To prosecute or not to prosecute: that is the question.

A lot is being said and not said about torturous techniques used by the CIA to interrogate enemy prisoners. The far left is outraged and wants Obama to prosecute the people who engaged in those interrogations. There are another set of people who want the interrogators pardoned but their superior officers, who ordered the torture, prosecuted. Obama himself has said he wants to look forward and move on, although he believes this was a crime. The far right neither believes it was a crime nor thinks the agents or their superiors involved in the interrogation should be prosecuted. In short there is a full spectrum of opinions. I hardly expect there to be any consensus on this issue.

There are a few things worth pondering before forming an opinion on this subject though. First of all, if the President thinks torture is illegal and is a crime but in the same breath says that he doesn't support prosecution of the torturers then isn't he condoning a crime? What makes this particular crime forgivable? If this is, then what other crimes are forgivable? The argument that they did what they did to protect the country is hardly defendable. Against what standard or yardstick will you measure an act and say that it is not forgivable regardless what ends it means to achieve? Any odd group of people, together or severally may commit murder, torture, pillage and what not and claim it was necessary, in their best beliefs, to protect the country. By this precedent then they should also not be prosecuted? Or does this mean that only people working in government agencies can be immune from prosecution as long as they claim their actions were for the protection of the country? Who makes this distinction between people in the government and ordinary citizens? The executive branch?

I hope President Obama has well reasoned arguments to answer all of those questions, not just one. There are many angles from which to attack his vacillating decision on whether to prosecute or not to prosecute. I will list at least one such angle in the next blog.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

Does anyone remember what happened at the Mad Hatter's tea party? The Hatter and March Hare tried to put the sleepy, drowsy dormouse in the teapot. I don't know if the tea was hot. And I wonder if it burned the dormouse or killed him entirely. The Hatter had a riddle though, which he confessed he didn't have the answer to himself.

The "tea parties" held across the US yesterday were somehow highly reminiscent of that story. It is a curious coincidence that a lot of the attenders were wearing hats very similar to the Hatter's hat. I wonder who March Hare is. But I think it is pretty clear to the rest of us who the dormouse is. Alas the dormice don't know who they are. And in their slumber they don't realize that the Hatter and the Hare are trying to drown them in that tea.

It is mostly funny, and partly pitiful, that the attendees of the mad tea party somehow got their own party confused with the Boston Tea Party. Now, the Boston Tea Party was in protest of taxation without representation. The mad tea party is in protest of electoral loss of representation. These same party-goers were probably sound asleep (like the dormouse) for the last eight years when government spending went up, surplus went down, deficit went up and the general economy went down and so on. They raise their voices against wealth redistribution but fail to see how the money goes from their wallets to the government coffers to failed bank executives and no-bid government contractors. Is that redistribution? Are the dormice against all redistribution or are they against redistribution in just one direction? The dormice cry and wail because they don't want undeserving fellow citizens to have health care but they do not speak a word when undeserving CEOs of failing companies get millions of the same tax dollars as bonuses. The dormice whine and complain when money is spent inside the country to rebuild its economy but they hardly raise their voices when money is spent outside the country to wage wars and then rebuild other countries. And when the majority of these same dormice get a tax cut, they rally in support of the hatter and the hare who have already received their cuts and are now trying to drown them in the teapot!

Oh the irony! Of mice and men...