What To Do With All the Felons?

by paradox

As Glenn Greenwald has been recently pointing out, the entire upper echelon of the Bush presidency are rank crooks, criminals and felons of the most serious sort who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands for the most nefarious and lying of motives.

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos has meticulously documented and followed the many crimes of Bush and his minions as they trampled all over the FISA statue in some slimy authoritarian quest, comprehensible in its necessity only to creeps.

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake followed the gross crimes inflicted upon Valerie Plame, her family and the CIA for years, adding another layer of treachery and betrayal to the American people in sick, deadly criminality. Irrespective that Bush’s VP and his closest advisor were and are obvious felons in the matter, Bush should have been impeached over the noxiously gross breach of process and justice when he commuted Libby’s sentence.

Tragically the liberal uproar over impeachment is about to be officially moot, the one-time window of availability for accountability and adherence to principle about to irrevocably slam shut. Not impeaching Bush does not mean he and his administration are at all immune from further prosecution, of course not, there is no statute of limitations for lying to kill, for treachery, or for spying on our people.

Digby of Hullabaloo has written the worst decision Bill Clinton ever made was letting Iran-Contra slide in the name of healing and "getting things done." The decision flat-out sanctioned criminal behavior in Republican minds while showing Democrats to be easy manipulated weaklings, leading to the totally credible thesis that such inadvertent sanction of criminality is partly responsible for the cadre of crooks we have for an Executive Branch now.

Since impeachment is folded away, what is the path forward for the all the Bush crimes next January in the first year of the fervently hoped-for Obama Presidency? Should he win in November, will Obama usher in another Let It All Slide episode of criminal American presidential history?

Sarah Robinson of The Big Con has written eloquently and fervent hope that an Obama victory can be fundamentally viewed as the Boomers finally getting their obsolete Vietnam-racism-sexism battles put behind us, mercifully moved on to history so Barack Obama can give politics and our young people a fresh start. Wouldn’t starting the process of putting Bush and Cheney behind bars for life be an inherent act of looking backward, of living in the past?

Frank Rich passed on the Obama quote of this generational aloofness today as above “the psychodrama of the baby boom generation.” The selling point of Mr. Obama’s vision of change is not doctrinaire liberalism or Bush-bashing. I think that’s a compelling rationale for the future and a much needed anecdote to a lot of our current political problems—not all, of course not, but many, should a future President Obama be good enough and have the support to pull that off.

Urgent change looking forward free from the shackles of the past is critical for the health of the Republic, yet what about the dead and wounded, and all that grieve for them left behind? What about Valerie Plame, her family and all her people at the CIA? What about the basic precious rights for all Americans that were tossed to the shitcan when they spied on us?

Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way.

Censured in what way, Mr. Clarke? Censure and depravity to truth, justice, accountability and adherence to constitutional principle? Is that path “forward” worth not being shackled to all the noxious boomer baggage that will hold us back?

I hope the reader understands how fervently I do not wish to hoist the leader of my own party on this nasty political prong when the mission is to beat John McCain. I am a small person with few answers; service, judging by what God gave me, should always be my primary path in this life. I proudly bought Obama lawn signs, bumper-stickers and clothes yesterday and will help the Obama campaign again today in my $2,300 2008 Presidential election goal. I like being a good soldier for the Party.

Adherence to truth and events force me to state, however, that prosecuting Bush and Cheney for life behind bars while somehow simultaneously launching a new political paradigm very necessarily free from boomer baggage will be one of the first great challenges of the Obama Presidency. Marginalize me as a boomer Bush-basher, it’s cool, but the sacrifices of the dead and wounded for nothing but criminal lies will never be ignored as long as I breathe.