Bush’s Big Lie

“This government does not torture people.”
-- George W. Bush

George Bush’s credibility has sunk further and deeper than a Russian submarine. Invariably, the divergence of Bush’s rhetoric from reality has been excused as the result of sincere and honest error. Bush may have misled, the apologists insisted, but he did not lie to the American people. The latter offence of course, is considered far graver than the former, especially by Bush’s Christian base, which tends to take Commandments like “Thou Shalt Not Lie’ very seriously.

Personally, I agree with the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, author of the classic, The Art of War, that a statesman is better off lying if doing so will keep us out of war. Statecraft is an art, not a science. And the same can be said about morality.

Bush, however, stands revealed a complete charlatan, a hypocrite, and a war criminal. He and Dick Cheney ran on a platform that was heavy on things liberals supposedly lacked: namely, moral clarity and accountability. When it came to crafting torture memos, however, Bush & Cheney utterly failed to draw bright moral lines against techniques that have been recognized by U.S and International Law as torture for centuries. Put simply, Japanese officials who used water boarding during WWII were prosecuted and found guilty for committing war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials. What the Bush administration’s torture memos did, of course, was to torture the law until interrogators could use any abusive technique Bush, Cheney, & Rumsfeld wanted to authorize.

Defining torture out of existence, by insisting all practices that didn’t lead directly to organ failure or death were acceptable, is the epitome of moral vacuity and evasiveness. In essence, Bush & Cheney thought they could evade moral culpability through legal locutions and hairsplitting: Sure, water boarding is fine, just as long as the water temperature isn’t too hot or cold, and the victim has a pillow, and is tied down with nylon rope that he doesn’t burn his wrists.

Bush & Cheney are intent on evading responsibility in a no less cowardly way. For years they have feigned outrage at lower-level military personnel for committing abuses that they in fact authorized. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice not only lied when they insisted the U.S. did not utilize torture. They lied in the most self-serving way by allowing low-level military personnel to pay the price for the crimes they knowingly sanctioned. The way Bush and Cheney evaded military service in Vietnam was less than honorable; the way Bush & Cheney are evading responsibility for the abusive techniques they authorized is cowardly and despicable.

The release of the torture memos indisputably show that top administration officials – including the president himself – repeatedly lied to the American people. Their deceptions were not aimed at protecting national security, but avoiding responsibility for policies they knew crossed the line into war crimes.

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