No respect without accountability

By Libby

The war criminals that currently occupy the White House are blithely confessing to their crimes and as Glenn points out they have no lack of defenders in The Village who would excuse them. Glenn points out the paucity of their arguments.

Isn't this all so painfully basic? When the predominant Beltway argument is stripped of euphemisms, it amounts to nothing less than the claim that our political leaders should be -- and are -- free to break our laws. And that's the system we've adopted. It's why Dick Cheney feels free to smugly admit in public that he authorized these war crimes. He knows that the Ruth Marcuses of the world will intervene to defend him. Still, it's one thing to argue that American political leaders should have the power to commit crimes. It's another thing entirely to advance the insultingly deceitful and Orwellian claim that doing so is necessary so we can focus on preventing similar lawbreaking in the future.

Booman struck a similar theme this morning as related to Obama's stated reluctance to go after them.

I understand the need for national unity and healing. Believe me, I do. But real unity and real healing can only come after we stop thinking of Bush as some hapless blunderer and pass the verdict of felon on him and his legacy.

I did a similar post last night at my DetNews blog.

This is not about hot headed partisanship. It's about holding our leaders responsible for their actions. It's well and good to seek to let bygones be bygones in the interest of a civil adversarial relationship, but the Democrats have been trying that for a very long time and it hasn't worked. This has been they most God-awful administration in my lifetime. They have no respect for humanity and forgiveness. They consider it a weakness. They just keep committing more crimes because they know they can get away with it.

As I said there, if we truly want to reform Washington and change the way things work, accountability is the only foundation upon which a new respect for the rule of law can be built.