Through the Long Lens of Time

It’s not often that I dedicate any virtual ink in this space to the editorial work of Nicholas Kristof, but this week he attempted to address an uncomfortable yet important subject in his column, The Truth Commission. The subject matter, unfortunately, is one where we are unlikely to find any fertile ground for an open, honest discussion between opposing sides. The reason? The author leaps directly, with no hint of subtlety, to the phrase “war crimes” as employed by Antonio Taguba in his recent report on American torture. The phrase alone is radioactive and tends to shut down any and all discussion faster than you can say whodunit. Upon its utterance, the eyes of most of my conservative friends begin to glaze over. Comments are then made which include phrases such as “moonbats” or “Code Pink” and “support our troops“, whereupon we march merrily on to the next topic.

Our more liberal colleagues share the blame in equal portion for this breakdown in communications. Since the very first missles began to rain down on Baghdad they have co-opted the phrase, crying out that “Bush is a war criminal!” and “Bush lied, people died!” until the charges became a cacophony of self-parody. Still, Kristol garners an E for effort in trying to wrap his arms around the subject.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Next, he bravely moves on to suggest a corrective course of action.

The first step of accountability isn’t prosecutions. Rather, we need a national Truth Commission to lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing.

That was what South Africa did after apartheid, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it is what the United States did with the Kerner Commission on race and the 1980s commission that examined the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Today, we need a similar Truth Commission, with subpoena power, to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11.

This will be far too bitter a pill to swallow for many – at least for the present. There has been a temptation in our post-9/11 thinking to put aside traditional lofty goals and ideals for the sake of expediency as we confront fears – both real and imagined – of a global threat to our future. Facing the prospect of a shadowy, barely understood enemy from foreign lands, some of us have felt entitled to treat “the other” as somehow less human and less deserving of the same rights and dignities which Americans enjoy. We even fall back on the writings of our founding fathers to find comfort in the fact that such priveleges were never meant for “non-citizens” and particularly so during a crisis such as this. I have, to my regret, been guilty of these same charges on occasion.

Kristol’s proposed solution – this “truth commision” – is a tempting offer, but it comes at the wrong time. America has long excelled at self-examintion, finding the flaws, faults and errors in our own behavior and seeking redress of same. But it’s not something we have historically been able to achieve in the moment. As with our attempts at reparations for slavery, mistreatment of indigenous natives and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two, we’re far more comfortable addressing our failures long after the principal actors are dead and buried. Like a bad vaudeville director, we are unable to break out the hook while the villians are still on the stage.

The time may – and should – come when we will take ourselves to task for some of the activities detailed in General Taguba’s report, but I find it unlikely in the extreme that many of us will live to see the day. For now, external threats are trumping higher purpose, and while many of us may feel a periodic twinge of guilt or regret, the threat of “the other” lurking near every parked minivan will provide cover for our consciences. We want to continue seeing America as that shining city upon the hill, and we don’t care to think that dark, scurrying sounds are coming up from the cellars after the lights have been shuttered. But they are.

e-mail the author: jazzshaw@gmail.com