It Was Nice While It Lasted

Barack Obama's decision to release the memos on the CIA interrogation techniques means we will get much less useful information from terrorists, who now know we won't even scare them into telling us useful information.

We are led to believe that putting harmless insects in enclosed spaces, while leading the prisoner to believe the insects are dangerous, is bad. But it is OK to launch missile strikes on suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In other words, scaring terrorists is bad, killing them is good.

As bad as all that is for our security, it is possibly not the worst aspect of this.

By not firmly and decisively rejecting prosecutions and investigations into Bush administration officials, Obama has exposed as a joke that he wanted to heal the partisanship wounds in Washington. To consider criminalizing policy differences is a new low in our politics.

The peaceful transition of power, from one party to another, is one of the great achievements in American history. It rests on the premise that the defeated party only loses political power - the members of that party don't lose their freedom or lives. So losing an election is bad, but not that bad.

Now Obama and the Democrats are raising the specter that this great principle and tradition is at risk. And it is critical that it be a tradition, so that each party has confidence it won't be prosecuted when it leaves office.

I wonder how many Obama voters thought the change they were voting for included putting at risk America's unprecedented history of peaceful transitions of power?