Немного об американской демократии

[a_kleber]

«As we step around the wreckage wrought by the Bush administration, one awkward but crucial question is how much we need to look backward in order to clearly see the way forward. President Obama, for the most part, has signaled a desire to avoid recrimination and retribution, and to focus on the future. That approach is noble and healing, as well as shrewd politics -- but only to a point.

The South African post-apartheid regime had to engage in a painful truth and reconciliation process before the nation could move on. South Africa's commission was unprecedented, and it took the stunning collaboration of Nelson Mandela and the more contrite veterans of the former racist government such as former president F.W. de Klerk. The more normal process, following revolutionary change, for the victors simply to put the vanquished on trial; or to just draw a curtain around a hideous past, as many Germans did after the Nazi era.
....
So it is not simple "recrimination" to come to terms with historical abominations. The analogy with post-Bush America, of course, is far from perfect. We did not lose all of our constitutional rights under the Bush-Cheney regime, only some of them. The peaceful election of an opposition-party administration is proof of that. And Barack Obama did not have to emerge from prison to begin a new chapter in American race relations.

Yet it is not quite enough for President Obama to simply reverse a series of Bush executive orders. The abuse of constitutional powers under Bush was so extreme that some kind of high-profile reckoning is required. It may even require trial and punishment of some high-level offenders, so that we are not left with a legacy of officially sanctioned torture in which only the lowest level G.I.'s were left to take the fall. At the very least, a public accounting of constitutionally dubious uses of executive power by some kind of prestigious commission that recommends safeguards for the future would help put closure on the era and prevent a repetition.»

Вот так вот. Судебного разбирательства уже давно требуют, и неспроста, а за дело.