Forgetting the Past and Its Consequences

It is inconceivable that a secret-intelligence arm of the Government has to comply with all the overt orders of Government. - James J. Angleton, Chief of CIA Counter Intelligence, Retired.

Today, immigrants continue to arrive in pursuit of that dream, just as others have done for more than 200 years. Yet these newcomers frequently generate negative reactions among native-born Americans despite their common pride in belonging to a nation of immigrants. In all parts of the United States, we often find frequent expressions of fear, suspicion, anxiety, resentment, hostility, and even violence in response to the immigrant presence. Immigrants are not the only group triggering a backlash, however. African American and Native American assertiveness often provokes resistance. Challenges to the status quo by feminists and gay rights activists also regularly induce adverse responses. Why this contradiction? 
- Diversity in America.

President Obama has on more than one occasion said that he would like to focus on solving current problems and not dwell on the past but the CIA and the Bush Administration's abusive relationship with it are making it difficult.  The American Civil Liberties Union obtained a court order under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) forcing the release of a highly redacted report about the Agency’s treatment of high value detainees that were in its custody.  Soon after its release, Attorney General Eric Holder acting on his authority as the government’s highest ranking law enforcement official broadened an existing investigation of CIA destruction of interrogation tapes being conducted by John Durham, a federal prosecutor, to look into the latest CIA IG report as well as accounts from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. 

The objective is to determine not so much if but how many Federal Laws were violated during the tenure of the Bush administration.  Durham, incidentally, was given his original task of investigating the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes by Bush’s final attorney general pick Michael Mukasey. This was certainly a good move on Mr. Mukasey's part.  One wonders though, can we actually expect to find something new at this point? Moreover will anything result from it? In Holder’s words:

As a result of my analysis of all of this material, I have concluded that the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations.

However Obama has already given the official duty of interrogation of suspected terrorists to a newly created unit to be headed by the FBI.  As a result, there is no longer any official CIA involvement in interrogation.

I’ve written elsewhere on this blog on Bush administration practices.   The New York Times summed up the situation as it now stands in a recent editorial.  Among other things they concluded:

The Obama administration has taken important steps toward repairing the grievous harm that President George W. Bush did to this nation with his lawless and morally repugnant detention policies. President Obama is committed to closing the Guantánamo Bay camp and creating legitimate courts to try detainees. He has rescinded the executive orders and the legal rulings that Mr. Bush used to excuse the abuse of prisoners. 

All of this is old news really, unspeakable things already known far too long.  And it is certainly known what members of the Bush administration sanctioned the techniques that were used.  Thus the idea that anything of substance will be obtained from Holder's investigation is doubtful.   Without question it will serve to focus attention away from problems whose needs are critical and immediate.  Health care reform is one and I will discuss it later.  The other is Afghanistan.  Here it is beginning to seem that there may not be a ready solution for the United States at all.

This is not to deny that individual members of the Bush administration are guilty of serious crimes, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression to be more specific.  This issue has become so politicized in the United States that it is unlikely to be resolved under U.S. Federal law.  As I have detailed elsewhere, there is International Law and I would favor bringing charges against those where a suitable prosecution can be waged before the International Criminal Court.  In the process, attention should be focused on the members of the executive branch of the Bush administration. The office of the Vice President would be the place to start.

For those living in the United States there remain difficulties that impact daily lives.  And few have given much credit to President Obama in his efforts to focus on the these "other" problems.  One wonders, can it possibly be forgotten what the situation in the United States was slightly less than a year ago?

The country had seen 8 years of greed, corruption and incompetence in financial institutions as well as government. 

This government incompetence resulted in a successful attack on North America by air in what is usually considered the most defended airspace in the world.  This attack was preventable if minimal competence were present and warnings were followed by the Executive Branch of the government.  The minimal competence to prevent this simply wasn't there and as a result almost 3000 lives were lost and New York City was devastated and  will never be the same. 

The economy was rapidly headed into a major recession with projected unemployment figures not seen since the early 1980s.  At the same time, major American corporations were on the brink of failure. 

The past 8 years with its two wars financed on an economic theory of borrow and spend have led to a nation left in ruin with enormous sacrifices in lives and money largely borrowed.  Other functions of government when paid for were done so from taxes obtained from those least able to afford them.  In brief, there were 8 years of wealth redistribution from the middle and working class to the top 1% of the most wealthy.   To be accurate, this was simply the continuation of a process that began in the early 1980s. 

After doing virtually nothing to prevent the largest attack on North America in recorded history, wouldn’t you think that if these people were put into the same kind of situation 4 years later that they might have acted a little differently?  They must have learned something, they couldn’t possibly get worse could they?  Yeah, they could and did. 

What happened to New Orleans during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina about 4 years after 9/11 by any standard provided an even more deplorable performance by the Bush administration in its attempts to fulfill its duties and protect the safety of American resources and the American people.  80% of New Orleans was under water and the only federal presence on the scene was the U.S. Coast Guard. It was like that 4-5 days on before anyone from the Executive branch surfaced in New Orleans.  

Bush should have deployed the Army before Katrina hit but as usual he was out of touch with what was going on in the United States, conveniently vacationing at his Texas ranch.  As a result, New Orleans was devastated and will never be the same.   All so sad and quite unbelievable.  Six years, two American cities devastated.

Returning to the present, are conditions with the economy any better now?  Are any of the measures the Obama administration initiated showing any positive results?  As E.J. Dionne pointed out in Why We Didn’t Crash,

If governments around the world, including our own, had not acted aggressively -- and had not spent piles of money -- a very bad economic situation would have become cataclysmic.  "In March of this year, the world was staring down the barrel of a Great Depression," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in an interview  last week. "This is a case study in bringing the world back from the brink, and it was American leadership from President Obama that was the key to that."

Any other signs of progress? 

Manufacturing and housing, two sectors that have suffered some of the largest job losses in this recession, showed signs of strengthening in July, the latest indications that the economy is on the mend.  A spike in demand for commercial aircraft and motor vehicles lifted orders for durable goods by their biggest margin in two years, while new-home sales increased for the fourth straight month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. About 3.5 million jobs have been lost in manufacturing and construction since the recession began in December 2007. The reports are likely to bolster the view, shared by a growing number of economists, that the recession is winding down or has already ended. Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said in a paper published Tuesday that a global recovery has begun. 

One could conclude that the President has accomplished much in his first 7 months in office. The signs are that the economy is beginning to rise from the depths and he is letting the Justice Department and Congress pursue the trail of illegality from the previous administration.   Through no fault of his though, the President's efforts to bring health care to all Americans and countering threats to legitimate government are in another category.  And these two issues appear manifestly interconnected.   

Certainly there is one way to deal with such perversions; you may identify it as the "General Sherman" approach.  Clearly there is an implicit challenge to Constitutional authority. However labeling the perpetrators responsible for the activities now present as "threats" to anything perhaps gives them more recognition than they deserve.  Nonetheless too many things have happened in the last 40-50 years to take chances. 

I have written about what one finds in the videos seen here on many occasions on this site.  What is now taking place on the issue of health care reform in the United States in 2009 is easily explained.  It is simply the power of monopolistic corporations to control parts of the media and segments of the culture that are easily manipulated by xenophobic political propaganda that exploits their darkest fears.  And in America the irrational fear that is most easily taken advantage of is race.  Fear commonly results from perceived threats and we are seeing this in American political culture today. 

To understand this, it would be useful for academics in fields like sociology to look closely at what is now taking place in the United States.  Mob behavior has not been seen to the extent it is now in quite some time.  On the other hand current trends show that American society is becoming more ethnically and racially diverse. 

A topic for study would be what problems current trends pose to the identity of those who harbor radical right wing beliefs.  The simplest and most accurate appraisal is that such people have low self esteem, view the world simplistically and are intolerant to diversity.   Those with such beliefs are unlikely to change in their lifetimes but there is hope for future generations.  It is founded in education that teaches tolerance for diversity. 

In the UK, there is an organization attempting to deal with this issue.  It is called Britkid and it contains ideas educators in the United States would find useful.  Tolerance for diversity and indeed what diversity is needs to be taught in elementary school onward.     Why aren't similar programs found in grades K-12 in the United States?

Now return to the title of this essay.  Why are Americans forgetting their past?  Why are political beliefs that haven’t been seen in such virulent forms in decades now appearing in the U.S. political process?  And why is so much of it grounded in ignorance and primitive, simplistic perceptions of reality?   In such a worldview, truth and rationality quickly become victims having no intrinsic value, becoming nothing but additional commodities to exploit.

Moreover how does one attribute motives to such behavior?  For some, clearly it is fear, however for those attempting to be seen as leaders, doing whatever is necessary to influence others, there is only one possible explanation and that is polluted self interest.