Remembering who we are

The parlous situation the US now finds itself in, and aptly described by Obama in his recent speech, is first and foremost the responsibility of MM Bush and Cheney.
No one should underestimate the monumental issues that President Obama now has to address.
Trying to rehabilitate a security policy based on faulty legal reasoning and that led to Guantanamo and the CIA torture program is no mean feat.
Can it even be done?
Can Obama humanize the legal structure put in place by MM Bush and Cheney to deal with terrorism suspects?
He thinks he can, but this very well may be a case of wishful thinking…
The previous administration’s detention and interrogation policies were illegal and immoral.
As such, they should be repudiated unequivocally.
No one should blame Obama for trying to sort out a morally and politically complex situation, which he has rightly described as a mess.
Yet, he should resist the temptation to try to tinker with and salvage these policies.
He should take his time, and start anew , with the following caveat in mind: denying justice to your enemies will never make America safer, but only render them stronger, for you will only be proving them right that the idea of justice is but a myth, a tool that we cynically manipulate to imprison and humiliate our enemies, and not one of the founding principles of our civilization, and one which we hold sacred.
Obama should take his chances, and defend this noble ideal and shun political expediency.
The more frivolous and opportunist politicians will always accuse those who actually believe in justice and human rights for all of compromising national security with their misguided idealism…
They will never hesitate to exploit the now proverbial GWOT to serve their own political ends.
The threat represented by al-Qaeda has been inflated by all those with a vested interest in preserving the status quo, vis-à-vis detention and interrogation policies.
To dismantle them would expose their fundamental immoral and illegal character, and encourage all those now calling for an investigation into all aspects of the previous administration’s security policies, and who rightly demand as well that those
responsible for devising and implementing them be held accountable.
It is, therefore, in the interests of these parties to change the subject. Abandon the legal and ethical battlefields, for these battles have been lost, and instead indulge in fear mongering.
The Fox News host Sean Hannity condemned the idea of transferring Guantanamo detainees to US jails, claiming these are the worst of the worst. We seem to be letting our guard down again.
In essence, the terrorist threat is a real but minor one.
Al-Qaeda is a non-state actor, without access to resources that a state can command, and with scant resources of its own.. It can launch attacks here and there, now and again, but in no conceivable way constitutes an existential threat to the US, or to any one else, for that matter.
It can be handled within existing democratic institutions.
Obama must resist the temptation ,and ignore the numerous calls, to subvert the entire framework underpinning our human rights because a few thousand Muslim extremists actually believe in their millenarian propaganda.
Hence, there is no need to update national and international legal norms, as the WP columnist Jim Hoagland argues.
As we have already said, that would be handing them a precious propaganda victory, validating their claim that our concepts of human rights and justice are nothing but hypocrisy. Gunatanamo, Abu Ghraib and Mr. Cheney’s cherished EIT ("enhanced interrogation techniques") have done nothing to prove them wrong…On the contrary…It is time to change course.
We can defeat these people simply by remembering who we are, without betraying our principles, sullying our values, and debasing our humanity…