On the day that George W. Bush made one last attempt at a feel-good, don't-blame-me farewell, Eric Holder said that waterboarding is torture. The two events made a jarring juxtaposition. On the one hand a stubborn, reactionary president threw both of those qualities in our face. On the other hand, the incoming attorney general began the long process of undoing the worst effects of the Bush years.
Recovery is the word of the moment: economic recovery from a runaway market capitalism, social recovery from the right-wing agenda to pick and choose who has civil rights, and moral recovery from the kind of blind self-righteousness that can convince itself that torture isn't torture but "enhanced techniques." Speaking personally, I think recovery from the temptation to punish the outgoing administration will be the most important healing we can all do together. No one is more convinced than a man with his back against the wall. This explains why Bush can stoutly defend himself while a recent survey of 100 historians by George Mason Univ. found that 98% consider Bush a failed president and 61% — an astonishing number — call him the worst president in American history.
A defeated president isn't the same as a defeated country. Bernard-Henri Levy, the noted French intellectual and commentator on America, made a telling remark in this regard. He congratulated the U.S. for being less harmed by a bad president than France would have been, pointing out that in France, much of society feels tied to the country's leader. Therefore, during the doldrums of the Chirac era, France as a whole felt as if it were in the doldrums. Here, on the other hand, life went forward for millions of Americans who detached themselves from the neocons and the religious right, maintaining tolerance and progressive values while the right wing tried to destroy both, and never wavering in their conviction that the Constitution could be restored once its attackers fell.
Because they kept their vision clear, I don't think these Americans want to pursue the wrongdoers in the Bush administration to the full extent of their misdeeds. They agree with President-elect Obama, whose instincts tell him that healing the country's deep divisions is far more important. The two courses don't go together. I don't think you can hold acrimonious hearings on torture while at the same time seeking healing. Retribution isn't healing. Enough — for me, at least — to hear Mr. Holder's clear, certain, succinct statement, "Waterboarding is torture." Suddenly the toxic fog that the Bush administration generated around this subject begins to clear. That is healing.
The neocons aren't going to abandon their ideology. Vice-President Cheney is never going to admit he made the slightest mistake in eight years (instead, weirdly, he admitted only to some "underestimates"). President Bush himself will remain, in his emotionally damaged way, certain that he has a decent heart and "made the tough decisions." That they were horribly wrong decisions based on warped values escapes him. So we owe it to ourselves to do the healing he won't acknowledge, to distance ourselves from a defeated president by rectifying all the mistakes we can and letting the tide wash the rest into the dustbin of history.
