Following the 1998 Lewinsky scandal in Washington, Peggy Noonan — conservative author, columnist for the New York Times and former speech writer for Ronald Reagan — gave her opinion on the debate of whether our country should go about prosecuting President Bill Clinton. “The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation,” she observed, “but the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation.” After Republicans caught “the falling flag,” as she put it, she described exactly how “producing a triumph for the rule of law,” was to be done; President Clinton’s prosecution, she stated, was “a reassertion of the belief that no man is above (the law), and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial.”

In 1998, Peggy Noonan had excellent points to make; indeed, had the U.S. not maintained the rule of law under the Clinton presidency, its government could claim no more legitimacy than those of banana republics. In this instance, the Republicans were exactly right in their critique, whether their crusade led to Clinton’s impeachment or not.

However, 11 years later — following the release of torture memos which include information detailing the questionable and illegal Bush administration policy on torture (exemplified by the case of one detainee who was waterboarded 187 times over a 30-day period, the gross abuses of power that lead to the atrocities of Abu Ghraib, and the evidence that shows other “enhanced interrogation” methods were used against captives who were found to be completely innocent) — the Republicans are now completely in the wrong of the same debate of whether our nation should prosecute government individuals who were clearly on the wrong side of the law.

“It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, ‘Oh, much good will come of that,’” Noonan now says in 2009, because “some of life has to be mysterious.” The mental gymnastics that one must endure to both rationalize the prosecution of a sitting president for perjury and at the same time condemn investigations over human rights abuses must be exhausting. But, this is the exact rhetoric we as a country are facing in our discourse over torture from the party that tells us that although gay marriage should remain illegal, mutilating a possibly innocent man’s genitals with a scalpel and holding him indefinitely without a trial is perfectly fine.

However, the conservative position over torture does not come completely without its arguments — regardless of how suspended from reality their arguments actually may be. There are oft-repeated claims that the use of torture was retroactively justified, simply because we have not suffered an attack since Sept. 11; apologists will go further in arguing that there exists at least one case of torture’s use saving American lives.

But these arguments, too, are intellectually bankrupt. Barring the fact that our country avoided heinous acts of foreign terrorism for centuries without committing detestable human rights abuses, it is impossible to argue that torture’s existence has kept us safer when all the information we needed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks was obtained by intelligence well before hand, and simply not properly acted upon by those in charge. Torture being implemented on Sept. 10 would not have saved us from the acts of Sept. 11, regardless of what Jack Bauer pipe dream apologists might maintain.

And the “one case” of torture’s use saving American lives? It — unsurprisingly — is completely unfounded. The case in question is that of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, a man captured in Pakistan in March 2003 — who was caught after the terrorist plot in question (targeting Los Angeles) was derailed. Torture’s use on him saved no lives; the plot in question was foiled without any coercive interrogation, and well before its use on Mohammad. Saying torture’s use thwarted a terrorist plot to strike Los Angeles is not only baseless, but also fascinating. In that in order to maintain the absurd assumption that interrogations done in 2003 helped deter tragedies in 2002, one would have to assume the terrorists have some kind of magical time machine that allows them to carry out malicious attacks in any timeframe.

So why — when we realize torture has led to no strides towards a safer America, when we know of the horrible acts being done to detainees without trial at Guantanamo and we have seen the human rights abuses that were not only condoned but called for at Abu Ghraib — is there still a debate on whether or not former Bush administration officials should be prosecuted for these illegal abuses? Didn’t we establish in 1998 that ignoring our own crimes makes us no better than a banana republic, Peggy Noonan? Do we as a country now have no right to defend the rule of law, conservatives? In 2009, where is our “belief that no man is above [the law]?” Are we not allowed to rebuke contemporary arrogances that have “grown imperial” anymore, Republicans?

Hopefully, like in 1998, we will do the right thing. Justice is not “just” when we apply it outwardly and refuse to apply it to ourselves.