Gotta Move On

by paradox

I’ve been somewhat amused—in a dark, uneasy way, true—in the last few weeks as the incendiary topic of prosecuting former Bush officials flares in blog posts: Conyers subpoenas Rove, Specter dicks around with Holder, is anything ever going to get done to weld accountability to the rule of law? Good questions, to be sure, but the answer came in weeks ago with the miniscule Bush pardon list.

Republicans may be obdurately obtuse in their clumsy, flagrant abuse and breaking of statute—Iraq, FISA, Dept. of Justice, what have you—but they will always be masters at protecting their long-term reputations from convictions and chains. Had there in fact been a real threat that gross felons with reservoirs of blood at their feet like Rove, Gonzales, Rumsfeld and Cheney would be arrested and charged they would have been pardoned.

Bush and the felon intelligentsia of the Republican Party took a long, hard look at the last eight years, who would hold the reins this Congressional term (the same legal quislings who let them get away with it before) and quite correctly judged nothing would happen. The uproar and massive distraction would simply never be tolerated by Obama for issues of the past, no matter how politically relevant or just prosecutions would be.

I’m totally forgiving of Obama for that, the implacable fact will always remain that if impeachment or prosecutions are going to happen they must occur real-time in the term currently being served by the Executive. It’s impossible to expect the next President—even from the opposition Party—to start passing around these massive ticking prosecutorial political bombs to Congressional committees when urgent work of the present must be done now. Throw in a hostile corporate media and the fantasy of that scenario is dreamily cemented in place.

Forgiveness, however, does not abate an acute distress at the crimes committed and the wearying unto death observation that if our leadership makes such mistakes the mechanisms to correct them yet again were left un-utilized. Not only are we much less a country for it, politically we pay an extremely heavy price in lost opportunity, watch the Republicans hissily kick ass all day yesterday over condoms and the tragedy of that lost chance of political oblivion Republicans deserve becomes vividly clear, that’s what happens when you don’t put them away.

But it’s in the past. Over, gone, just another dream of a functioning country and Congress. Everything we’ve got must be focused to the present and building a future, that is so very true. Next time we have an opposition felon Executive we’ll have empirical arguments on what not to do.

Absurdly weak tea, but there’s a day ahead deserving all we have so gulp it down, if you can’t leave life behind you’ll never have one, don’t we all know it. Spring 2009 is almost here, the die was irrevocably cast weeks ago for Bush prosecutions in a life we cannot dictate or control, we gotta move on.