Soul Searching

As usual, Krugman says what I think much for concisely and with more simple elegance than I ever could. In Friday's New York Times column, Reclaiming America's Soul, he makes a strong case for why not holding those accountable for making torture America's policy is an enormous cop-out.

Key paragraph:

The fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.

It’s hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn’t, now declare that we should forget the whole era — for the sake of the country, of course.

The most telling phrase that sums up the essence of today's political reality:

Still, you might argue — and many do — that revisiting the abuses of the Bush years would undermine the political consensus the president needs to pursue his agenda.

But the answer to that is, what political consensus?

Of course, the Republican view of bi-partisan consensus is "do what we want, and if you don't do what we want, you're partisan." Will they ever wake up and realise that America doesn't like their policies. That's why we voted them out!