“Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration, and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

There comes a time when each of us must take responsibility for our actions, step up and accept that we are accountable not only for the actions but also for the results they engender. This is true for individuals, for organizations and for Nations. It is time for the citizens of the United States to call for an accounting of the crimes perpetrated by members of the Bush Administration and insist that those who broke the law be held responsible.

Despite repeated assurances by the former President that “We do not torture,” there can no longer be any doubt that during the Bush Administration officials of the U.S. government not only committed acts that violate both U.S. and international anti-torture statutes, but also offered up spurious legal arguments in an attempt to provide both justification for the illegal acts and legal cover for the people committing the illegal acts.

Despite President Obama’s moves to end extraordinary rendition and close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, we haven’t fully dealt with the legacy of torture left us by the Bush Administration. How we bring this issue to a close will define us as a nation both in the eyes of the world and to generations that follow us. We will forever, and indelibly, define our legacy as surely as the rise of Nazism defined the legacy of the German nation in the 1930’s.

Evidence of torture has been mounting for some time now with more supporting evidence surfacing on a seemingly daily basis. From Jane Mayer’s superb investigative book, The Dark Side, to the International Red Cross’ 2007 report revealing that CIA medics joined in Guantánamo torture sessions, to the four “torture memos” released last week by the Obama Administration, evidence of acts of torture committed by employees of the U.S. government and evidence that those acts were sanctioned by the Bush administration continues to pile up. As George Hunsinger writes, “A strong prima facie case exists that war crimes of the worst order have been committed.”

Consider these recent developments.

Spain is a NATO ally of the United States which actively supported the Bush Administration’s war on terror, including deploying troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Spanish national security court has opened a criminal investigation into the Bush Administration’s introduction of a regime of torture in the detention facilities at Guantánamo. Specifically targeted in the investigation are:

• Alberto Gonzales, former White House legal counsel and attorney general;
• Jay Bybee, former assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and now a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit;
• John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general at the OLC, now a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley;
• David Addington, former legal counsel and chief-of-staff to Vice President Dick Cheney;
• Douglas Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute;
• William J. Haynes II, former general counsel at the Department of Defense, now a lawyer at Chevron.

Scott Horton, a New York attorney who is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, writes, “The [Spanish] prosecution holds a cache of some 6,000 pages of Bush Administration documents—the so-called torture papers—including extensive evidence that the targets conspired to introduce torture at Guantánamo by crafting a legal ‘golden shield’ to protect those who implemented the torture policies. The criminal complaint quite properly views the torture memoranda prepared by or involving these lawyers as clear documentary evidence of a conspiracy to introduce and authorize a regime of torture. As the criminal complaint notes, the team met and conspired together regularly; they called themselves the ‘war council.’ In every respect their conduct bears the classic badges of a criminal conspiracy.”

At the end of March, the Attorney General for England and Wales announced, in response to a parliamentary inquiry, that she had conferred with the Crown Prosecution Service about the commencement of a criminal investigation in Britain that also focuses on the Bush Administration’s torture project.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority at Guantánamo, stated her legal conclusion that one prisoner had been tortured.

Colin Powell’s former chief-of-staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, acknowledged the Bush Administration knew all along that 90 percent of the Guantánamo detainees were guilty of nothing, but continued holding them anyway.

Vijay Padmanabhan, a State Department lawyer responsible for detainee cases, has publicly acknowledged that torture occurred.

In the wake of World War II and the ashes of the holocaust, the United States led the world in the restatement of the rights of individuals and the obligations of nations in the humane treatment of individuals. Although our efforts over the past sixty years have been far from perfect, the stain of torture on our nation’s conscience threatens to obviate much of the good we have accomplished. If we are to reset our moral compass, we must face what was done in our name and bring the question of torture to a fitting and just conclusion.

“Harsh interrogation,” “enhanced techniques,” “extraordinary rendition” –  all nice, sterile euphemisms for that which we don’t really want to face. For, as long as we can put a bland face on it, as long as we can look away or put our heads in the sand, we can maintain our attitude of moral superiority.

But how will we answer when the rest of the world asks the tough questions?

How will we respond if Spain, or any other nation, indicts a former government official?

Would we dare allow the former attorney general or Vice President of the United States to be hauled off to The Hague and tried for war crimes in the same manner as was Slobodan Miloševic? Probably not.

The Republicans tell us torture is legal if the Justice Department and the President say it is. But Richard Nixon discovered just how wrong was that position.

The Bush Administration generated supportive judicial opinions so that everyone could wave pieces of paper about and say, “See, it’s all legal. The Justice Department says so.” George Bush said, “The United States doesn’t torture” because there is no organ failure or death. God bless America. Wave the flag.

They tell us torture is the only way to avoid another 9/11 and that by torturing they have kept America safe since that awful day; thanks to torture, no one has attacked us since. But that is effect-and-cause, not cause-and-effect, thinking.

And we are told we should not look back in anger. Instead, look to the future. Torture is the only way to protect us, to keep us safe. Torture will teach those who would do us harm not to dare think of another attack. It is revenge for what the evildoers have wrought upon democracy, but even more importantly, it is the sword of justice that will lay waste to our enemies.

There are voices telling us that “enhanced interrogation techniques” work, that multiple plots and potential attacks have been averted. But we can’t be told about these secret incidents for reasons of “national security.” And the FBI refused to be party to the torturing in Guantánamo precisely because senior personnel at the FBI know one simple fact - torture does not work.

Dick Cheney has told the world President Obama has made us less safe, and talking heads on the right intone the gravity of having released the memos authorizing torture. Now, their reasoning goes, we have told the enemy what to expect and how to defend themselves against these “harsh” techniques. But these warnings and complaints come from the same people who, for nothing more than thirty silver pieces of political gain, willingly revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent who was protecting America.

As John Cory writes, “They say that the first casualty of war is truth, but they are wrong. The first casualty of war - is reality. In war, the unreal becomes real and the lie becomes truth.”

For 60 years, America has denounced the torture tactics of our enemies as being criminal. From WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam to the Iraq War, torture was evil.

We invaded Iraq and overthrew the evil Saddam Hussein who tortured his people.

When the North Vietnamese tortured American soldiers in the Hanoi Hilton, we decried their acts and pointed out that torture only served a propaganda purpose.

Now, we say torture is not torture because we do it humanely; because we do not cause organ failure or death. If America tortures, it is not the same as when communist rulers, fascist dictators and Islamic fundamentalists do it. There is good torture; there is bad torture. And America defines the difference.

Our leaders need to investigate what happened and determine who should be held accountable - not because the country needs a political witch hunt, not because we need a host of prosecutions to show the world and not because George W. Bush was, quite possibly, the worst President this country has ever seen. We, as a Nation, need to do this to reclaim our soul.