Change of heart?

Too bad President Bush isn’t Catholic.\nIf he was, maybe Pope Benedict’s call to uphold justice and humanitarian principles would cause him to feel some of that infamous Catholic guilt. Maybe President Bush would look back on his seven years in office – from lying, to an invasion, to torture scandals – and feel so guilty he would confess to Pope Benedict right on the spot. \nThat’s all the Pope wants. All week Benedict has been trying to send Bush the message: you’re a sinner. Repent.\nAt the UN on Friday, Benedict declared the importance of upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ethical principles providing for human dignity are ignored, Benedict warns, when “the attempt is made to deprive rights of their true function in the name of a narrowly utilitarian perspective.” This is barely a coded message to Bush and the Department of Justice. Benedict is condemning torture. The Department of Justice approves “harsh interrogation techniques” for the utilitarian goal of getting information from a prisoner. The Department of Justice has defended torture by claiming the significance of the goal (information, security of the American people) trumps the significance of the manner in which the goal is achieved (torture). \nBenedict then reminded us there are no exceptions to the rule “do not do to others what you would not want done to you.” Attorney General Michael Mukasey laid the foundations in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee: waterboarding a suspected terrorist isn’t torture, but if Mukasey himself were waterboarded, that would be torture.\nDoes it sound like Benedict is talking down to us? Well, that’s because Bush lives by a new golden rule: Do to suspected terrorists what you would not want done to you. But of course, Bush is not Catholic. And yet all week the president’s guilty subconscious has been latently manifest in his speeches. Could a change of heart be just around the corner?\nOn Wednesday, he declared, “In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need (the Pope’s) message that all human life is sacred.” The crowd cheered! Is Bush planning to stop debasing life with “enhanced interrogation techniques?” Maybe he wants to respect human life by reinstating habeas corpus and the prisoner conduct codes outlined in the Geneva Conventions? \nBut he goes on, “In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need (the Pope’s) message to reject this dictatorship of relativism and embrace a culture of justice and truth.”\nIt’s not simple telling the difference between torture and enhanced interrogations. It’s all about manipulating that gray area in between. But Bush wants to give up his dictatorship and start telling the truth and start upholding justice and the rule of law! \nSadly, some of my friends think I’ve misread Bush’s words. But they are just cynical liberals who think Bush is incapable of a moral rebirth. \nI know, with the help of Pope Benedict, Bush has seen the light on torture.