Monday, November 12, 2007

How long will it take?

Yay - they let me out! I went, fully prepared to serve on the petit jury if they chose me but, ugh. It looked to be a nasty little civil case whose outcome, I am very glad to say, rests in someone else's hands. So I am treated to an afternoon off, and it looks like I might grab a friend and go see Ang Lee's new movie, "Lust, Caution."

Meanwhile, I thought I would share with you some thoughts I had upon hearing this story on NPR this morning. The very first thought I had was: I wonder if the Bush administration will ever be held to account for its war crimes, and if so, how long will it take? Some time ago (in another universe, it seems!) I mentioned in a blog conversation that I thought the Bush administration's crimes in Iraq were going to be a moral shame that we Americans will have to reckon with for generations to come, not unlike what the Germans are still having to do with regard to Hitler and the Nazis. Naturally, shrieks of outrage ensued from the nest of righties that I happened to be embroiled with at the time, and I was roundly excoriated for being a lefty-traitor-loser-despicable-terrorist-loving-fringe-lunatic, etc., which, strangely enough, still appears to be the consensus of opinion in those circles to this day. Then Frank Rich wrote his column about The 'Good Germans' Among Us and he said essentially the same thing I was arguing only, of course, he said it much better. There's a really interesting discussion of Rich's column and the issues he raises over at D.Sidhe's place in which she posits (I think) that average, every day Americans who are consumed with the burden of just getting by in our lives can't be expected to know the extent of the Bush administration's criminality and mendacity, given the power structure that is in place to hide and obfuscate, and while I appreciate her point, I still find myself feeling a dreadful foreboding about the future of our country post-GeorgeW. I think what I am afraid of is that the damage this administration has wrought is far more extensive and long-lasting than we have yet begun to understand. And I wonder how long it will take for Americans to find the moral courage necessary to do whatever it takes to find our way out of this wasteland. Personally, I think the criminal conviction of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld is only one step, but a crucial one. What do you think?

7 comments:

D. Sidhe said...

Well, I think my point was more along the lines of The New York Times has no business smugly blaming those people for not stopping the Bush administration.

I rather suspect that we will all burn in hell for what's going on in our names, and that some of us are going to have maggots as well since there were things we actually could have done but didn't bother. So I absolutely do agree with your point. I just think it's the sort of judgment that should be rendered by one's own conscience, rather than by a newspaper that spends its time lying to us about what's happening and keeping us distracted by Maureen Dowd's opinions about Hillary.

AnnPW said...

Hi D! Wow, you got here really fast! Thanks, I really enjoyed that post of yours and I've been wanting to write about it for awhile. It's hard not to give in to cynicism, isn't it? I tend to think that because I still feel outrage (some days its weaker than others) that I haven't given myself over entirely to a WTF-We're-Completely-Screwed-So-What's-The-Difference attitude, but it's getting harder and harder to fight off. So what do you think, will we be able to redeem ourselves? How long will it take?

Freewheel said...

Although I was delighted to see Kucinich initiating Cheney's impeachment on the House floor, I doubt really accountability will ever occur. Bush & the so-called opposition appear to have a silent agreement to leave it all to the historians.

P.S. - a Bush presidency countdown button would make a great addition to your blog.

Mike Thomas said...

I thought Rich's column this Sunday was pretty good too.

He has a gift of being able to take all the flood of information and compress it down into a few potent and powerful paragraphs that hit you in the gut. Like this one:

It’s been apparent for years that America was suicidal to go to war in Iraq, a country with no tie to 9/11 and no weapons of mass destruction, while showering billions of dollars on Pakistan, where terrorists and nuclear weapons proliferate under the protection of a con man who serves as a host to Osama bin Laden.

Remember when Bush couldn't even name who the Pakistani leader was?

D. Sidhe said...

Did I? I was just checking in here on my usual rounds. Good timing, I suppose.

I'd love to see them impeached, tried for war crimes, even just run out of town. I don't see any of it happening, though. I don't see us ever regaining our national reputation, which seems only fair because I don't see the people we've killed ever coming back to life, either.

Between global warming and all the other truly stupid things we're doing to the planet, I can't see it mattering for more than two or three more decades at most, anyway.

I'm probably overly prone not so much to cynicism but to we're-completely-screwed resignation, though, in that I've been borderline suicidal barely held in check by meds and sheer bloody apathy for over three decades now. But I suspect even if I were sane I wouldn't see much cause for encouragement.

This has been your daily bummer. You are invited to remember I'm crazy in multiple ways and to get on with being constructive.

AnnPW said...

Having you come visit my blog is anything BUT a bummer, DS - thanks so much for coming and leaving your comments, and for clarifying your points. I hope you will do so often!

D. Sidhe said...

I pop in at least a couple of times a day. I'm insomniac and prone to internet pacing. :-) And you've just been added to my blogroll, for exactly whatever it's worth. I should have done it weeks ago, but I'm absent-minded like that...