YOU MISSED ONE NATION:

Time for a Souter-O'Connor Commission (Fred Hiatt, August 30, 2009, Washington Post)

If President Obama has been frustrated in his desire not to look back at Bush-era detention practices, it is because he is caught between two fundamental but seemingly irreconcilable American principles.

On the one hand, this is a nation of laws. If torture violates U.S. law -- and it does -- and if Americans engaged in torture -- and they did -- that cannot be ignored, forgotten, swept away. When other nations violate human rights, the United States objects and insists on some accounting. It can't ask less of itself.

Yet this is also a nation where two political parties compete civilly and alternate power peacefully. Regimes do not seek vengeance, through the courts or otherwise, as they succeed each other.

More than either of those, it's a nation that pursues its foreign affairs with an almost unique savagery. Recall that the "anti-war" side in Iraq proposed maintaining the embargo instead, even though they said it was killing 5,000 children under 5 per month. The notion that a people who happily burn down cities in order to win wars must try guys for pretending to drown a couple terrorists in order to vindicate its legal traditions is absurd.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 30, 2009 7:01 AM