Greenwald: Democratic complicity and what "politicizing justice" really means

[Karmadillo]

Greenwald makes the seemingly obvious point that blocking criminal investigations for political reasons is corrupt regardless of the party doing it.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/24/democrats/index.html

Friday April 24, 2009 08:01 EDT
Democratic complicity and what "politicizing justice" really means

Bush-defending opponents of investigations and prosecutions think they've discovered a trump card: the claim that Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller and Jane Harman were briefed on the torture programs and assented to them. The core assumption here -- shared by most establishment pundits -- is that the call for criminal investigations is nothing more than a partisan-driven desire to harm Republicans and Bush officials ("retribution"), and if they can show that some Democratic officials might be swept up in the inquiry, then, they assume, that will motivate investigation proponents to think twice.

Those who make that argument are clearly projecting. They view everything in partisan and political terms -- it's why virtually all media discussions are about what David Gregory calls "the politics of the torture debate" rather than the substantive issues surrounding these serious crimes -- and they are thus incapable of understanding that not everyone is burdened by the same sad affliction that plagues them.

<edit>

Obama's ostensible motives here are no better. The claim that punishing Bush crimes will undermine his political interests is not only false (as Krugman definitively establishes today) but also corrupt. Democrats spent the last several years vehemently complaining about the "politicization of the Justice Department" under Alberto Gonzales. Yet so many of these same Democrats are now demanding that the Obama DOJ refrain from prosecuting Bush criminals based on purely political grounds: namely, that those prosecutions will interfere with Obama's political agenda.

Blocking criminal investigations for political reasons is definitively corrupt -- period. That's true whether Democrats or Republicans do it. In The New York Times today, Mark Mazzetti and Neil Lewis advance the Jane-Harman/Alberto-Gonzales/AIPAC scandal by making clear that at the core of the scandal lies the actions of Alberto Gonzeles, who intervened to block a criminal investigation of Harman for purely political reasons:

One reason Mr. Gonzales intervened, the former officials said, was to protect Ms. Harman because they saw her as a valuable administration ally in urging The New York Times not to publish an article about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants.

As Michael Isikoff pointed out on Rachel Maddow's show earlier this week, what Gonzales did there (blocking a criminal investigation of Harman because the investigation would undermine the White House's political interests) is extremely similar to what many Obama loyalists are arguing now (that criminal investigations of Bush crimes should be blocked because such investigations would undermine the White House's political interests). That is what made the efforts of Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs and even Obama to dictate who would and would not be prosecuted so improper: it the role of independent Justice Department officials to make that decision based on purely legal and apolitical grounds, not the role of White House officials to try to interfere for political reasons. I was preceded yesterday on Warren Olney's To the Point program by Philip Zelikow, and Zelikow said: "I really don't think the President should have opinions on who should or should not be prosecuted -- full stop."

more...

[LWolf]

1. K & R nt

[Dragonfli]

2. K&R - nt

[chill_wind]

3. Ben Nelson.....Grrrrrr.....

"UPDATE: Just to underscore how continuously Democrats are complicit in thwarting the rule of law in the United States: one of Obama's most impressive and rule-of-law-defending appointees, Dawn Johnsen, has had her nomination as OLC Chief blocked for months by the Right, and the office of a key Democratic Senator -- Ben Nelson -- just told Greg Sargent that Nelson "is all but certain to vote against Johnsen," substantially increasingly the GOP's chances of preventing her from becoming head of the OLC. That's our bipartisan Washington establishment in a nutshell: key Bush torture architects such as John Rizzo and Bush intelligence policy defenders such as John Brennan are able to remain in positions of high power in the Obama administration, while those, like Johnsen, who want accountability for government crimes are considered fringe, extremist and unfit for office."

[mod mom]

4. Equal Protection under the law does not mean you can ignore prosecuting for political reasons.

Zelikow got that right!

[barbtries]

5. greenwald's great

The inability of so many people (both Republicans and Obama-loyal Democrats) to view the need for prosecutions independent of political considerations is a potent sign of how sick our political culture has become.

so fricking true. it is both sick and pathetic that republicans think that their party loyalty should trump all obligations to justice or the rule of law, and that they can twist around words to advance the notion that the left is equally blinded by ideology. the left must continually straighten them out and speak plainly back to the issue: crimes were committed. the perps need to be brought to justice. this is a nation of laws not men. crimes were committed.

i do think and hope that the country is coming out of that slide, because the real damage caused by the republicans with their all politics all the time way of doing business has become apparent at long last to more rather than less of us. the republicans who apparently are incapable of change, reflection, or remorse, don't get it, and consequently are becoming less and less relevant by the day.

speaking to the point of greenwald's piece, i for one say bring it all to light and bring justice to everyone regardless of their politics.

[RC]

6. If we don't do what needs to be done, hopefully the rest of the world will do something.

[Usrename]

7. but, but, but...

If we just let Bush, Cheney and all their henchmen go free, then all of those Republicans in Congress will get on board with Obama's agenda. They'll just be falling all over themselves in their haste and excitement about supporting him...