The loonies at MSNBC are fantasizing about how to wreak vengeance on the warmongers:
Noting that “prominent Democrats” had ruled out impeachment, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann asked former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke on his show last night, what “remedy” there could be for the lies and misinformation highlighted in the new Senate Intelligence Committee reports on the Bush administration’s misuse of pre-war Iraq intelligence.
CLARKE: 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.
Now, I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society …
Somehow I think we will avoid truth and reconciliation commissions here in the U.S. and A.—or at least so I hope! They’re getting pretty popular up in Canada!
But these revenge fantasies of Richard Clarke’s remind me of something Jared Diamond wrote in the New Yorker recently, in an essay about tribalism [e.a.]:
We regularly ignore the fact that the thirst for vengeance is among the strongest of human emotions. It ranks with love, anger, grief, and fear, about which we talk incessantly. Modern state societies permit and encourage us to express our love, anger, grief, and fear, but not our thirst for vengeance. We grow up being taught that such feelings are primitive, something to be ashamed of and to transcend. …
But, while acting on vengeful feelings clearly needs to be discouraged, acknowledging them should be not merely permitted but encouraged. To a close relative or friend of someone who has been killed or seriously wronged, and to the victims of harm themselves, those feelings are natural and powerful.
So, yes: Feelings of vengeance, like all other feelings, need to be addressed and processed so that people can move beyond them. But truth-and-reconciliaion councils are a vehicle for wallowing in those feelings, not for moving beyond them (just as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “liberation theology” nurtures the grievances of his congregation and ensures that their racial resentment will live on in future generations).
Well, let’s hope we don’t enter a new era of witch-hunting, which some Dems (the ones who want to “look into” the instances of “racism” and “sexism” in the primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) seem bent on.
On that score, there’s one small encouraging sign buried deep in the biography of a future President Obama. When Barack Obama was practicing what he learned from Saul Alinsky, he reputedly felt uncomfortable with some necessary parts of the process of community organizing.
But, although he was a first-class student of Alinsky’s method, Obama also saw its limits. It appealed to his head but not his heart. For instance, Alinsky relished baiting politicians or low-level bureaucrats into public meetings where they would be humiliated. Obama found these “accountability sessions” unsettling, even cruel. “Oftentimes, these elected officials didn’t have that much more power than the people they represented,” he told me.
At one meeting, where residents of an asbestos-laden housing project confronted their property manager about whether their homes had been tested, Obama suddenly had the urge to warn his target. “I wanted to somehow let Mr. Anderson know that I understood his dilemma,” Obama wrote in Dreams, with the kind of empathy that is the hallmark of his autobiography. He was sometimes more interested in connecting with folks on the South Side than organizing them. He studied the characters he encountered so closely that Kruglik says Obama turned his field reports into short stories about the hopes and struggles of the local pastors and congregants with whom he was trying to commune.
Let’s hope that a President Obama will prove to be a late-stage dissenter from the School of Alinsky.
update: Instalanche! Thank you, Glenn Reynolds!
Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around. Mostly, I write about media culture (”They call it news. I call it infotainment.”) But even though I’m not a politico, like everyone else during this election season, I find myself writing a lot —way more than I’d like—about politics.
12 comments ↓
If George Bush is shunned by polite society, he can come over to my place and he’ll be honored like the true mensch he is. Shunned. Who do these people think they are?
We are all insects when viewed from the Olympian heights of Obama’s brow!
Seriously, the guy has no idea at all how to go about fixing all the defects he claims to see in America. None. Not one of his analyses rises above the level of a freshman’s beginning sociology essay.
The last politician who managed to pull off this particular con, by the way, was… Tony Blair.
Richard Clarke has about as much credibility as Sandy Berger. Put Clarke and Olberman together and you are only lacking one stooge.
So….if these truth and reconciliation fantasies come true, does that mean the Lefties will have to come forward and ask for forgiveness for the millions who have died because Lefties demanded DDT be banned after reading Silent Spring? How about the millions who died because of Stalin’s gulags while Lefties covered for him in the US? How about the millions who have died in the Khmer Rouge killing fields after Lefties demanded we cut all military aid to South Vietnam? How about the millions that have and will die in Africa because Lefties have demanded that we spend uneccesarily large amounts on stopping heterosexual spread of AIDS?
Let’s get those tribunals started first, and then we can see about getting Olbermann and Clarke as prosecutors in a Bush trial.
Yes, I don’t think we can let Richard Clarke and Keith Olbermann into polite society. They would simply not fit among decent folk.
Sounds like BHO only regretted he was dealing with the small fish as a community activist. Count on a president being able to target the big fish, whomever he chooses that to be.
As for Dick Clarke having some legitimate grievance for revenge, what pray tell would that be? Especilly after all his duplicitous b.s. between administrations?
I have the uncomfortable feeling Obama will take to it like a duck to water.
How can you have truth and reconciliation when the basic presumptions of truth are wrong?
This is typical smearing that liberal lefties do to vilify a policy.
They should not get any more consideration for their absurd arguments. If they want to arrest Bush and Co. they have to get through the Secret Service cordon. The rest of people can blast them legally or physically if they are so foolish to take this stand.
I mean if these idiots attempt to do a citizen arrest for “war crimes” they are likely to get roughed up. Tolerance for this idiocy is getting low.
The problem with the liberal fringe is that they think they are winning the war of words. The MSM is an echo chamber for them and the Democratic Party has appeased them since Deaniacs took over the party.
Once Hillary decided to revolt against the Codepink and MoveOn people vote numbers went up. This was in the Democratic primaries. Obama’s contempt for those that love God and guns showed that a large number of Reagan democrats are getting fed up.
The denigration and a vilification of Hillary by the leftist’s portion of the Democratic Party is creating a backlash. A good portion of these people may jump to McCain. These types of tactics to criminalize differences of opinions feed that feeling that these idiots are dangerous and need to be slapped down.
If Obama wants a real chance to get elected then this type of verbal war needs to be shut down. Olberman is an Obama supporter and Clarke is not helping.
There was a reason that the Bush administration stopped all talk of going after Clinton people once they won. It would have tied them up in recriminations and they never would have a chance to try to promote their own programs. Obama tries to transcend the partisan bickering and Truth and Reconciliation tribunals would just entrench the partisan warfare.
The Democrats already do this, they’re called Committee meetings. Recently, the Dems threatened American Oil Companies with socialization. They’ve threaten cigarette companies, pharmaceutical companies, and who knows who they’ve threatened.
Yes, let’s force Bush to apologize for repeating everything first brought up by Democrats Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and John Edwards.
When Democrats say it, it’s true.
When Republicans say it, it’s a lie.
“Four legs good, two legs bad! Buck-buck-buck-buh-KAWK!”
Perhaps Sen. Obama’s own cause is to root out those “root causers” who have caused the root causes of these problems. Now, in the case of an asbestos laden public housing project the root causers of the root causes would be, let’s see. The public! We are the root causers of the root causes that we have been waiting to uproot! Can you fit that on a bumper sticker?
From where I sit Richard Clarke is the first one who needs some “truth and reconciliation.” It’s always the incompetent people who screwed up and cost the country the most who want to point the finger at others.
Leave a Comment