The Right Is Still Clutching Its Beloved Torture Policies

Posted by Byard Duncan, AlterNet at 9:00 AM on October 20, 2009.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the man who served as George W. Bush’s CIA director from 2006 to 2009, presented an interesting theory Monday regarding Obama’s April decision to release DOJ torture opinions. In a guest column on CNN.com, Hayden asserted that Obama’s move was “a political one, not a legal one -- a question of choice rather than necessity.”

The flaws with this argument reside on two levels. First of all, it’s somewhat absurd that Hayden would take such a strong stance against transparency, given his prominent involvement in the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping fiasco of 2005 -- arguably this decade’s most ruthless campaign to ascertain intelligence. Guess transparency only goes one way.

But what’s really frustrating about Hayden’s piece is its subtle attempt to relegate an inconvenient little thing called "public opinion" to a separate, de-politicized sphere in the broader discourse on torture. Obama did what he did only because he wanted to, Hayden argues; it was "a deliberate decision and, if it is to be defended, history (and journalism) should demand that it be defended on those grounds and not on some hapless "the judge was going to make me do it" argument."

Hayden’s view is dangerous because it plucks Obama’s move from any sort of political context. At the time of the decision, many in the U.S. were following the torture question very closely (One example: Jane Mayer’s torture opus, “The Dark Side," was nearing its release date). And, regardless of whether or not Obama was feeling overwhelming pressure from ACLU attorneys, he was certainly feeling pressure from millions of concerned citizens. To say that he gladly chose to release information about torturers is like saying Nixon resigned so he could golf: it’s absurd and myopic.

Basically, Hayden’s whole spiel smacks of the same pointed disregard for Americans’ concerns and opinions that characterized the administration of which he was a part. It’s not at all surprising that he would criticize a Democratic president for trying to clean up the shit he spilled. It is, however, kind of disgusting.

Tagged as: torture, obama, aclu, doj, hayden