Let's (not) be reasonable

It’s annoying to hear Obama’s invocation of qualities like ‘reflection’ and magnanimity (as in avoiding ‘retribution’) to justify his refusal to confront the mess left behind by his predecessor. He insists that being oh-so-reasonable is required because a thorough airing of criminal activity and official torture will somehow interfere with his reform plans.

In fact, there is every reason to believe that the exact opposite is the case—that the failure to go after the Bush legacy full throttle has emboldened its partisans to dig in ever deeper and defend their nauseating record from the rooftops. Trying again and again to reach for that elusive, non-partisan, forward-looking, equanimous tone assumes that Dick Cheney and the screamers on Fox News have a real interest in formulating a viable national health strategy or getting people back to work. Maybe it’s a good communications strategy, guys, but don’t start believing your own rhetoric.

Meanwhile, seeing the bombs go off daily in Baghdad once again and the strewn body parts of dozens of slaughtered Iraqis reminds me that all the morally repugnant defense of torture emanating from our TV screens rests on the purported goal of protecting Americans from violence—exactly what Bush and the entire U.S. military apparatus was and is unable to provide the Iraqis they ‘liberated’. There is something particularly grotesque and nasty about a country that can placidly contemplate tying people up and torturing them out of an abstract concern for their own safety while not even noticing that the nation it conquered enjoys none.

Another aspect of the torture discussion left out: what exactly are we going to say when American soldiers are trussed up and waterboarded by foreign enemies? That it’s not fair? After all, these military personnel are entirely likely to possess valuable ‘actionable’ intelligence about where bombs are going to drop on Pakistani villages or Colombian coca fields. If those are the criteria we apply, we better get ready to have them turned around and thrown in our faces.