Krugman and the Justice or Peace Dilemma

I think Krugman get's this pretty much exactly right. He writes:

In fact, we’ve already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it’s giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off — which isn’t too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

Let me indulge in pointing out that I've made exactly this point (many times) in the past: Dems face the justice or peace? question here. There are important reasons to forgive and forget in order to achieve peace and unity...but there are important reasons, as always, to look for the truth and seek justice. Jim Wright faced a similar dilemma during the Reagan administration: impeach a president who had clearly committed impeachable crimes, or let it go? Wright chose the latter course on the grounds that American couldn't take another blow like that so soon after Nixon. Whatever that merits of the decision given the information available to Wright at the time, in retrospect I believe it would have been better for him to choose impeachment (again, as I've argued before). By letting Reagan's crimes go unpunished, I believe we enabled and emboldened Bush '43. Wright's decision sent the message that the president can--not quite literally, but not quite not--get away with murder.

Note that, while the Democrats since Wright have declined to pursue impeachment even for the gravest crimes, Republicans have elected to relentlessly pursue impeachment of Democrats for any reason...or, basically, none at all. The Democratic message to Republicans has been something like: no matter what you do, we won't impeach you; the Republican message to Democrats has been: no matter what you do, we will. There's already a nascent "impeach Obama" movement. One consequence of this is that we seem forced to conclude that the Democrats' irenic approach doesn't work. Though the fact that the Democrats in general and Obama in particular seek unity and reconcilliation is admirable, the peace over justice approach hasn't worked thus far. (In my opinion, it's usually a fruitless and morally reprehensible approach anyway.)

My hunch--though there's no doubt that many folks understand all this better than I do--is that we must at least pursue the truth even if we do not pursue justice. An independent commission must be charged with producing the most accurate possible account of Bush's apparent misdeeds and crimes. If such a commission can show that we are wrong and that the administration's actions are all defensible, no one will be happier (nor more baffled and chagrined) than me. But we cannot simply turn a blind eye to what, on the face of it, are very serious violations of American law and--more importantly--principles. And once the truth comes out, it will be clearer what justice demands of us here.