Arianna Huffington says we should call the past eight years the "How Could We Know?" era--because it's the excuse everyone from those who were supposed to be regulating Wall Street Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff to Dubya himself cited in denying responsibility for the atrocities (fiscal and otherwise) inflicted during their watch.
She makes an excellent argument. In today's Huffington Post, every case she cites (from Iraq to Fannie Mae to Citibank to Madoff) reveals the identical pattern. Those responsible create a plan; they then diminish, dispute, and destroy anyone (in a position to know) who questions said plan; they then carry out said plan with no regard for reality nor any transparency or accountability; they then look askance and say "how could we know?" when it all falls apart . . . as it inevitably does. The ambiguities deliberately created by the planners themselves become the planners' refuge from their responsibilities for making and carrying out those plans in the first place.
She's correct. But after watching clips of two interviews, one with Dubya and one with Darth Cheney, both of which aired Monday night, I have another nominee: let's call it the "So?" or "So What?" era.
For the very first time, as far as I can tell, the president acknowledged that Al Qaida was not a presence in Iraq until AFTER we invaded. He was oblivious to the consequences of his admission, however. He didn't seem to grasp that Al Qaida wouldn't have gone into Iraq at all if we had not already have been there. Dubya was indifferent to the fact that the US invasion caused the problem in the first place. His understanding was limited to the idea that "we" are fighting the "war on terror" where Al Qaida "chose to fight." It is irrelevant to him that Al Qaida made that choice solely in response to what it saw as US provocation. His exact words to the interviewer were "So what?"
Cheney's response to a similar question which focused on the terrible loss of American lives was ever shorter: "So?"
This is beyond appalling. Its callousness and willful disregard for the sacrifices ordinary Americans have been forced to make are almost incomprehensible to me.
I am willing in Dubya's case to chalk it up to his willful indifference to learning anything or even acknowledging anything that contradicts his pre-conceived world view. But Cheney? He simply doesn't care, so long as Halliburton gets its millions and billions of profits at OUR expense. In response to a question I have long and often raised in this blog is this: being stupid is bad, but being evil is worse.
What worries me the most, however, is that President-elect Obama doesn't think that bringing the malefactors to justice should be one of his highest priorities. He seems to be leaning to the Gerald Ford approach: in pardoning Richard Nixon before any charges were officially brought against him, Ford said "Our long national nightmare is over." I hope I am wrong about that. Not only is justice delayed "justice denied." Justice denied sets extremely dangerous precedents for the future--indeed, they mean the end of our entire system of checks and balances.
Consider this: the most frightening thing about Richard Nixon's take on executive power, as is so ably exploited in commercials currently airing for the film Frost/Nixon, is his assertion that "when the President does it, it's not illegal."
That statement is so wrong on its face that I scarcely know where to begin pointing out its flaws. First, it says the president is above everything, even the US Constitution. Second, and as a direct result, it says there's no such thing as a "government of laws and not of men." Third, it says that the president never can be held accountable for anything done under his ægis. Fourth, it's just as stupid a doctrine when someone more liberal is in power as it is when someone more conservative is in power. It's equal-opportunity absolute monarchy masquerading as representative democracy.
It's just flat-out wrong. It's the essence of un-American. And it makes me want to puke. America deserves so much better!
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