Honor before expedience

Dear President-Elect Obama,

It is unsettling to hear your recent comments regarding the crimes that have been committed by the Bush Administration, with your focus having drifted to a position of moving “forward,” rather than one of addressing the wrongs that have been committed in our names.

Contrary to House Speaker Pelosi’s well-known position, we do not have as an honorable option the choice to forego prosecution for the war crimes that were committed by those in our employ. We are a nation of laws, but if we do not adhere to those laws, and choose not to prosecute violations of those laws, we are mere pretenders, and our Constitution will be as besmirched by our inaction as it has been by the actions of Bush and his minions.

Would any District Attorney seriously address a crime that was committed with the preference, for expedience sake to let it go, to simply move “forward”? The whole suggestion makes a mockery of the Rule of Law, and I dearly hope that your focus will be at least partly on holding those who committed such abominable acts as torture accountable for their actions. We, and the rest of the world, deserve nothing less. “Moving forward” in willful ignorance simply is not an ethical or lawful option.

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