Americans Can Get Past Tortured History

The citizens of this nation can come to terms with our country’s latest international embarrassment — the apparent Bush administration-sanctioned torture of detainees in the wake of 9/11 — by first owning it, then rejecting it as a matter of policy, as President Obama did in his first days in office.

It is strong medicine. We’ve taken it before. Our history is marked with such dark chapters.

There’s slavery, our original sin, committed almost from our nation’s birth; Japanese Internment Camps, with U.S. citizens held captive on their own soil during World War II; the massacre at Mi Lai in the Vietnam War; the failure to intercede in the genocide in Rwanda.

In each instance, we’ve owned up to our failures. We have not ignored them.

Surely we’ve learned by now that when we embrace the tactics of our enemies, such as torture, we lower ourselves to their level. And when we do, we can no longer claim the moral high ground.

Insisting that torture did not take place in America’s name because the definition of torture may have been conveniently redefined by Bush administration officials falls short of a claim of plausible deniability.

Only by launching a full investigation — before other nations do it for us — can we reclaim some of that high ground.

Each time we’ve acknowledged our infallibility, we as a people have emerged stronger and even more exceptional.