There was a time when we could proudly say about our country, “Look how far we have come.” Now we must lament, “Look how far we have fallen.” In today’s letters to the editor section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune a woman commented about “enhanced interrogation techniques some feel are torture.” In one way you cannot really blame her for this statement of ignorance about U.S. and international law. Even our best newspapers are blurring the line between what is legal and illegal.

            In its praise of President Obama’s speech yesterday, the New York Times characterized his proposal for “preventive detention” of some Guantanamo prisoners as a policy “we’re not convinced is needed.” Are you kidding me? Not needed. It’s unconstitutional. It’s illegal. The president of the United States is talking about holding people without the benefit of habeas corpus (due process) indefinitely, not for crimes they have committed, but for the ones they might commit in the future, and all the Times can say is that they are not convinced it is needed. This statement is a de facto admission that we are no longer a democracy under law. We have become a nation ruled by an imperial presidency. No wonder the Minneapolis woman doesn’t know the difference between torture being illegal and how some people “feel.”

            Beyond the fact that Obama is talking this way, what is most troubling is that the New York Times response may be symptomatic of the slack Democrats and some liberals are cutting Obama when they castigated President Bush for saying and doing the same thing. What Obama is talking about is substantially no different than Bush using the designation “enemy combatant” to justify indefinite detention “of the worst of the worst,” to use Donald Rumsfeld’s language. Those who criticized Bush for gutting the Constitution and betraying American values were right to do so. They are wrong if they give Obama a pass for the same betrayal.   

            That we can no longer stand firm on the rule of law as a nation is the real legacy of the Bush administration. It succeeded in exploiting fear to such an extent that our national character has been severely damaged, perhaps irreparably so. What is more, Senate Democrats proved this week in their rejection of funds to close Guantanamo that Republican fear mongering still works, at least on them. This is a dangerous time in our history, not because of the threat of terrorists, but the fatal wounds they are leading us to inflict on ourselves. That torturing prisoners is even being debated illustrates how far we have fallen as a people. That one president can adopt a policy that undermines our Constitution and his successor then propose to veil that policy with an appearance of “congressional oversight” makes a mockery of our collective values. Freedom carries risks. That is the message a great leader brings to a democratic state. He does not talk about the sanctity of the rule of law and then propose a “regime” that contradicts it. Yet “regime” may be just the word to describe the way Obama sees his presidency.