America, land of the free ... war criminals

Thanks to the Obama administration's vow to "Look Forward, Not Back", which in practice amounts to an ongoing disregard for the rule of law, a continuance of human rights and civil liberties abuses, and a cover-up of criminal malfeasance, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are free to tour the country (but perhaps not the world) bragging of their authorization and support for torture.

Dahlia Lithwick comments on this as well as anything I could think to say. But I would like to note that when given the opportunity, liberal bloggers who spent years denouncing the attrocious human rights record of the Bush administration, failed to question President Obama about his active efforts to continue many of those same policies and shield members of the previous administration from criminal accountability.

This is especially frustrating when it is so easy to point out the sheer hypocrisy of this all. Given that our Versailles media class - the Chuck Todds and such - are nihilistic relativists when it comes to government actions who have managed to see their moral compass dissappear, it's not likely that many in the mainstream press will be bothered by the torture rehabilitation tour that Bush 43 is now on.

Thus, you would think that people who previously recognized torture as a grave crime might have attempted to ask the President to defend his betrayal of the values that he campaigned on.

Update: This link is merely an elaboration on the point I made above about nihilistic relativists in the press - those who, in the name of "objectivity," would do damage to objective truth. They, too, along with the current administration and an apathetic public, have helped make America safe for torture.

Update II: I believe this Amy Goodman quote speaks for itself

Which brings us back to Guantanamo. While the U.S. preaches to Cuba about its lack of democracy, maintaining an embargo against the country for decades, you would think it would set up a model of democracy on the piece of Cuba that the U.S. controls. Instead, it has formed a globally reviled concentration camp there, a Kafkaesque land beyond the reach of law. About 180 men are now interned at Guantanamo Bay, with diminishing prospects of a day in any real court, for years subjected to interrogations and to extended isolation that is both legally and actually torture. President Obama promised to close the prison camp. Congress now is unlikely to fund any Guantanamo shutdown and prisoner transfer, leaving the president shackled to Guantanamo, consigning the prisoners there to indefinite detention and despair, and deepening the disgust with which many in the world view the U.S.