I think that in order to move forward we're going to have to examine the past

[Wetzelbill]

I don't understand why anybody would think that reaching out to the other side involves ignoring egregious crimes. Or at the very least potential crimes. I have always been troubled at how easily we let political and economic elites off the hook when they've obviously done something wrong. I know people who have gone to prison for relatively innocuous offenses that never hurt anybody except maybe themselves. They were held accountable, why can't those who commit the biggest crimes be held accountable?

Any damage or reprisals that may be caused by investigating and/or prosecuting any Bush officials who committed crimes is nothing compared to the damage they caused in performing those actions. Should we just let them get away with it because it might create political turmoil or increase partisanship around the country? No, I don't think so.

It's better to enforce the law, so that these things never happen again. Will it aggravate some wounds? Maybe, but it will heal even more. That's important.

That's justice.

[LakeSamish706]

1. I totally agree and if Obama were to stand in the way of this, he will be the one...

that will be brought into account. Like Johnathon Turley said, Obama will own this if he doesn't insist on investigations for these crimes by Bush and ilk.

[AtomicKitten]

2. If he doesn't, somebody in the world community will and rightfully so. nt

[gravity]

3. Moving forward means forgiving the past

[Wetzelbill]

4. That's a curious response

It could mean many things, can you elaborate?

[gravity]

6. It means that you can't be seeking vengeance

It is fine to investigate the truth to make sure mistakes don't happen again, but when your motivation is to put people into jail, it isn't moving forward.

[Wetzelbill]

8. That's not why I would want it

I think if somebody commits serious crimes they should pay the price according to the law just like everybody else.

[gravity]

13. but that comes at a cost

of dividing up the nation and getting stuck in past political battles. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Someone has to forgive to move forward.

[Bjorn Against]

18. Gandhi never meant for that quote to be used to defend war criminals.

[gravity]

21. Alright, I will give you the example on how we treated Germany after WW1

seeking justice and making them pay for the crimes they committed. It is all the same concept.

[Bjorn Against]

22. I will give you an example of how we treated Germany after WWII

We sent the criminals who were running the show to their war crimes trials. I don't know about you, but I think that was the right thing to do.

[Wetzelbill]

23. Nobody knows that for sure

That's just an excuse not to do it. Most people in our country aren't to fond of nor do they approve of this administration, so the division isn't as big as most would think. When Bill Clinton was impeached for virtually nothing, he was far more popular and had far more support and it didn't tear our country apart. The shrieking far right would make a big deal out of it, probably not many others. Even elite media like Joe Klein are in support of it. Upholding the law isn't an eye for an eye. Not even close. If somebody commits crimes, they should be held accountable. I am not suggesting that because Bush got lots of innocent Americans killed by lying us into a war that he should be shot or anything. I'm saying that it should be looked into, and if wrongdoing is found then, according to the law, they should pay for that crime.

I'll put it to you this way. I can forgive somebody like Ollie North for his actions during Iran-Contra, but I still think his actions should have been looked into. I forgive Chuck Colson and G. Gordon Liddy for anything they have done during Watergate, but they deserved to pay the price for breaking the law. I, personally, can forgive Scooter Libby for whatever he did and whatever secrets he kept about the outing of Valerie Plame, I already have for the most part. But he definitely deserved to be investigated and he definitely deserved to be convicted of his crimes. That's not an eye for an eye, that's just living in a law abiding society.

As a child there was a young man who visited my house, I vaguely remember him. Not long afterward he and a friend were brutally murdered by a hitchhiker who they picked up. He marched them off into the woods and shot them. I was horrified at that. I hated him. I am from a small rural area, an Indian reservation. That man has been on death row for about 25 years. I long ago forgave him for what he did to my fellow tribal members, including somebody I met. But I don't think that he should have been allowed to get away with it either. I don't believe he should be allowed to just get out of prison and to be absolved of those murders. He committed a crime and should be held accountable, just like you or I should be if we committed crimes. Just like Bush, Cheney or whomever else has committed a crime. Should we become a society that just looks away when a crime is committed in an effort to move on? If we did that we'd soon have nothing to move on from. Justice is not an eye for an eye, in and of itself. Justice is fairness according to the rule of law. We should all be able to live up to that and held accountable if we can't. Whether your an average citizen or a member of the executive branch.

[gravity]

25. Prosecuting Bush would just be a political and legal shit strom

Even if your intentions are just, it is going to be a very messy process if you are making this a criminal case.

Instead of really looking for the truth, you will be fighting the defense of "faulty intelligence" and it will probably be scapegoated onto someone else. It is the same excuses we've been hearing for the last 5 years. It is just going to get dragged on and on with no real conclusion.

You are also turning this into a political battle, which probably will be played into the Republican hands.

In an ideal world, it could be a good idea to prosecute Bush, but if that was the case, he would have never been voted in office in the first place.

If you forgive and move on, you might actually get a more accurate investigation because you aren't politicizing the process and aren't putting people on the defensive. People will more than likely be honest if they aren't worried about being thrown into jail.

[Wetzelbill]

26. If you forgive and move on you get no investigation at all

That's what I'm talking about. I don't care about politicizing it. He's not in office, there is no impeachment by the House or removal by the senate. You get somebody independent like Fitzgerald to investigate it. Any investigation at all isn't playing into Republicans hands, it's the last thing they would want in the first place. And it's more than just Bush, you have a whole host of things to look into. The wasted money in Iraq, the Justice Dept problems, torture etc etc. The intelligence isn't really the biggest part of it, because that's among the most difficult parts, it's a whole bunch of stuff. You'd probably never get to Bush, but you have to look at investigating the problems. And if election stopped prosecution, then Bill Clinton would have never been prosecuted for impeachment and then for removal of office, so that makes no sense.

Being fearful of a potential political battle isn't an excuse to do absolutely nothing. The only people that would go crazy over it is the small but vocal far right. Are you so scared of the far right that you wouldn't want to see any investigation at all? I'm not. If they aren't mad and trying to fight about fair investigations then they'll be mad about something else. That's how they are, and it's no reason to be cowed by them. Their time is over, the far right doesn't dictate what is legal and what isn't based on their ability to scare people out of a political fight. It's not a political battle, it's the law, but yeah, they'll try to make it one, so they'll do what they have to do. Forgiving and moving on does nothing. It's the same as not forgiving but moving on. Nothing happens either way. An investigation doesn't magically spring up out of thin air, somebody has to put it into motion.

And no way in hell would anybody involved in this administration at all ever be honest because now they think they won't have to worry about going to jail. Not even close. They will not magically decide to give up information out of the goodness of their hearts, not going to happen.

[Bjorn Against]

12. I am still curious to see if you would apply this same logic to street crimes.

[gravity]

14. They are a threat to society

ex politicians aren't.

[Bjorn Against]

15. White Collar Crime costs us many billions every year.

How do you know these people are going to stop committing crimes once they leave office?

[gravity]

16. They don't have the power to do so

[Bjorn Against]

17. Sure they do, they have all kinds of friends on Wall Street and in the halls of power.

I think you would have to admit that any ex-President is going to have some serious connections, Bush will still have far more power than the average citizen once he leaves office. And anyways that is beside the point, not all street criminals are at risk to reoffend yet they still prosecute them. There is no reason that George Bush should be treated under a different set of laws.

[Wetzelbill]

30. even more than that they are

still part of the culture and especially the foreign policy establishment. Poppy Bush was on the board of the Carlyle Group, he still gets daily intelligence briefings. He still does work with the Saudis. People like George Schultz and Caspar Weinberger worked for Bechtel, or Cheney with Halliburton. Jim Baker's firm Baker Botts represented the Saudi Royal family against the 9/11 victims families. Retired politicians and political figures are heavily involved in our national and world affairs and it reflects on policy. Look at how people like Alexander Haig went out and shilled for the Iraq war. How many of those retired military leaders who were paid to sell the Iraq War by the Pentagon have close ties with politicians who wanted that war to happen, even retired ones?

[Bjorn Against]

5. So do you think they should stop investigations of all those who may have committed street crimes?

Or should they still continue to pursue ordinary criminals but forgive the crimes of the powerful?

[Bluenorthwest]

10. Balderdash

The inner act of forgiveness and the outward delivery of justice are not mutally exclusive, and in fact the justice is most often necessary for forgiveness to take place. The current cut and paste philosphy that wants to promote looking the other way as some form of spritiual evolution is not a well thought out position.
To the silly satsang crowd, dig this: to look forward or to look backward is to look at that which is not. Looking at the present moment is the only true thing. To deny the truth of the moment is to remain forever unable to progress.

[Wetzelbill]

11. I think that was a haiku

:)

[proud patriot]

7. to the Hague with bushco

:patriot: let them handle it

[Wetzelbill]

9. that'll work

[Vattel]

19. To move forward

we need better criminal laws against torture. Prosecutions would be nice, but with the crappy laws we have now, they might well fail.

[Wetzelbill]

24. yes

[mmonk]

20. Yes, it is justice. And justice will bring a closure that ignoring will not.

And all the talk in the world will not bring people together into some type of understanding without the truth.

[IsItJustMe]

27. If you don't learn from your mistakes, your bound to repeat them. And so far, we haven't even

looked at them. Time for a Church commission.

[Wetzelbill]

28. I am not a big fan of commissions

but you are exactly right, and I think it would be better to have one than nothing. And I have no delusions that Bush will be carried off in handcuffs or Cheney. But we need to hold somebody accountable in some way, and we need to get some insight into what went wrong. A commission is good.

[bullwinkle428]

29. I think the Rude Pundit put it best...

"...one of the greatest faults of the Bush administration is its failure to look backwards, its refusal to understand what happened and why. Fuck this whole "move forwards" horseshit. That was the mantra of this White House. It's why they didn't even want a 9/11 commission. It's why they didn't want any real accounting of the Iraq War. When you're investigating crimes, you are always looking backwards. Stop damning us to repeat. You can be sure that, when they're no longer in office, there's a lot of White House officials who are gonna avoid going to most of Europe for fear of arrest."

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

[struggle4progress]

31. "The past isn't dead: it isn't even past" -- William Faulkner

[eridani]

32. Does "moving forward" mean we should eliminate courts and police departments?

All crimes, by definition, occur in the past. Let's just tell the victims to get on with their lives and quit pointing fingers.

[glitch]

34. It is crazy isn't it? We get closure when we remove criminals from society.

That is the only way we will feel safe again, even if safety simply means, for example, the confidence to invest in a company again based on their books.

Confidence in the US desperately needs restoring and simply moving forward without holding the criminals responsible will not accomplish that.

[Wetzelbill]

35. exactly right

[JeffR]

33. Hell, yeah.

I've been insisting until I'm blue in the keyboard that what's at stake here is justice, not revenge. As much as vengeance is hotly desired, the rule of law points us toward justice. The rule of law means justice or it means nothing.

[Wetzelbill]

36. I don't even care about revenge

Sure that would be sweet to an extent, but what good does that do? I don't want to get vengeance just for the sake of that. It's the law! I don't care if people are so cowed by the far right that they are apprehensive of a political fight. Somebody broke the law, they should be held accountable. Period. For example, the OJ Simpson situation was crazy, you knew it was going to cause a big media stir because he's famous and because he was black and it was only a few years removed from the race riots, you knew things were going to get ugly racially. But it still looked like he committed the crime, so he had to be investigated and prosecuted, just like anybody else. In his case he got off, but still, because it was going to be a tough fight and divisive, should he have just been allowed to get away as a suspect? No that's just ridiculous. The argument that we need to heal and move on because it will tear us apart as a nation is weak sauce.