arteejee

A site of satirical musings, commentary and/or rhetorical criticism of the world at large.

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Location: Southeastern, Pennsylvania, United States

Friday, July 17, 2009

Liberal Thoughts on Justice and the Legacy Asterisk

One of my loyal blog readers, who noted the pro-liberal leanings of my writing, has asked when am I going to write an entry about how Barack Obama is slowly turning the United States into a socialist country. Well, believe it or not, I am currently working on a response to this question which I hope will satisfy both my fans and critics. However, I must remind everyone: I am not affiliated with the Fox News Network. In other words, I am not obligated to be “fair and balanced”. The answer to my reader’s query will be, “Sorry, Joel, not today.”

Instead, I will offer a thoughtful debate on the pros and cons of investigating the most recent charges against the Bush Administration. Naturally, we have to consider all of the parties involved in this debate. First, there is the wonderfully elegant, morally upright, and otherwise poised for absolute political perfection Obama Administration. The second party is Congress, a bipartisan, bicameral group of individuals who are always at odds, either together as one or as a multiple of separate interests, with the Executive Branch, no matter who is in power. The third party is the late, lamented, despicable, Constitutionally-challenged Bush Administration.

Remember...no obligation to the concepts of “fair and balanced.”

At issue now is the revelation that former VP Dick Cheney instructed the CIA to lie to Congress about the existence of a certain surveillance program carried out in conjunction with the "war on terror". One commentator pointed out (on the liberal Keith Olberman show) that the Bush Administration was set up wherein the Commander-in-Chief Decider would tell his subordinates what his goals were, instruct them to do whatever was necessary to achieve these goals, but for God’s sake, don’t tell him what they were doing to achieve these goals. This way the Decider could really be in the dark about what was going on and truthfully say that his administration was not doing the horrible things that the liberal media was accusing them of doing.

It’s an interesting theory but, even if it is proven false, George W. Bush will go down in history as the Chief Executive who perfected the deer-caught-in-the-headlights facial expression. History may judge him harshly, but we have to give him props for this. There, see, I can write something nice about the Bush Administration. I bet you didn’t think I could do it, but there it is in black and white.

Anyway, Congress is in an uproar over these latest revelations and many of them (coincidentally Democrats) are calling for hearings, investigations, and indictments. They have a point; after all, this may be an indication of criminal activity on the part of the Bush Administration. In a perfect world, we could not, and should not let any crime go unpunished. It would be in the Republican's best interest to pursue justice too, since any crimes which go unanswered would surely give members of the Obama administration a free pass to circumvent the Constitution...but I doubt that this point is currently being considered.

However, let’s put this into perspective. Throughout American history, members of Congress have promised voters anything just to get their support, showed favoritism for financial contributors ahead of the public good, accepted bribes, and misled constituents...but God help YOU if you lie to THEM. Apparently, there is a legality issue involved. Also, for some reason beyond my understanding, they take lies very personally. Go figure!

President Obama is resisting the calls for investigation, since it may distract from his ambitious domestic agenda, and I believe he has a very valid point. We need to look no further than the Clinton impeachment for a good example. As you may recall, the GOP-led Congress abandoned all other issues just to pursue Clinton’s perjury and, they hoped, to push him out of office. While the impeachment raged on, Americans continued to lose their jobs and their health insurance; Wall Street financiers accumulated their wealth at the expense of investors and raided their workers pension funds; and, oh yes, an evil man by the name of Osama Bin-Laden planned and plotted his attack on the Great Satan. Congress obviously thought they had bigger fish to fry.

As much as I would enjoy seeing former members of the Bush Administration publicly hung by their short and curlies, I must admit that we can’t afford to look away from our biggest problems right now just to pursue justice. It would be a terrible shame to let these miscreants get away with these high crimes, but the Obama Administration needs cooperation from both parties to get his reforms enacted, and demonizing the past administration would surely alienate the Republican members of Congress.

So the Bush Administration may get away with its assault on the Constitution, but we do have one weapon left to us to exact justice: history. When it comes to Bush’s legacy, we could mark it with a big, fat, juicy asterisk and then detail all of the nasty things his people did in a footnote that would take up volumes of paper. Ah, yes, the mere thought of this weapon warms my dear old liberal heart because I know I will have a lot to write about for many years to come.

(Thank you for reading! Please pull around to the second window.)

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