling with taxpayer money, or George Bush violating the Constitution, there is never any day of reckoning. What kind of message does this send to our own people, and the rest of the world? If the crime is heinous enough, or large enough in scope, it will simply be too much trouble to prosecute.

It's time to end this disregard for the law and the Constitution once and for all. Transgressors should be prosecuted and punished under the full extent of the law with no regard to political position or influence.

Anything less would be a betrayal of the American people and clear signal to the world that it's business as usual in the USA.

[tangerinesong]

With all due respect Ms. Huffington,

We need to move on with positive momentum concentrating on our future.

IThere will no Bush investigations as its never happened in History nor will it . Barack will not allow Ms. Pelosi to investigate as not to experience the same upon his own exit from the White House. Not one of us on these threads has any clue what the real security issues are for this Nation that Barack has and will continue to see.

The expectations demanded of Barack is being met with silence and I embrace this. Barack has an exceptional intellect and I trust him explicitly which is precisely why he received my vote. But in the spirit of this new leadership a couple of things I have resigned myself too:

Gitmo will not be closed.

American combat troops will be moved out of Iraq, yes but will merely be differed to Afghanistan.

Wiretapping has and will continue and Barack will reserve deftly all current and available powers he deems fit to keep this Nation safe.

In the spirit of this new leadership, good luck and riddance Mr. Bush, welcome Mr. Obama and you have my full support in your decisions on how to move forward. So, as to the rear view mirror negativity? I'm not a buyer but I am a buyer for positive movement forward. Allow all of us as Citizens to support President Obama with a positive America behind him.

Respectfully,

TS

[scared4ALL]

Dear TS: With due respect to you, as I have seen your comments in your profile, here. I've seen all the wisdom and goodness in you by what you write. You're dead wrong though about allowing Bush & cronies to step all over our Constitution and get away with murder. Just ask all the dead innocent Iraqi familles and our own poor duped soldiers who really, most of them, believed they were going to war for noble cause. All the children dead, maimed or being born with severe birth defects. Not one can doubt that it all was wrong and purposely based on lies. Many lies. This illegal occupation of Iraq was but one crime among many but it was the biggy IMHO. How can we let all those people down & let these criminals off scott free? That gives a free pass for further abuse on "US"!

[Geria]

Listen my dears, you don't just sweep it under the rug and move forward into the future without ever looking back. That is naive in the extreme! Bush/Cheney destroyed this country as completely as though we had been bombed by a foreign enemy. Does a population who has been destroyed just hitch up its pants and go forward? No, it takes recovery and that takes time. We can investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration and go forward on infrastructure projects at the same time. It isn't one or the other!

[Savojah]

There's no need to go after Bush. What's done is done, and he made the decisions he felt were right in proctecting this country. To go after him would bring this country to its knees. I think the people spoke in this election, and it was a response of the failure of the Bush Administration. The Republican party is in the dumps, has lost all its power in Washington, and Bush and Rovian politics is to blame for that. He is a pariyah in American politics, and that is punishment enough for what his administration is responsible for. Obama likes Bush as a man, plus he feels that going after Bush is not something that would be constructive for his administration, that is trying to cross party lines in getting things done for this country. That would turn alot of conservatives off, and would begin the petty bickering that he is trying to change in Washington. So even though some of the Bush Administration tactics have been questionalbe, this would not do anything but satisfy the need of some folks who want to bring this man down and this is not what the president-elect is about.

[ignorantwillyharper]

To hold Bush and Cheney accountably would in no way bring our country to its knees. It would give the American people the chance to get up off their knees and face the world with the wisdom, that if and when we do wrong, we can be held accountably and right what worngs we have done.
If we can't, or don't look back, we'll never be able to move forward and will repeat somewhere down the road the same matter of shame we have brought on our nation for the past eight years.

[Frenbar]

Allowing Bush and his fellow war criminals a free pass will just be a confirmation of the message that Americans have been sending out for decades: Do as I say, not as I do.

Without justice, there is no law, without law, we are no better then any other petty dictatorship.