"With Malice Toward None"

A reader writes:

Obama won't pursue war crimes. This is just based on my reading of the man, so obviously I could be completely wrong, but I don't believe that Obama will legally pursue anyone from the Bush administration for war crimes. And I think this comes out of some very deeply held beliefs on Obama's part.  I don't think it's because he doesn't understand the problem, or that he just wants to do what's expedient.

Obama is all about building bridges, and building up ties. When Obama's white grandmother made racial comments, Obama didn't write her off, or think of her as a terrible person. I think that instead he saw it as a kind of misunderstanding, or a rupture that had to be healed. Something that came out of ignorance. And that doesn't happen if you denounce people.

I believe that Obama is going to have a very strong instinct toward decency in our policies, and that he's going to try to rebuild the American polity so that it is more decent. Part of that will mean a rejection of torture; part of it will be more compassion for the poor and the working poor; and part of it will be about reaching out to people who disagree with him, and trying to bring them on board. I'm pretty confident that Obama is going to try to justify his new strategy in the war on terror by getting results. He'll do things the right way, and work hard to bring the consensus around so that people in both parties believe in what he's done.

Biden has said that he wants to prosecute, and I'm sure Rahm would want to as well. But I'll be amazed if Obama does it. Honestly, I want to prosecute them as well. I'm angry, and I want vengeance. But I think that's one of the reasons Obama is a better man than I am. Remember what Lincoln said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

We need to remember that refraining from punishing someone who does wrong doesn't mean we don't know right from wrong. It's possible to have "firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right" and to have "charity for all". They're not contradictory. Those two things are, in fact, Christlike. And think about the context in which Lincoln made that speech -- all of the things that had happened, and how reasonable vengeance must have seemed. It was harder for Lincoln to be charitable than it is for us to do it now, in our present circumstances.