Letters to the Editor
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Academia and guilt
I find it odd that Lawrence Summers (former president of Harvard University) could be forced to resign for because of a ridiculous statement about women and science, and yet John Yoo still has a job after giving the green light to torture.
What is so maddening about the argument that John Yoo didn't make the final decision and so shouldn't be held accountable is that those who did make the final decision hide behind Yoo's legal "analysis" in order to escape accountability. Bush himself claimed on Friday that he had legal opinions saying that water torture was OK. So apparantly Bush isn't accountable because he had a legal opinion saying his actions were OK, and Yoo, who wrote that opinion, isn't accountable because he didn't make the actual decision to torture people.
The fact is, they are both guilty. Bush certainly has more moral culpability since he made the decision, but Yoo aided in the execution of that decision, and so he, too, is culpable. The dean must know this. I can only conclude that he either doesn't care about Yoo's actions or doesn't have the courage to stand up to it.