Error and Trial

At The Corner, Byron York is unable to understand how the left could possibly be serious about wanting to put Bush Administration officials in some kind of courtroom or hearing room to sort out how badly they abused, circumvented, or otherwise violated the law. I’m not sure that I’m the first conservative with halfway decent bona fides to state that I am not unable to understand where this impulse is coming from, but I’ll do it here, for the record and what it’s worth.

The explanation is simple: this administration has made a habit of doing as secretly as possible whatever it takes to do whatever it deems appropriate at the time, and has taken that approach during a period of extreme fear, confusion, and opacity. The ‘post-9/11 world’ does require a series of emendations and tweaks to our law. But these need to be conducted with as much transparency and due process as possible, and the contention that the Bush administration met the bar of possibility in that regard is simply fanciful.

When it comes to talk of trials and truth commissions, the administration is directly and almost exclusively responsible for riling up ‘the left’ — which inevitably will turn out not to be made up exclusively of card-carrying Kossacks. Maybe this is the cost of doing business, but at any rate if the administration simply went public with what it did and why, there wouldn’t be a need for any great formal spectacle. But I suppose the administration can’t do that For Reasons of National Security. It should be obvious how that kind of circular logic is frustrating, and not just for partisan reasons.