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Why Investigate? Reversing the Culture of "Anything
Goes"
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2009-03-05 07:44:33
A recent USA Today/Gallup poll reported that 62 percent of Americans favor some form of inquiry into the torture practices
of the Bush administration, in the form of a criminal investigation or an independent panel. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy,
chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee has vowed to press an investigation despite the Obama administration’s lack of
enthusiasm.
Not only would a Senate investigation take steps toward uncovering the truth about atrocities committed under the previous
administration; it would also put the new administration on notice that such atrocities are not acceptable to the American
people. Despite his campaign pledges to renounce torture and close Guantanamo and other secret prisons, President Obama
has proven slow to reverse his predecessor’s policies and reluctant to address what happened in the past, stating, in fact, that
he is “more interested in looking forward than...in looking backwards.”
The desire to move forward instead of looking back is a common excuse. But those who forget the past are doomed to repeat
it, and those who have been allowed to commit atrocities with impunity will not suddenly stop doing so simply because the
faces of their superiors have changed. During the 2004 campaign, then-Senate candidate Obama predicted that President
Bush’s defeat of John Kerry would lead to “a culture of anything goes.” He was right then, but the reversal of a pervasive
culture of "anything goes" takes more than his showing up in the White House. It takes an honest assessment of what
happened in the past, imposition of consequences for the perpetrators, and concrete procedures to make sure violations of
human rights and civil liberties do not happen again.
