How bad things are, and what needs to be done

The following is from an editorial in the NY Times, emailed by a friend, and it summarizes pretty well why I'm politically active these days (in frozen Iowa trying to get a new Democrat into the presidency):

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country.
Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some
of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of
prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes
of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of
the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the
Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we've felt this horror, this
sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has
become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened
by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there
is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot
that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals,
that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals
are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America's position
of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and
treaties, sullied America's global image, and trampled on the constitutional
pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and
challenging times. These policies have fed the world's anger and alienation and
have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually
humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been
punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen
mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen
the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own
citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping
phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government's top lawyers huddled in
secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to
circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial
review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow
Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to
abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for
abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn't go just a bit too
far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national
unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more
power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time
fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others
determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they
could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq,
were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could
claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with
no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence
and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not
permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American
jailers.

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where "high-value detainees" were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that "experts" could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush's two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.