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• Monday, January 12, 2009 10:17 AM

  Tilting at wind for lack of windmills

  Glenn, have you ever given any thought as to what happens if a former prisoner of one of our gulags is found blowing up American citizens subsequent to the closure of that gulag? Do you give any credence to the fact that this will not be good politically for the type of policies you advocate, across the board? What if, in addition to that, there was very good reason to believe ex-ante that this person was indeed a member of Al Qaeda before he was brought to the gulag, and that we couldn't try him on the basis of that evidence because he'd been tortured during his captivity? Is it your sense that the American electorate is such that they would condone releasing someone who was a threat to them because we didn't have a good legal case to make, (i.e., just how politically tone deaf are you)? Let me be as succinct in my loathsome Barack Obama apologia as I can: you may have the luxury of abstracting from such considerations, but Barack Obama surely does not.

  And I have more questions. Have you ever, as it seems you haven't, given any thought to the fact that a change of party in the executive triggers huge partisan (in that the other party is the primary target) investigations and prosecutions? That this precedent will instill all manner of perverse incentives of its own, being that the party with its members headed for the slammer is discredited. And, btw, it is patently clear that this is the case whether or not they indeed violated the law: see, for example, Africa.

  In both these cases which have you so incensed, you seem to think that these issues are politically neutral, when the reality is that Obama is likely to get spanked if he went away from beltway orthodoxy, and thus to be very unsuccessful in doing so. That, also btw, is also not good precedent.

  Now, how about you point out what's wrong with this, aside from its not providing much in the way of fodder for argumentative, contrarian blog posts: Obama is and has always represented incremental rather than fundamental change, and many of us who supported him from the beginning always knew and understood this, and understood that the alternatives to this are anything but uniformly positive. If we're lucky, and I mean very lucky, he will take advantage of the political cover that may come with post-Bush revelations, (likely to be more spectacular than what we know now, i.e. the tip of the iceberg), to appoint 9/11 type commissions or independent councils to investigate. In the meantime, take heart that with the economy doubling over and threatening to get much much worse, the type of social unrest and upheaval that may well catalyze true transformative change could be at hand (although, as in all things, be careful what you wish for. The outcomes from such upheaval has a checkered record, at best.).

  —Majorajam Read Majorajam's other letters
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