What’s Good for Jon Burge is Good for the CIA
Although prosecutors did convict a few rogue FBI agents who had provided information to organized crime figures to help them avoid capture, prosecutions are rare whenever illegalities are committed against nascent political organizations, activists or “unpopular” people.
Even when such prosecutions occurred, as they did during the 1970s when several FBI agents were convicted of violating the rights of anti-war activists, corrupt apologists like Ronald Reagan, darling of the “conservatives,” issued pardons before any of these agents ever spent a day in prison. Reagan said he hoped to “forgive those who engaged in excesses,” a forgiveness conspicuously not extended to those whose rights were violated.
How ironic it is to now hear Obama, darling of the “liberals,” sound exactly like Reagan as he excuses the “excesses” of the CIA.
Obama’s actions convey two grim realities about America: the first is that American democracy is often nothing more than the substituting of one self-serving hypocrite for another; the second is that America’s legal system is founded on three lies—the lie that “justice is blind”; the lie that “nobody is above the law”; and the lie that “America is a nation of laws, not men.”
And a system founded upon lies is incapable of producing truth or justice.
America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, once said, “I tremble for our nation when I remember that God is just.” But when a country like Spain, with its doctrine of “universal justice,” refuses to investigate the crimes of the Bush dictatorship, people who dream of fairness and human rights must tremble for the world as well.
But, if Jefferson is correct, these CIA torturers and their enablers will ultimately discover, once their days on earth have ended, that a governmental rubber-stamp will not exempt them from paying for their crimes.
Yet, at the conclusion of Et Tu Barack (Part II), I expressed both my hope and my doubt “that those who do good will eventually be rewarded and that those who do evil will eventually be punished.”
Obama and Holder’s actions have only amplified my doubt, and made me wonder if any political system will ever produce honorable leaders who are guided by selfless principles, instead of driven by a self-aggrandizing lust for power.
In 1776, at the dawn of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” But, after eight nightmarish years of the Bush dictatorship and the realization that a new generation of torturers will walk freely and safely upon the earth, I am compelled to ask, “Do men even have souls to try?”
David R. Hoffman
Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru
