Torture Report: “How America Lost Its Moral Authority”

The Senate “torture report” and
the reaction to it (both critical and positive) are part of a
far-larger problem of legitimacy facing American government, I
argue in
a new Daily Beast column:

We need to be clear about the ultimate import of the torture
report, which covers a period from late 2001 through 2009 and whose
release was unconscionably delayed for years. It won’t be the cause
of lowered international esteem for America or even attacks on
overseas personnel. No, that’s all due to the same old failed
interventionist foreign policy, massive and ongoing drone attacks,
and the proliferation of “dumb wars” over the past dozen years
under both Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses.

The torture report is simply the latest and most graphic
incarnation of an existential leadership crisis that has eaten
through Washington’s moral authority and ability to govern, in the
way road salt and rust eat through car mufflers in a Buffalo
winter. “America is great because she is good,” wrote Tocqueville back in the day. “If America
ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” We’ve got a lot
of explaining to do, not just to the rest of the world but to
ourselves. How much longer will we countenance the post-9/11
national security state, which Edward Snowden’s ongoing revelations
remind us are constantly mutating into new forms and outrages?

This is all far bigger than the
run-of-the-mill awfulness of the past decade-plus of bipartisan
blunders, mud-slinging, and scandals.

For most of the 21st century, faith in government has been
fading like the last light sent off by a star that had died long
before we even knew of its existence. Record
low numbers of Americans trust the government to do the
right thing and record high numbers see it as the biggest threat to
the future. The 2000 presidential election was essentially decided
by a coin toss, an unnerving reality from which we have never
fully recovered. If the highest office in the land is governed by
such caprice, maybe all of government is equally unmoored to
anything other than a will to power and sheer luck. George W. Bush
went into Iraq under specious circumstances. Under the most charitable
interpretation, his administration was simply mistaken. Elected on
a promise to undo Bush’s record on civil liberties, state
surveillance, and foreign policy, Barack Obama arguably has been
worse on every score. Is it any wonder that control of Congress is swinging back and
forth like a tetherball?

The leadership in both parties is laughable and ineffective,
incapable even of pushing a budget through in the official manner
while missing no opportunity to sermonize on the real and imagined
evils of their legislative adversaries. The torture report taunts
both sides equally because in the final analysis, the difference
between “How could you support this?” and “How could you let this
happen?” is morally null and void.

Read the whole thing.