[Marxism] NYT/Krugman - Forgive and Forget?

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 16, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Forgive and Forget?
By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/opinion/16krugman.html

Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an
investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. âI donât
believe that anybody is above the law,â he responded, but âwe need to look
forward as opposed to looking backwards.â

Iâm sorry, but if we donât have an inquest into what happened during the
Bush years â and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obamaâs remarks to mean that
we wonât â this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law
because they donât face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Letâs be clear what weâre talking about here. Itâs not just torture and
illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that
they were patriots acting to defend the nationâs security. The fact is that
the Bush administrationâs abuses extended from environmental policy to
voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government
to reward political friends and punish political enemies.

At the Justice Department, for example, political appointees illegally
reserved nonpolitical positions for âright-thinking Americansâ â their 
term,
not mine â and thereâs strong evidence that officials used their positions
both to undermine the protection of minority voting rights and to persecute
Democratic politicians.

The hiring process at Justice echoed the hiring process during the
occupation of Iraq â an occupation whose success was supposedly essential to
national security â in which applicants were judged by their politics, their
personal loyalty to President Bush and, according to some reports, by their
views on Roe v. Wade, rather than by their ability to do the job.

Speaking of Iraq, letâs also not forget that countryâs failed
reconstruction: the Bush administration handed billions of dollars in no-bid
contracts to politically connected companies, companies that then failed to
deliver. And why should they have bothered to do their jobs? Any government
official who tried to enforce accountability on, say, Halliburton quickly
found his or her career derailed.

Thereâs much, much more. By my count, at least six important government
agencies experienced major scandals over the past eight years â in most
cases, scandals that were never properly investigated. And then there was
the biggest scandal of all: Does anyone seriously doubt that the Bush
administration deliberately misled the nation into invading Iraq?

Why, then, shouldnât we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush
years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it
would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldnât
there be some penalty for the Bush administrationâs politicization of every
aspect of government?

Alternatively, weâre told that we donât have to dwell on past abuses,
because we wonât repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush
administration, or among that administrationâs political allies, has
expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or
their political heirs wonât do it all over again, given the chance?

In fact, weâve already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the
Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national
security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and
when the White House finally changed hands the political and media
establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice itâs giving Mr. Obama: let
sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up
right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off â which isnât too
surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those
conspirators.

Now, itâs true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make
Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those
who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of
friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we
whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, weâll guarantee that they will
happen again.

Meanwhile, about Mr. Obama: while itâs probably in his short-term political
interests to forgive and forget, next week heâs going to swear to âpreserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.â Thatâs not a
conditional oath to be honored only when itâs convenient.

And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than
obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the
Constitution accountable. So Mr. Obama should reconsider his apparent
decision to let the previous administration get away with crime.
Consequences aside, thatâs not a decision he has the right to make.


=========================================
     WALTER LIPPMANN
     Havana, Cuba
     Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
     "Cuba - Un ParaÃso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================

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