Talking about prosecuting war criminals and other ways of pretending to care

We come now to the curious case of Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who is holdng up the confirmation of President Obama's choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder, until Mr. Holder comes clean on whether he intends to prosecute Americans for torture.  Since we live in Wonderland, you of course already know that Cornyn needs to be reassured that Holder won't. 

"Part of my concern, frankly, relates to some of his statements at the hearing in regard to torture and what his intentions are with regard to intelligence personnel who were operating in good faith based upon what their understandng of what the law was," Cornyn said yesterday. 

What Cornyn is trying to say is that both the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 retroactively provide defenses to those who might otherwise be charged with war crimes or Geneva Convention violations; these might loosely be called "state of mind" defenses, and Cornyn is pretending to be worked up at the prospect of a new Administration nullifying the august and sacred pronouncements of the Senate in carefully "crafting" these loopholes.

You know -- as if.  Senator John, whose law degree from someplace called St. Mary's College in Texas probably does not entitle him to lecture Yale's Eric Holder about how to read criminal statutes, especially since Holder is an actual lawyer and Cornyn is another in an endless series of Lone Star Bullshitters, doesn't care about "intelligence personnel."  Cornyn is holding down the fort for Bush and trying to flush Holder out on whether he's going to prosecute the Big Dog.  Obama, Holder, and the American Public are not going to sit still for another Abu Ghraib bottom-feeding exercise where the Justice Dept. goes after some low-level staffer as a "bad apple." If the procedure of tying an Arab down to a table and pouring water into his lungs was the officially sanctioned policy approved by the "Principals" in the Situation Room, as reported, then there's your target.  Otherwise, forget it.

But it's nice of Cornyn to help Bush decide, while things are still up in the air for the ex-Preznit, between settling down on a ranch near Crawford or un rancho cerca de Asuncion.  But not to worry, W.  You're feeling a little vulnerable right now and your native paranoia has your mind working overtime.  But it's all good.  I know my fellow Americans, and this will all pass.  This is just a fun game for us.  It's all so dramatic  -- torture!  It allows us to pretend to care about other humans (even Arabs!), to simulate concern for our "standing" in the world, and even to feign reverence for the "rule of law."

Oh for crying out loud.  What a bunch of malarkey.  Obama knows it too, which is why he's settled into this "looking forward" mantra as a way to deflect the temporary mania for vengeance. Pres. O has one great gift: an unerring feel for the Zeitgeist.  He knows what works and what don't.  It's why he knew he could get away with Rick Warren and with voting for telecom immunity. And he knows that Americans don't want to see former presidents, vice presidents, attorneys general, secretaries of state or defense, or anyone else prosecuted as war criminals.

It isn't going to happen.  So let it go, Glenn Greenwald, Keith Olbermann, Dahlia Lithwick.  O can't go for that, no can do.  Now it's true that the international Convention Against Torture, signed by President Reagan and with the force of a treaty within the United States (thus: the supreme law of the land under Article 6 of the Constitution) requires us to prosecute torture against anyone found within our borders who is suspected of having engaged in it, with no excusing circumstances such as necessity, peril or anything else. The Convention is quite explicit and unqualified in demanding compliance from its signatories. But seriously folks, we also signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the U.N. Charter, and did that stop us from, respectively, (a) selling fissile materials and nuclear technology to India, a non-NPT party, or (b) unilaterally abrogating the ABM Treaty with Russia or (c) invading Iraq?  Hell no.

So our vaunted "respect" for international law and our "deep concern" about our international standing are simply more cudgels we use for domestic purposes, namely, to beat up on each other.  Americans are smug, indifferent, insular scofflaws whose sleep is never disturbed by any such considerations.  And this same mass media-mediated state of semi-consciousness we call our national "conscience" is not going to arouse us to prosecute anyone for torturing Arabs.  We wouldn't prosecute Jack Bauer, would we?  Of course not.  And he's a real TV character.