Kerry and the Gift of Impunity

[Cheswick2.0]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1126-02.htm

<snip>

Impunity--the perception of being outside the law--has long been the hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appears to have deepened since the election, ushering in what can best be described as an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are assaulting civilian targets and openly attacking doctors, clerics and journalists who have dared to count the bodies. At home, impunity has been made official policy with Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales--the man who personally advised the President in his infamous "torture memo" that the Geneva Conventions are "obsolete"--as Attorney General.

This kind of defiance cannot simply be explained by Bush's win. There has to be something in how he won, in how the election was fought, that gave this Administration the distinct impression that it had been handed a "get out of the Geneva Conventions free" card. That's because the Administration was handed precisely such a gift--by John Kerry.

In the name of "electability," the Kerry campaign gave Bush five months on the campaign trail without ever facing serious questions about violations of international law. Fearing he would be seen as soft on terror and disloyal to US troops, Kerry stayed scandalously silent about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. When it became clear that fury would rain down on Falluja as soon as the polls closed, Kerry never spoke out against the plan, or against the illegal bombings of civilian areas that took place throughout the campaign. Even after The Lancet published its landmark study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion and occupation, Kerry repeated his outrageous (and frankly racist) claim that Americans "have borne 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq." His unmistakable message: Iraqi deaths don't count. By buying the highly questionable logic that Americans are incapable of caring about anyone's lives but their own, the Kerry campaign and its supporters became complicit in the dehumanization of Iraqis, reinforcing the idea that some lives are insufficiently important to risk losing votes over. And it is this morally bankrupt logic, more than the election of any single candidate, that allows these crimes to continue unchecked.

The real-world result of all the "strategic" thinking is the worst of both worlds: It didn't get Kerry elected and it sent a clear message to the people who were elected that they will pay no political price for committing war crimes. And this is Kerry's true gift to Bush: not just the presidency, but impunity. You can see it perhaps best of all in the Marlboro Man in Falluja, and the surreal debates that swirl around him. Genuine impunity breeds a kind of delusional decadence, and this is its face: a nation bickering about smoking while Iraq burns.

[rainy]

1. because we have no legs.....

No definitive proof, no rebel leaders who will lead the charge. I know we would fight if we just had one piece of hard evidence and one leader to stand with.

[Demeter]

2. And Not Enough People Are Hurting Bad Enough

not yet, anyway. Even with Reagan, the threshhold of pain never really was exceeded--it took another Bush (and the stellar candidacy of Clinton) to push people out of Park.

[Cheswick2.0]

7. but what did Clinton get us really

We got a president and lost everything else.

[Demeter]

9. We Lost Everything Else Because The House and Senate Were NOT

worthy. They repeatedly let us down. One good thing is the Dixiecrats finally came out of hiding, the corrupt were discharged, and a lot of earnest and committed youngsters got elected. The losses numerically exceeded the gains, but each new one is twice as strong as any lost one.

And there is the public knowledge that a Democrat presided over the strongest economy in decades, while it took Bush 10 months of slopshod and criminal neglect to destroy it all.

And there is the public record of how the GOP abused and plundered the country.

No mater how they deny it, they cannot erase it.

[Cheswick2.0]

5. Yes we just need one leader who people trust

Who will it be?

[YBR31]

3. A lot of people haven't given up!

[Cheswick2.0]

6. yes but the leaders have

That is the problem

[madison2000]

4. I used to think Jesse Jackson was too far out there

but now I am beginning to wonder.

[Cheswick2.0]

8. I never thought he was too far out

but will people follow him? We shall see.