Can the Damage Be Undone?

Under the Bush administration and under the guise of national security, American’s 4th Amendment Constitutional right not to be spied upon without probable cause and the issuing of a judicial warrant for that purpose has been eroded, and in some cases effectively discarded.

Beginning with the jingoistically named USA Patriot Act in October of 2001, American’s library records, book and periodical purchases, and medical records were deemed subject to secret scrutiny by the government. With a Kafkaesque or Orwellian twist, depending on your brand of totalitarian state paranoia, the subject of investigation was not to be informed by those agencies whose records were to be explored by pain of fine and/or incarceration. A nice touch in coercion by the same band of “patriots” that lobbied for closed, extra-legal military tribunals for prisoners in Guantanamo, and who also conducted kidnappings for torture AKA extraordinary renditions. Fortunately the Supreme Court did not bend to the Chief Executive’s Spanish Inquisitional type of legal justice, though for all we know the abductions for torture may still be going on.

Next came the shocking revelation and years-late admission that American’s phone calls and emails had been illegally tapped and spied on in violation of FISA, which requires government agencies to get judicial warrants for such surveillance activities. In collecting this illicit data the Bush administration was aided and abetted by some of the major telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon being among them. To what extent this has been done – the number of Americans spied on, and the type and amount of data procured – is still not known, and probably never will be what with the recent passage of a revised FISA bill that lets the telecoms, and by extension Bush & Company off the legal hook.

And let us not forget that medieval master stroke to do away with habeas corpus for those seized as suspected terrorists, which has been the moral cornerstone of our judicial system, and a bedrock safeguard for the rights of mankind for a thousand years – the right to be charged with an offense in a court of law in an expedient manner. Once again the Supreme Court narrowly voted against this unprecedented legal dismemberment, passing it off to Congress to deal with in the final analysis.

“The U.S. doesn’t torture,” lied Mr. bush having all the while constructed a “legal” framework for the systematic torturing and horrendous abuse of subjects in prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo for the erstwhile purpose of gathering critical information. Apparently some high-ranking officials in the Pentagon, and former Secretary of State Powell thought this (again) unprecedented and dangerously libel-to-backfire dismantling of the Geneva Conventions on the handling of prisoners a terrible idea. If it’s okay for America to torture and abuse prisoners of war then what’s to stop American prisoners from the same fate in the hands of an enemy, huh Mr. Bush?

So the question is: Can these egregious Constitutional breakdowns, the underpinnings of our legal system, along with a dissolution of moral and ethical bounds in devising systems of torture be changed back, reformed or undone? Can we go back as a nation, and as the individuals that comprise that nation, to what used to be; before those that have perpetrated this marked veering off course? Can we undo what’s been done?

I’d answer, yes and no.

Laws can be reinstated, or new ones written to correct a course. If there is the political will to do so. This remains to be seen when a new administration comes to power. My guess –perhaps hope- is that a Democratic president will encourage changes of the provisions of the Patriot Act that all but do away with the Fourth Amendment. I also think that this same Democratic Chief Executive will encourage a revising of the compromised FISA to temper some of its overreach and better safeguard civil liberties. However I don’t think the newly granted immunity can be overturned, and more’s the pity.

I think any program to justify the use of torture, and the twisted legal logic that underwrote it, will be done away with and denounced. The people must make it clear to their leaders what they will accept and what they will not. If we as a nation haven’t lost all our moral footing, and are still a people of conscience with a strong sense of justice, which I believe we are, then we will make sure our leaders correct the disastrous course the Bush administration has taken.

But there’s a nagging doubt that because the pendulum of cultural shifts has swung so far to the right, the center is no longer where we once were, and our cultural consciousness has shifted with it. For example: The concept of a pre-emptive war being justifiable. Have we as a nation become more acceptant of that idea? And what about the question of torture: Is it ever acceptable and under what circumstances? How much spying can or should we do on our citizens in the name of national security?

The fact that we’re even entertaining some of these ideas indicates to me that the center has shifted from where it was. The center of our sense of what is right or wrong, just or moral, has been, I think, brought to a different place; a less tolerant, more suspicious and more fearful place. Because we have moved so far afield from what we once held to be the norm of behavior, and because the actions of our leaders have degraded us in the eyes of many other nations, we can’t just erase these deeds by the stroke of a pen and go on as if all is well again. It’s too late for that.

Of course we must get our legal footing back to where it was before being usurped by a small band of ideological miscreants. But can we get our moral sense back? It’s a very disturbing question, but I think it’s one we (all) need to wrestle with, and then come up with a way of restoring our moral compass. I think there are ways of doing that – first and foremost being Congressional hearings examining criminal or illicit acts. In addition we could embark on national projects that benefit our society as a whole, beginning with an affordable universal health care system. Government sponsored public works projects could go a long way toward providing jobs for people, repairing the nation’s infrastructure and at the same time shoring up the failing economy. We need to reinstate and enforce regulations that oversee commerce and trade, and that protect the public’s interest, not just wall street and investors. These are just some of the things that can restore our civic sense of responsibility and participation in a democracy sullied and perverted by the current ruling claque.

Perhaps some version of a truth and reconciliation process will be needed to regain our moral footing. It is important that we know the degree to which we’ve been lied to and misled. It’s essential that we become aware of what’s been done in our name to those we’ve imprisoned and stripped of all legal rights. It’s imperative that we be told the extent of the clandestine warrantless surveillance that has been ongoing for the last seven years, and not let it be sweep under the rug by enacting a “new” FISA and saying the job is done.

If we do not proceed with Congressional hearings and investigations to discover the extent of the damage done, and hold legally accountable those who transgressed and are responsible for these actions then the body politic cannot heal and will remain infected. If we try to dismiss or ignore the illicit actions of those in government responsible for taking the nation on an illegal and immoral direction, for whatever reasons, political or otherwise, then the damage to our legal system, and the degradation of our moral code of behavior and standards of decency will not be undone. There are some small signs of hope on the horizon, but we are still far from shore.