Doublethink

Sullivan sums up the glaring contradiction at the heart of Bush’s Missionary Imperative:

Looked at from a distance, the Bush administration wanted to do two things at once: to declare to the world that freedom is on the march, and human rights are coming to the world with American help, while simultaneously declaring to captives that the US has no interest in the law, human rights, accountability, transparency or humanity. They wanted to give hope to all the oppressed of the planet, while surgically banishing all hope from the prisoners they captured and tortured. And the only way they could pull this off is by the total secrecy they constructed and defended. So we had a public government respectful of the rule of law, and a secret government whose main goal was persuading terror suspects that there was no rule of law at all. It is hard to convey just how dangerous this was and is.

Moreover, this was done by the professional classes in this society. It was not done by Lynndie England or some night-shift sadists at Abu Ghraib. According to these documents, almost nothing that was done at Abu Ghraib was outside the limits agreed to by Bush – and much of what was done at Abu Ghraib was mild in comparison. So when the president acted “shocked” at what we all saw, and said it was not America, he was also authorizing far worse in secret – and systematizing it long after Abu Ghraib was over. He was either therefore a fantastic liar on one of the gravest matters imaginable or so psychologically compartmentalized and prone to rigid denial of reality and so unversed in history, law and morality that he had no reason being president.

It reminds me of nothing so much as the Soviets. When you are certain you are in teh Vanguard of History, you know that you are excused to commit whatever crimes you feel necessary because the end will justify whatever you do.

Sullivan has much more faith than I do that the incestous power elites in Washington will actually *do* anything to punish the people who ordered these crimes. Punishment is for low-level stooges, not the people who are in the business of continually expanding their riches and power, with copious amounts of infighting and mutual back-scratching. Essentially, the argument being put forward is that prosecuting the people ordered this stuff and created the bogus legal mechanisms so that it was all technically lawful would be “divisive” and dangerous in a time of war (a time of war which is, by defintion, infinite and unending since a “war on terror” is a war on a tactic, not on a definable enemy who can one day surrender). In short, the same people who are telling us that we have to pony up trillions to people who are “too big to fail” are also telling us we cannot expect punishment to be meted out to people who are “too big to be punished.” So they prosecute Lynndie England and a couple of other thugs who (cheerfully) followed Administration policy and that’s about it.

Waiting for an outburst of virtue from an immense structure devoted to power and money is steady work.