Let me get this straight. The Obama administration's position (along with senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) is that the conduct of our military and CIA personnel towards our detainees was so horrific that, were photographs of that conduct released to the public, it would inflame Muslim sentiment to the point that previously peaceful Muslims would seek to kill our soldiers and diplomats . . .
And yet there is no need to investigate and prosecute this conduct?
Where the hell am I?
Joe H.
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The Years Of Writing Dangerously
9 years ago
2 comments:
Michael Gerson and other commentators probably have it right:
"It is President Obama's defining rhetorical strategy. For every contending thesis and antithesis -- Islam vs. the West, Iran vs. America, Palestinians vs. Israel -- he is the synthesis. All sides possess a shiny shard of the truth. Obama assembles the mosaic." BHO Synthesis
More than rhetoric, it's also how the administration appears to approach policy -- (along with the RealPolitik of setting up a hierarchy of priority issues to push on the Agenda -- and the domestic issues (economy, health care) trump certain issues like prosecutions and even investigations into torture as a policy).
But he does have his moments of clarity:
"There was, however, a notable exception to this approach during his recent overseas tour. In Obama's rhetorical universe of mist and fog, divided between gray and deeper gray, he drew one vivid line. Holocaust denial, he said, is "baseless," "ignorant" and "hateful." He talked about the "evil" of genocide, repudiated "lies about our history" and challenged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Buchenwald.
"Obama's intensity and clarity on this issue were unexpected -- and needed. Holocaust denial has long been a staple of Middle Eastern anti-Semitism. But it has grown more pervasive since the 1990s -- not merely due to the manias of Ahmadinejad but in service to a broader strategy.
"The political purpose of Middle Eastern Holocaust denial is to delegitimize the state of Israel. Since Israel, in this view, was created by the West out of Holocaust guilt, disproving the Holocaust removes the reason for Israel's existence. "The entire Jewish state," said one Jordanian newspaper, "is built on the great Holocaust lie." Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, argues that if "the official version of the Holocaust is called into question," then "the nature and identity of Israel" must also be questioned.
"This conception of Israel's history is itself a distortion. The Holocaust is important to Israeli identity; it is not identical to Israeli identity. Zionism existed well before the European genocide. The ties between Jews and the land of Israel reach back for millennia. Israel does not exist merely because of Holocaust guilt. It exists because of its own tenacity, sense of purpose and national success."
Obama is mezmorizing. But I'm just shocked that the citizens can't put two and two together. You gotta be in a deep state of denial not draw the inference that, if the conduct depicted in the photos was as bad as our leaders have said (as a reason for not disclosing them), then it can't have been legal.
I understand the realpolitic motive, and perhaps after Obama gets some big legislative accomplishments under his belt he'll be more amendable to disclosure . . . say around January of 2012. We'll ses. But this isn't going to go away. Its too big.
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