No Pardon for North

SPEAKING OUT

As the trial of Oliver North approaches, my family—along with millions of others—has once again received letters from Christian organizations urging us to petition the President for “an immediate and unconditional pardon for a real American hero—Oliver North.”

The committed activists who send these appeals are gravely concerned about the dangers of totalitarianism in Nicaragua. They view Colonel North’s actions in diverting Iran arms-sale profits to the contras as bold initiatives for the cause of freedom. They are outraged that someone so dedicated could be, in their words, “harassed, humiliated, and persecuted unjustly.” They decry North’s 16-count indictment as a “travesty of justice” perpetrated by “liberals in Congress.”

I don’t quarrel with their concern about Nicaragua. I, too, believe the current regime is brutal, repressive, and incorrigible. Given that belief, should I mail in the petition with my signature? Should Oliver North be pardoned? It’s a question we discuss as a family.

My oldest son will soon enter college to begin studying accounting. If I sign the petition, he is going to ask me some tough questions. Didn’t North misappropriate several millions of dollars that didn’t belong to him? Well, it appears so. Isn’t that normally considered embezzling? Well, yes, under normal circumstances. Can an action that is normally defined as a crime become, on rare, urgent occasions, a valiant and heroic deed?

If so, then some heroic accountant’s task in such a situation is to hide the transactions. He will create spurious documentation to camouflage what is going on. And if the authorities should open an investigation, he will gather armloads of incriminating evidence and dump them in the paper shredder.

This, I must explain to my son if I sign, is how true heroes operate.

My younger son aspires to the legal profession. He wants to be a judge. To him I must explain that the laws cannot apply to cases like this one. After all, Congress made a mistake by passing the Boland Amendment, which prohibited further military aid to the contras. North should not be blamed for disobeying this bad law. Nor for stealing the money. Nor for destroying evidence. Nor for lying to investigative bodies.

Somehow I must help my son unlearn all the notions he has picked up in his civics classes—clichés about checks and balances, separation of powers.

As a judge, someday he may have to try a similar case. Will he know when to acquit a lieutenant colonel acting on his own impulse, who commits crimes in a worthy cause? Or will he mistakenly assert that officers of the military and executive branch have a duty to protect and defend the Constitution?

Evidently the friends of Oliver North fear that the presiding judge in his case will make this very mistake. So they call for a presidential pardon.

These fellow Christians exhort us to glorify in Oliver North what they condemn in Daniel Ortega: the expedient and illegal use of political power.

When the cause obliterates the distinction between falsehood and truth, between end and means, the cause has destroyed everything good, including itself. When expediency is transformed into principle, chaos is unleashed.

My comments have presupposed that North is guilty. Perhaps he is innocent. If so, a pardon would inflict an egregious insult upon his person. He deserves a trial in which he can demonstrate the folly of the charges. He deserves the right to walk out of the courtroom exonerated of all wrongdoing, not pardoned as if he were a gangster with friends in high places.

So, I’ll let the red, white, and blue petition gather dust on my desk. North’s self-interests and our family’s lively discussion can best be settled in a court of law.

Gary Hardaway is a free-lance writer living in Hillsboro, Kansas.

Speaking Out offers responsible Christians a forum for their views on contemporary issues. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

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