Left-Wing Authoritarians
Joe Klein thinks that David Ignatius is “precisely right” in how President Obama’s “decision” to release the Bush torture memos makes certain “veteran officer[s]” fear a “new season of investigation and retribution.” Now “it’s slow roll time at Langley,” meaning that they only, “go through the motions; they pass cables back and forth; they take other jobs out of the danger zone; they cover their backsides,” (Passive-aggressive much?). Presumably that means they are no longer torturing people several times a day for nonexistent intelligence links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
First off, I’ll let Paul Begala (courtesy of John Cole) drive a stake in the right-wing meme that releasing the memos was Obama’s choice:
“…the president was compelled to release them by a lawsuit, a lawsuit that his lawyers, the Justice Department and the White House counsel, decided they could not successfully defend.
We have a Freedom of Information Act. I know it’s—it’s an adjustment, but we now have a White House that lives under the rule of law and obeys the laws. So, he released them because he was compelled to release them.
This is very different from the Bush administration, which selectively leaked national security information, top-secret information, in order to build what I think the record shows was a dishonest case for war, or, in the case of Valerie Wilson, to destroy the career of a covert CIA agent.
That’s the politicization of intelligence information and—and top-secret information. This was the president obeying the law.”
But what is fascinating is watching these guys actually seek to protect the tiny parts of clandestine service that illegally spied on American citizens and tortured captives in violation of their sworn oaths, the clear letter of the law, and basically every tenet of civilized behavior. Certainly they consider themselves to be ethical and moral men, small “d” democrats, perhaps even liberals. So how do you say you believe in moral behavior, the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States and fret about the practical costs of enforcing those ideals on a tiny minority of people who actually failed their duty by following their orders?
Actually, it’s not difficult for authoritarian followers to hold an ideal in their heads while, at the same time, violate that ideal in the act of following authority. It’s actually a feature, not a bug (see: Republicans). Even people who don’t see themselves as embracing right-wing ideology can find themselves in stark violation of liberal ideals, as long as that is what is required by their particular authority figures. The rank-and-file CIA employees who were obviously thrilled to see Obama turn over the rock they’ve been living under are not part of the power-elite that Klein and Ignatius worship. Those people at least partially represent the smaller group of clandestine officers who were willing to follow their orders no matter how lawless, pointless and sadistic. Get the picture?
America is hard work, or as Ben Franklin gave us … a republic — if you can keep it.
Hey Ara, did I ever tell you that the edit option os the BEST feature on this blog?
er….on, not os, but I guess I could editt………ah…t
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i meeen IS
Ha!
Seriously, this is why I love Wordpress — a ton of plugins for customizing your blog, like this one for editing comments.
No matter what you want to do, you’ll find at least a couple of plugins that will do it.