Un-American Activities

Yesteday, I wrote a long comment on Laird's previous post on the order of "Hang em all, and send the bill for the rope to the Republican party." I didn't post it, although I like to imagine a vast crowd of Americans listening to a toothless French Revolutionary crone, complete with dirty bonnet, reading off a list of crimes against the people and pointing a jagged finger at Dick Cheney, his hands and feet shackled, old vegetables flying through the air.

We now have to start considering what we really are going to about the proto-fascist elements in American government that have endangered the country over the last eight years. That is, when we have a Democratic government again next January, which while far from certain is the most likely outcome.

If only the Internet was larger, we could list the Bush Administration's crimes against our country. From torture as policy to billions in government money disappearing to wholesale contempt for the rule of law and constitutional liberties manifested in innumerable instances by the Bush Administration, we need, first of all, a basic accounting of what happened.

It is bad enough, and so large in scope, I don't think even a set of high profile criminal trials of Administration officials would suffice. And there is a tremendous political problem: we have so much to repair, a balance will have to be struck between accountability and moving the country forward.

Obama's energy is directed towards national progress, in what politically speaking is, I think, the correct judgment.

So how do we get the bastards? How does the United States, as it is, account for what is looking like a near-brush with a soft, Putinistic dictatorship, and punish the offenders?

Trying to conceive of what is politically possible, and what would not grind the country to a halt, what I am imagining is a bit of the Truth and Reconciliation commission, not quite so grand, but essentially a bi-partisan congressional commission employing a special prosecutor who works not for DOJ but for Congress directly. The idea is comparable: blanket immunity is granted from prosecution for testimony from the legions of low and mid-level functionaries of the Bush Administration, who wrote the checks, escorted the prisoners, signed off on ignoring law and the Constitution. Let what follows, follow.

The whole point is that we get a complete account of what actually happened, how U.S. law was violated, who we killed and tortured (remember the people who died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan), and who ordered what, whether in the government itself, or particularly, in the private organizations that have been feeding at the public trough during the security hysteria that fueled this mess.

Call it the Congressional Bush-Era Un-American Activities Committee.

In a related idea, here is a picture of William Kristol.