What unfathomable mystery?

Hillary Clinton finds the massacre of Afghan civilians in their beds by a rogue U.S. sniper ‘inexplicable’, but I don’t. After all, didn’t the Republican presidential candidates just excoriate Obama for apologizing over the Quran burnings of a week ago? Didn’t golden-haired Mitt just insist that ‘America doesn’t apologize’, meaning ever about anything? Didn’t half the comments on the YouTube video of GIs pissing on Taliban corpses a month ago include cheers and bravos for the neat genito-urinary statement? Isn’t the mayor of liberal New York City quoted daily saying that NYPD spying on mosques is okay because ‘terrorists’ might be lurking there? Aren’t we continually reminded by the Obama-led Democratic establishment that we must accept a police state because dangerous enemies wish to attack us? Why wouldn’t a half-crazed vet with four combat tours decide to slaughter a few suspects on a midnight crusade? What took him so long? [photo: AP]

It’s just amazing to listen to the CBS News on this incident and hear Scott Pelley pause to editorialize that it was just one ‘lone’ nutcase who committed this war crime while 90,000 other good soldiers are out there just being a great bunch of guys. Can anyone imagine a similar posture after William Calley was discovered to have murdered 100 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1969? In the much-maligned ’60s, such behavior caused unmediated revulsion and led to the collapse of support for a pointless war against a civilian population. Why doesn’t that happen today? Instead, we are subjected to a parade of official spokespeople in and out of uniform mouthing their careful talking points, that this ‘incident’ will not deter us from our glorious mission, that it would be a ‘tragedy’ if the crimes caused us to change course—or as Hillary put it at the UN without a hint of irony, to weaken our commitment to ‘protect’ the Afghan people (!).

Meanwhile, our news media slip further into the grip of Pravda-like conformity and obedience. An entire segment on CBS tonight was dedicated to polling the GOP candidates for their views on Afghanistan, not including, of course, the obvious question to the Mitt: Do you think we should apologize NOW? Even more incredible, Ron Paul, the one guy who would have unequivocally urged withdrawal from the whole debacle, was not included in the survey, and everyone pretended not to notice the omission.

We chortle gleefully at the pathetic Republican primary circus, but Obama remains a weak, uninspiring figure whose mystique dissipated in the first year of his term. These incidents reveal that our political culture has mutated into something unrecognizable with no moral compass whatsoever, and the creepy robots and inquisitors of the right are far more natural expressions of it than the smooth-talking law professor from Harvard.