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• Sunday, July 12, 2009 07:47 AM

  We can only hope

  Yes, we can only hope that Eric Holder will somehow come around to doing what is right.

  I mean, we can only hope. We will sit here, keeping our fingers crossed, while the black box of American law enforcement operates in its opaque and inaccessible way. Maybe the output will go our way. Maybe not! Who knows?

  See, there is one principle which is far more important than any other here, which is that we as citizens can, and should, do nothing, not get involved, just extend our middle fingers to the establishment and really let 'em have it.

  So let's hope away! Being a politician means by definition that you are completely unbending, a totally rigid pillar (or whatever metaphor Holly McLaughlin prefers) of fixed belief that no external force can influence.

  As for Glenn Greenwald's absolutist demands for high-level prosecutions, what could he possibly be thinking? Think about what would have happened after the second world war if we'd insisted on that. Who can imagine expending the political capital to try high-level leaders of a defeated regime and hold them to account for their policies? It never would have worked.

  Or consider those French lunatics who wanted their government to try Maurice Papon for his Vichy-era crimes against humanity — 50 years after the fact! No reasonable person could ever seriously expect a nation to conduct such an investigation into one of its own, deeply respected aging statesmen.

  Imagine if Papon had been tried, and then found guilty, and sentenced to prison for the rest of his life. Imagine the damage to French society of all that partisanship. Their country would be in ruins by now.

  —Amity Read Amity's other letters
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