Obama Pardons Madoff

(Washington, D.C.- April 17, 2009) President Barack Obama announced today that he has issued a full pardon to Bernard Madoff and ordered his release from prison.

In a statement released by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, President Obama stated that nothing could be gained by sending the 71 year old financier to prison for the rest of his life, since this would not lead to any of his former investors getting their money back.

The statement went on to read:

"This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."

Before I start receiving comments taking the story of Madoff's pardon seriously, let me acknowledge that this is satiric, but like all satire, has a serious point. The quote from Obama is, however, real. It applied not to Madoff, but to Obama's decision to provide amnesty to CIA officers who may have engaged in illegal torture.

The idea that punishing those who break the law is nothing but "retribution" or "laying blame for the past" is of course contradictory to basic principles of the rule of law, and Obama the law professor certainly knows that. Sending a swindler who has already spent the money to prison will not return the funds to the victims, sending a murderer to prison will not bring back the dead, and prosecuting a torturer cannot relieve the detainee of the pain he suffered.

But the criminal justice system does not punish wrongdoers only to return the victims of their crimes to their former state. One purpose of punishment is to deter people considering committing similar crimes in the future by making them fear the consequences.

The message that Obama sends by refusing to even consider prosecuting CIA officers who may have committed war crimes, is that in the future, government officials can commit similar acts with impunity.

It is good that Obama has said that under his administration, America doesn't torture. But that doesn't prevent a future administration from reverting to the Bush/Cheney policies. If officials in such a future administration know that the next President might prosecute them for their misdeeds they might think twice before carrying them out. Otherwise, there's nothing to stop future war crimes.

Obama was almost certainly under tremendous pressure from the CIA to grant immunity to its operatives. There even may have been threats, implicit or explicit, to undermine his administration. Nonetheless, granting amnesty to those who may have committed war crimes under the justification that they "were just following orders" violates basic principals of human rights and the rule of law.

Comments

[TruthmongerII]

I wonder if the CIA threatened the POTUS. Probably wouldn't be the first time, nor the last. Even so, this refusal to try torturers and war criminals has demolished what was left of American credibility overseas. The United States is now a confirmed rogue state.

[JimR]

The people who violated the laws are the people who ordered the torture. Obama is looking at the bigger picture here, even though you are not.

[edwcorey]

The people who obeyed the orders also violated the laws. They did it for a paycheck or because they were sadists. If you obey an illegal order, you are guilty. Period.

[naschkatze]

Bullseye, Mr. Mogilescu! Your parody of the torture decision was a parody, but like Jon Stewart, there is more truth in what you say than in "reality". I will not vote for Obama again in 2012 and I hope there will be opposition against him from within the party. A so-called constitutional law scholar willing to let crimes of torture go unpunished! I completely do no understand Obama. It's as if what the NYT wrote is true: he likes to give speeches and he likes to be liked but he doesn't have the stuff to make hard but right decisions. My disappointment in him also includes the stance Holder has taken on the Siegelman case. 44 of 50 state attorneys, of both parties, called for a review of the Siegelman trial, but Mr. Holder is deaf and blind apparently. All crimes by the Bush administration will go unchecked, but, Mr. Obama, those people are not going to vote for you, ever, and you are losing the ones who did because of your actions.

[futate01]

I'm sad to say that I feel the same way you do.

[olmossy]

From what I've read so far, It seems the CIA agents were acting in good faith,after being told by their superiors, and the US Attorney's office, and a ruling by an independant Judge that these tactics could be used under safe controled conditions. They were ordered by the Judge to porvide medical oversight to the interragation. I know on a smaller scale local Police Officers rely on the advice of State's Attorneys But. We're not talking about questioning some local burglar, these are enemy combatants, some should be tried as war criminals themselves. I could see a panal of judges finding whether or not the US Attorneys office and the Judge involved acted properly. They could be disbarred or tried for missfesense.

[edwcorey]

Nazi guards were assured they were doing the right thing, too. Their government was a criminal enterprise.

[littleblackcat]

Indeed, as was ours for the last eight years.

[Kungfublood]

Emboldened by this official act of cowardice the evil degenerates have only just begun to give people a taste of what they really want to do once they are secure in their immunity from humanity.

[TJCole]

It's the lawyers like this Bybee and Yoo and Addington others, the entire criminal White House Office of Legal Counsel who with their memos turned illegal orders, into legal opinions that really muddied the waters for a lot of these operatives...where were they to go..except maybe the media but then they would have been prosecuted by Gonzales and Mujkasey...

You see the most dangerous element within our government and nation are these Federalist Society usurpers there is much more to this and I know a lot but they are now embedded within our government in our Courts and the Justice Dept. as well...

When you have a group within a group that's a cabal and there is also the subject of their suspect loyalties due to this affiliation...of the Federalist Society....for all too many of them, their first loyalty is all too often to this group of modern day Tories and worse than Tories..

[jollyelle]

Obama- a constitutional law professor who doesn't honor the constitution, damn

[DavidMG]

I am hopeful that Obama will eventually change his position. It would be smart politically to put this off until the economy is back on track.

[Liberal2]

You are wrong. The criminals who committed this economic disaster are only encouraged by Obama's lack of response and will continue to rape the US economy. What do you think the bonuses were all about?

[wonketteRAWKS]

Did you say politically? We were told he was different!

Basically, he's obstructing justice!

[futate01]

I'm hoping the same thing but the prophet of HOPE is killing my hope.

[littleblackcat]

If attention is paid to what Obama said, you will realize that the President has positioned himself in such a way that if the grassroots call for punishment for those who drew up the torture plans and ordered them carried out becomes great enough, he will be able to hand it over to Congress and special prosecutors. He has to walk the fine line of trying to get the rethugs to co-operate in a few ways over a period of months in an effort to straighten out the mess bushit left him.
Up to now, the rethugs have voted NO to everything the man has offered. The people need to see that this wretchedly puerile party is deliberately tripping up every plan for improvement that President Obama puts forth and then there will be stronger support for getting tough where such is needed.
We simply can't take any more weakening of our very shaky economic position, so until more strength is built, it is going to remain a razor edge to walk. Twits like Ben Nelson need to have the screws put to them too. His constituency needs to let him know that if he sounds much more like a rethug, he is going to lose his seat.

[Helzapoppin]

It's just the same old selling out for political expediency. I didn't vote for this crap. I want my vote back.

[jeanrenoir]

Obama campaigned as a moderate. That's the only reason he won. And even as a moderate Dem, he would have lost without the panic caused by the economy among America's masses of yahoo whites. People on the left have truly got to decide whether they would rather be "pure," and thus completely powerless politically (since real leftists are as weak numerically as the 28% of hardcore Republicans), or would rather have some power and influence through a moderate, center-left president. Obama's much better than the triangulator Clinton. He's smarter, wiser, and more principled, not to mention more honest and decent. But precisely because he's so smart and astute, he knows he MUST compromise. Leftist purists have often preferred no power, "purity," and the ability to whine forever in the wilderness, ever since 1968, when these purists gave us Nixon and forty years of conservative government. These purists should recall the refrain of the Boomer anthem, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?": "When will they ever learn?"

[TheQuestion]

This is international law it is not liberal vs conservative. If this country does not act against the torturers then the international community will.

[navynorm]

I've often wondered why there can't be a political protest in this country without someone showing up with a caricature of hitler? and any discussion of war crimes involves nuremberg. this situation has too many differences to use nuremberg as an example. some future evil administration bent on handing out torture would not be deterred by prosecutions today any more than our recent one was deterred by the nuremberg trials. the defense of following orders is valid under many situations; especially when the acts are no so egregious as the concentration camps. every day in our own justice system we grant amnesty to lower level figures in return for evidence on higher level ones. if we really start pulling the thread on this, are we willing to see what unravels? how many elected officials and their staffs? our justice department could do nothing for the next 10 years and still not resolve this. did we ever take to trial the guards at the camps where we sent our own Japanese-American citizens in WW2? Contrary to what was written in the original post, I think retribution is really the motive for those screaming for a trial here.

[Liberal2]

Really? What are the differences?

Guards at the US internment camps???? True, the camps were wrong, but the US was an openly racist society back then. But at least the guards didn't (afaik) beat or kill our fellow citizens.

[Manx]

To: navynorm

Although the internment camps for Japanese citizens were egregiously wrong, the guards did not torture the inhabitants as you suggest. That's why they weren't put on trial. However, we did prosecute and convict Japanese soldiers for waterboarding. It was an international crime then and it still is.

To confuse the pursuit of justice with "retribution" is a very cynical thing and a dangerous, slippery slope. Obama will be sorry he ever used the term and he will hear the word thrown back at him for the rest of his political life.

Or should we rename the Department of Justice, the Department of Retribution and should Supreme Court Justices be known as Supreme Court Retributionists?

Obama's decision, although he doesn't have the authority to decide who gets prosecuted for crimes, is purely political because he doesn't want to roil the right-wing. He's trying to justify it by using double-speak and terms like "retribution."

[edwcorey]

"he doesn't want to roil the right-wing"

As if pandering to them hasn't stiffened their spines and increased their contempt?

[BARRISTER]

Impeachment is the tool Congress has to ensure that the President upholds the Rule of Law. They ignored that tool from 2001 to this past January.

[firstrax]

If you want to prosecute war crimes, you have to go after Bush-Cheney. Any one else would just be scapegoating.

[Professor Wal-Mart]

Think about your own job, and the person in charge of you. Now think back to the last time that person gave you a directive that was boneheaded or ill-advised. Did you valiantly risk your paycheck and stand up to your boss, or did you grumble, grit your teeth and do what was demanded of you?

Now pretend that the job you do is crucial to national security, and lives hang in the balance, and you have no reason to doubt that the people up your chain of command are anything but the best in their field. If they tell you to hold a prisoner's head underwater because he will reveal useful intel, are you going to risk a court-martial, a hefty fine and jail time?

There are a few examples I can think of in which disobedience of a direct order is absolutely called for, and conversely where failure to disobey would merit prosecution of the agent on the ground. I don't think waterboarding -- which does not leave permanent physical injuries -- rises to that level, particularly when the order is backed by the Office of Legal Counsel's OK. It's the OLC's job to determine the legality of interrogation techniques, and they screwed up, not the CIA employees.

Many in this thread unduly malign some very brave people when they call CIA agents "barbarians" and such, especially given that it was the misgivings of some of these very people who brought torture of detainees to light.

[ramblin jack]

Legal if that is waht you are grapsing at does not mean moral and if one is not willing to put morlas ahead of career then well these things will happen. Waterboarding is torture plain and simple. have someone do it to you and then tell me what you think. It does not take brave to harm a person. Maybe it would not hurt you to read Henry David Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience.

[Professor Wal-Mart]

Maybe it wouldn't hurt you to be less sanctimonious. I read Civil Disobedience a long time ago and I agree with the principles, but one waives his right to civil disobedience when they sign up for the military or CIA. Except in cases of abject inhumanity, which I do not think describes waterboarding or sleep deprivation of detainees, job one is following your directives.

[BARRISTER]

Prof. WalMart:

Your reasoning is what the Nazis in their Defence at Nuremberg, and it failed.

[Professor Wal-Mart]

The trials at Nuremberg were for the prosecution of the leadership of the Nazi party. Rank-and-file members of the German military and intelligence services were not tried at Nuremberg.

An effective military or security apparatus relies heavily on command structure and strict adherence to orders from one's superiors. Waterboarding may be torture, personally I'm agnostic on the subject, but it does not jump out at me as an order that I'd expect CIA or military personnel to defy.

[Michael Gene Sullivan - Huffpost Blogger]

There is an old theory that when running for office you campaign to the Right or Left, but run to the center once you win. Obama seems to be doing something else - running into the past. Not to find the culprits of the greatest crimes in American political history, nor to uncover the bandits who masterminded the near bankruptcy of our nation - instead the current Administration seems bent on going back to the 90's, as if by ignoring eight years of high crimes, looting, and death all will be well again. If we could only resurrect the Clinton White House without the scandals, his every action shouts, pretend the Bush/Cheney years didn't happen, everything will be fine. Obama seems to be trying to get the ship of state back on course without realizing it was the course of the last 30 years - deregulation, crumbling social contract, a for-profit, Corporatist foreign policy, and political lawlessness - that led us here. And by trying to dump the injustices of the last 8 years down the memory hole unexamined and unredressed he becomes not an agent of Change, but of the victory of political expediency over Hope. And I hope I'm wrong.

[Liberal2]

Precisely.

I only voted for Obama because he wasn't a rethug.

[mbaty]

You can bet that there were threats made on Obama to pardon the CIA people. And you can also bet that they would've made good on those threats had Obama not pardoned them. Obama is in a very tricky place right now. He is compassionate and thoughtful, but he's been thrown in with those who have no interest in the interest of the public or of "justice" as we think of it. He is walking a fine line.
We have to keep asking for, intending, and seeking the changes we want made, because we cannot rely on Obama to do it all. If you think the CIA is going to let him prosecute them, you don't understand the nature of political power in the US.
That said, if you are "ordered" to torture someone, please refuse, for all of us. Spare us the worldwide embarrassment, and, in your refusal, elevate us all to the ideal America we know we can be.
Let's all decide that, when asked, even by a person of "authority," we will not torture other humans.

[Liberal2]

"...You can bet that there were threats made on Obama to pardon the CIA people. And you can also bet that they would've made good on those threats had Obama not pardoned them. Obama is in a very tricky place right now..."

So what? What we need is a president with courage. If he's decided he doesn't have the guts to do what's needed...resign, let's see if Biden does.

[futate01]

I agree. He jumped in the fire, now he needs to fight the battle.