Third Way Dispatch

Bruce Springsteen, who served as the troubadour of post-9/11 America with “The Rising,” has returned with “Magic,” his scathing and eloquent indictment of the Bush years. In “The Long Walk Home,” Springsteen sings:

“You know that flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone: who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t.”

Somebody should play it for Mike Mukasey.

As we have written many times, the risk of terrorism is real, and this country should be doing everything we can, consistent with our values, to fight it. That begins by getting out of Iraq and shifting our focus to fighting al Qaeda and its allies.

But while terrorists have inflicted horrific harm and could do so again, they cannot actually defeat the United States – only we can do that. Indeed, the greatest risk of terrorism is that what Bill Galston and others have called the “autoimmune response” – the risk that we will react to terrorism by destroying our own values or our democracy itself. That could happen on a mass scale in the wake of a nuclear attack, with a complete breakdown in social order leading to martial law and the rollback of many of our most cherished freedoms.

But the Bush administration already has been chipping away at the bedrock of our values on a smaller scale. Illegal rendition, holding prisoners without charge or trial at Guantanamo, warrant-less surveillance of American citizens and the distortion of federal law with his “signing statements” all are dangerous departures from core American values. But without question, the most corrosive, most despicable is this administration’s approval of torture. If anything violates our core values, it’s that.

To be sure, we haven’t always gotten the core values calculation right in this country: slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans, Jim Crow, and Japanese internment, to name but a few. But the genius of America is that, as Martin Luther King said, “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward freedom.” We have consistently evolved toward liberty, inclusiveness and respect for human rights. And today, there are things that Americans simply do not do. Simulated drowning, which is torture by the standards of any rational human being, is one of them. (If you doubt that, take a look at this account of what actually happens to the victim of waterboarding, and I guarantee you won’t doubt it anymore.)

That flag that Springsteen sings of flew over Judge Mukasey’s courthouse, too. He knows damn well that it means that certain things are set in stone. Americans don’t torture people. If we do, then the terrorists truly have won. Mukasey’s lawyerly and evasive answer on this question – strung out over four pages of, well, tortured logic – doesn’t cut it. Until he comes to grips with this fundamental fact about American values, he should not be confirmed as our nation’s chief law enforcement official.