Friday, April 24, 2009

An Infinite Loop

Barack Obama tells us we should not investigate American intelligence agents or their overlings who are responsible for torturing hundreds of suspects in their custody. We have to forget about the past, he says, to concentrate our attention on the future. That might be a convincing argument if Obama were going all out for an ambitious program to remake our economy and our relationship to the rest of the world. But the future is on hold because the number one job today is bailing out the financial system, so we can preserve the money moguls who juiced our economy in the past.

3 comments:

Shag from Brookline said...

A new "Freedom" for the torture enablers of the Bush/Cheney administration:

FREEDOM FROM ACCOUNTABILITY!

(Available only to conservatives."

Anonymous said...

I wasn't aware that it is Obama who decides what crimes are investigated and what crimes are not. I thought we had a Department of Justice for that. My bad.

Kevin Carson said...

From the Right, we hear that "in wartime" all good Americans "rally around the Commander-in-Chief" and "support the troops" for the duration. It's unpatriotic to question the war or any measures taken for "national security," because "politics stops at the water's edge" and all that. Of course, they say, having a democratic system means they can be held accountable after the fact if it turns out they launched the war on false pretexts. But we have to wait until the war is actually over to apploint the truth commissions.

The problem is, after the fact the center-left will be telling us we have to "move on" for the sake of "national unity," and that it's inappropriate and vindictive to investigate and punish people after the fact.

So when, exactly, are we supposed to hold these bastards accountable?