***This is another scholarly blog by my Brother Unbuntu***

This week Obama restated his stance on the Bush administration and the torture techniques. After releasing the torture memos that the Bush administration put forward in order to ”aggressively interrogate” captives, Obama noted he would not support prosecuting former members of the administration about these actions. Obama said he does not want to go into the past and that he would rather move forward with new measures to never use torture again.  Other commentators agree with Obama’s move to just continue ahead and not to look back. One such commentator said “its easy for us to find fault in what the administration did on a safe April morning,” alluding to the fact that 9/11 forced the hand of the administration to torture. But all criminals do crimes for one reason or another. I guess this particular commentator wants us to empathize with the Bush administration and understand they had to make tough decisions at a very difficult time. Well in that regard I can dig it. I can understand that they had to make very difficult decisions at a very scary time. And what they did was throw human rights out the window, the American legal system out the window and took basic human rights out of consideration. In essence they broke the law because times were tough for them. If America is going to take this approach to legality I think we need to start treating all people suspected of crime with the same care. With over 2 million people in prison and more people in prison than any other industrialized nation, we really need to start to take in to consideration each person’s circumstances. I think this would lead America not to prosecute most non-violent drug offenders or any “illegal” immigrants because for the most part they’re in tough situations and had to make decisions that are tough for their family’s sake. If America approached all crime like it does white collar and government crime we wouldn’t have a third of the prison population we do now.    

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