Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Byrne
In the conservative editorial pages of the Chicago Tribune what passes for fair and balanced coverage of an issue, so far, is three op-eds about how the presidential wiretapping is probably constitutional and one about how it isn’t.
Piling on the “yea” column is Dennis Byrne, an editorial writer who regularly takes pains to prove that he’s middle-of-the-road, but who in actuality is more like a moderate republican.
He starts by minimizing, which, I predict, will become (if it isn’t already) the preferred tool for conservatives to defend malpractice both by the DeLays and the Bushes of the government. He waves off the desperate inaction and stonewalling of the republican congress by saying that they’ve decided they “don’t like” special prosecutors.
Actually, they have a legal and moral responsibility to investigate malpractice by the executive, Byrne, and they’ve abdicated that responsibility. Where was the investigation of Bush’s Harken energy deal? They sure thought Whitewater was important. Why isn’t Phase II complete? Why was Roberts trying to say that Valerie Plame wasn’t undercover? Why was he trying to place the blame for WMD intelligence squarely at the feet of the CIA when we have so much evidence that the intelligence was manipulated? When signatories to PNAC, among them Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, already made clear their intention to invade Iraq in the Clinton Administration? When the former Treasury Secretary of this administration, the former Counterterrorism Czar of this administration, and the former Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State all left this administration and claimed that the administration was hell bent on invading Iraq from the get go?
But questions like these don’t trouble Byrne. He points out the “hypocrisy” of democrats in not calling for an investigation of the NSA leaks, even though the justice department already has initiated a probe.
Perhaps the reason democrats were so reticent is because if the NSA program was illegal then revealing its existence was not only a service to the nation but the legal and moral responsibility of those involved. Government officials don’t have an obligation to keep secret an illegal government program.
But Byrne has made up his mind on that front, too. He cites John Schmidt’s op-ed piece, a flimsy argument I and many others have repudiated, as “proof” that the wiretapping was constitutional. I won’t counter that pathetic argument again.
He goes on to claim that “reputable scholars, lawyers, and judges all agree that this issue is complex,” seeming to back down from his earlier support for Schmidt’s assertion that the wiretapping is legal. He thus infers that the sniping at the president is “partisan.” The same defense used by the conservative establishment to defend Tom DeLay, as I recently read in Southern Partisan. The same defense used by the conservative junta to defend the president in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Byrne also uses the broad shield of national security as vigorously as the president. He sarcastically maintains that “The only calls to be heard from Democrats are for congressional hearings on the surveillance program, hearings that our enemies will find useful.”
Hearings on sensitive matters can be closed, Byrne. People like you are also “our” enemies, apologists for imperial presidents and enemies of open government.
Despite what they maintain, conservatives have demonstrated that they don’t believe in small government or personal freedom. They believe in massive deficits, perpetual war, and the abridgment of freedoms.
They are wrong. Even when they get elected they are wrong. Even when two-thirds of the population supports torturing prisoners they are wrong. Even if two-thirds of the population supports warrantless wiretapping they are still wrong.
People are amazingly easy to lead down the gilded path to ruin. Adolf Hitler was democratically elected. Millions of Russians mourned Stalin’s death. The Sunnis in Iraq largely maintain that Saddam Hussein’s trial is a farce and that he should be immune as a former head of state. Jimmy Carter suffered job approval ratings worse than this president’s for doing far less wrong. Reagan and Clinton suffered dips in their JARs comparable to Bush’s early in their administrations not for lying people into war but simply because of recessions.
When bad governments take control of a country it usually takes quite a bit before the people wake up an realize that they are being misled. As long as the economy is strong presidents are largely immune to popular pressure to reign in their worst excesses. By the time a leader is called to the carpet for rampant corruption and abuse of power he has usually done incredible amounts of damage to his country that is difficult to repair. History will not look favorably on the Dennis Byrnes of this time.
He also remarks that “This kind of hypocrisy and selective outrage isn’t new to either party.” It depends on what you mean by “new,” Byrne. Bipartisan castigation of corruption was strong in the days of Dick Nixon, but since then your party has led America down the path to ruin by rallying behind Reagan in defense of congressional investigations that, though moderate, revealed the rotten core of his administration’s foreign policy, by hounding Clinton for seven years with a special prosecutor whose mandate to investigate the president was perpetually renewed and funded by a bloodthirsty congress eager to nail him in any “scandal” that turned out to be bogus, by stonewalling and refusing to investigate every single blatant example of conservative malpractice, from Tom DeLay to the Downing Street Memos. Only when special prosecutors or grand juries opened inquiries were conservatives dragged, kicking and screaming, to the witness stand to testify. Republican-controlled congress refused to investigate Tom DeLay until, eventually, a grand jury in Texas had to do it, and then conservatives accused the grand jury of being partisan.
“This kind of hypocrisy” is your invention, you diseased animal, and the better half of this nation is going to hammer you with it until you are forced to limp away to the dim confines of far-right propagandists outlets where you can spew your lies to the militia members and corporate whores who comprise your real base. When responsible governors once again control our government they will shovel shit like you out of the mainstream and flush you down the toilet of history.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 12:52 AM 
