All Are Equal Under the Law

There is an article on Yahoo! News that just came out about 15 minutes ago. The headline reads: “Obama advisers: No charges likely vs interrogators”

Within the body of the article was a quote from an interview by Vermont Public Radio. When asked if Bush administration officials would face war crimes, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Senate Judiciary Chairman said, “In the United States, no.”

In addition, “two Obama advisors said there’s little – if any – chance that the incoming president’s Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provided worldwide outrage.”

This is despicable! No way should anyone who perpetrated these atrocities not be held accountable. I cannot believe this injustice. This is just a furtherance of “The Powers That Be” throughout the decades enabling current administrations to flaunt the law with impunity, knowing that at the end, they will be held unaccountable by the successors. I’m convinced there is some kind of “Gentlemen’s Agreement” that when leaving office the next regime will “move forward and forget the past” and ignore any egregious behavior that’s been perpetrated on the citizens of the world by their predecessors.

However, there are those who are not going to roll over on this. Again, from the article:

“But Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy.

‘The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it,’ Ratner said. ‘I don’t see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable.’”

My sentiments EXACTLY! This is not about revenge or retribution. This is about ALL men and women being held accountable for their actions. No one is above the law, including presidents or ex-presidents or their staffs. At least I thought so in these United States.

The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal.” This does not mean (to borrow from George Orwell) some are more equal than others. Are we to be brainwashed into thinking that these are “Very Important People” with “Very Important Problems” that must be solved regardless of method? Then not worry about what they did to whom and who may have suffered and/or died from these outlaw policies because we “must move forward”? Forget about the past? What’s that about those forgetting the past being condemned to repeat it?

Are we really going to allow us sheep to be shorn by these "Very Important People"? We sheep should just go shopping and let the “Very Important People” take care of business in whatever manner they choose – without oversight?

We must not fall back on the mantra that there are “more Important Issues ahead,” and we must “not dwell on the past.” This sets a bad precedent for the future, letting the soon-to-be “Powers That Be” know they can do whatever they want, and we sheep will just blithely agree that the “past is past” and the “Important Issues” are more pressing than accountability. Is anyone confident that a sitting President (including Barack Obama come January) will “do the right thing” and we should just “trust him,” with whatever he chooses to do because he is a “good guy”?

This is absolutely counter to what our country is all about. All of us should exercise due diligence in overseeing our leaders. Believe it or not, they work for us and, in theory, are supposed to promote OUR general welfare and let US enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not just the corporate elite or military industrial complex.