Doing the same thing, hoping for different results...
Other people back when this came out a couple weeks ago tackled Useful Idiot Fareed Zakaria, MSNBC pundit and his fatuously-naive bit of Exceptionalist logic, so I didn't really think I needed to bother. But given that Bob Woodward has been newly revealed as having gone Darkside (this was pretty well a foregone conclusion, given the way he has been assiduously carrying water for Bushco the last years, while trying to pretend independence) and the strange coincidence that I am simultaneously reading his and Carl Bernstein's 1975 book on the collapse of the Nixon administration, I think it's important to revisit this bit of Brooksian Blather. Speaking of Abu Ghreib, and the official US response to the revelations of the scandal:Most telling, 61 percent of Iraqis polled believed that no one would be punished for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Of the 29 percent who said they believed someone would be punished, 52 percent said that such punishment would extend only to "the little people."
America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America's image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels. Initially, people the world over thought Americans were crazy during Watergate, but they came to respect a rule of law so strong that even a president could not break it. But today, what angers friends of America abroad is not that abuses like those at Abu Ghraib happened. Some lapses are probably an inevitable consequence of war, terrorism and insurgencies. What angers them is that no one beyond a few "little people" have been punished, the system has not been overhauled, and even now, after all that has happened, the White House is spending time, effort and precious political capital in a strange, stubborn and surely futile quest to preserve the option to torture.
Now, in the cast of characters that leads into The Final Days, one of those in the beginning of the alphabetical list is one George Bush, then-chairman of the Republican Party.
What he says, too, about people the world over thinking Americans were crazy isn't true, if Bernstein & Woodward were accurate in their painting of the world-stage in 1973-74. Externally, the Hill was holding it together, if beleaguered by the fact that we were painfully obviously stuck in a quagmire, fighting alligators whilst in the water, and with no plans for extricating ourselves besides more of the same. It was the Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers that had so grossly damaged US credibility to that point; Watergate seemed to be a petty in-house political scandal.
Only those who were involved deep in the coverup, knew that the Nixon White House was a cesspool of backstabbing Byzantine-court plotting and rivalry and an isolated ruler whose self-isolation lent itself to a feedback cycle in which various advisors ran the show, or fought with each other for power and precedence in efforts to be the only ones with the imperial ear. --That the man with the Football was a paranoid, out-of-touch, self-obsessed drunk, while he presented a confident and unyielding front to the world, triumphing over physical pain and ill-health to carry on.
--We elected, or allowed our elected leaders to appoint, this same crew and their proteges, again. Then we let them screw us over, pardon themselves, scamper off laughing after Iran-Contra - and elected them again. And Zakaria wonders why we're in such bad shape?
--More on the Nixon chaotic evil disguised as lawful good later on, tonight, I hope, if work doesn't run *too* late.
America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America's image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels. Initially, people the world over thought Americans were crazy during Watergate, but they came to respect a rule of law so strong that even a president could not break it. But today, what angers friends of America abroad is not that abuses like those at Abu Ghraib happened. Some lapses are probably an inevitable consequence of war, terrorism and insurgencies. What angers them is that no one beyond a few "little people" have been punished, the system has not been overhauled, and even now, after all that has happened, the White House is spending time, effort and precious political capital in a strange, stubborn and surely futile quest to preserve the option to torture.
Now, in the cast of characters that leads into The Final Days, one of those in the beginning of the alphabetical list is one George Bush, then-chairman of the Republican Party.
What he says, too, about people the world over thinking Americans were crazy isn't true, if Bernstein & Woodward were accurate in their painting of the world-stage in 1973-74. Externally, the Hill was holding it together, if beleaguered by the fact that we were painfully obviously stuck in a quagmire, fighting alligators whilst in the water, and with no plans for extricating ourselves besides more of the same. It was the Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers that had so grossly damaged US credibility to that point; Watergate seemed to be a petty in-house political scandal.
Only those who were involved deep in the coverup, knew that the Nixon White House was a cesspool of backstabbing Byzantine-court plotting and rivalry and an isolated ruler whose self-isolation lent itself to a feedback cycle in which various advisors ran the show, or fought with each other for power and precedence in efforts to be the only ones with the imperial ear. --That the man with the Football was a paranoid, out-of-touch, self-obsessed drunk, while he presented a confident and unyielding front to the world, triumphing over physical pain and ill-health to carry on.
--We elected, or allowed our elected leaders to appoint, this same crew and their proteges, again. Then we let them screw us over, pardon themselves, scamper off laughing after Iran-Contra - and elected them again. And Zakaria wonders why we're in such bad shape?
--More on the Nixon chaotic evil disguised as lawful good later on, tonight, I hope, if work doesn't run *too* late.