Forgiving War Criminals and Other Liberal Crimes

If you've been here before, you know I am a Fighting Liberal and vocal advocate of Liberals always Staying on Offense and Fighting Dirty.

It is, in the end, the only way we ever win. (No, the oh-so-polite-dems 2008 election was NOT a liberal victory.)

I have no patience with the being-nice-is-more-important-than-winning crowd, and could not be bothered to address Rachel Maddow's abomination of an interview with the unspeakably appeasing Jon Stewart.

Fortunately for all of us, Digby has more fortitude.

In the wake of Rachel Maddow's interview with Jon Stewart and his explanation as to why he does not think it's right to call President Bush a war criminal, one of her readers sends in a very thoughtful email, explaining and agreeing with that position:

SNIP

So, I guess my question is, how do we "learn" from his presidency if in addition to giving him a pass on his crimes, we aren't even willing to have an honest conversation, using real words with real meaning about what happened? If we dance around these things as if it's wrong to call white white and black black and insist that someone who ordered war crimes shouldn't be called a war criminal then I see a very different lesson being taken from that example than the one this commenter anticipates.

Yes, it's pretty to believe that the country will self-evidently come to the right conclusion without any legal or even social condemnation of what went wrong. We'll just "know" going forward that we need our leaders to have more patience, and be more thoughtful and less bellicose in the future. But I think this defies human nature and it certainly defies the reality of the world in which we live.

People are subject to a barrage of information and stimulation and the lessons they take from things are highly manipulable. There's a reason that wealthy, conservative plutocrats (who know just a little bit about PR and marketing) are spending billions to influence elections and create an alternative media to sell their ideology and discredit liebralism. Being passive in the face of that onslaught, pulling our punches, being unwilling to be unpleasant and confrontational in this environment is highly unlikely to even be noticed, much less appreciated. It certainly will not create the space for average people to consider both sides and make a thoughtful, reasonable judgment about their government and their society -- the necessary information simply can't rise above the din to make itself heard.

I understand the impulse. If one believes that people are basically good and that they aren't by nature irrational creatures, it's reasonable to put your faith in their better angels to see them through times like these. But human civilization was created not just to allow our creative and social aspirations to flourish, but also to keep the not-so-better angels from overwhelming the good. And history has shown that there are times when being passive and failing to sound the alarm about those bad angels is a tragic mistake.

We are living in an era in which very powerful people are being allowed to commit crimes with impunity while millions of others are being imprisoned and worse. Regardless of how the people see that (and the plutocrats are working overtime to ensure they see it their way) it's clear that the lesson the powerful are taking from this is not that Bush or any of them are "cautionary tales of poor leadership". They are being perfectly insulated even from harsh words and uncomfortable references to unpleasant historical analogies, so they are being assured every day by well meaning liberals and cynical conservatives alike that they will not even suffer social disapprobation, much less be held personally accountable for what they've done. They have learned that they get away with anything.

And in perhaps the most clever turn of all, these same well meaning, thoughtful liberals are suggesting that their fellows turn the other cheek when they in turn are characterized to many millions of people every day as "vermin" and "infectious diseases" which must be purged from the body politic. It is a perfectly defensible moral position, proposed by a guy named Jesus Christ, so who am I to argue? But I'm not sure that passive resistance works without the resistance part. And in our cacophonous political culture I just don't think you can persuade anyone to moral action without strong and meaningful rhetoric. "Yes we can" is great, but if the whole country is in distress and other side is calling you the "disease" that caused it, I'm not sure it gets the job done.

The conservatives created this hostile and aggressive discourse and now we all have to live in it. I wish I had the faith that others have that "good" will come to the fore without any necessity for liberals to defend themselves, but I don't. I think it's important to be truthful and to try to be fair, but I don't think we'll get anywhere by denying that war criminals are war criminals or covering over the fact that we have people on our airwaves dedicated to the dehumanization of their fellow Americans who call themselves liberal. Unfortunately, I see a strong liberal indication to pull back and rely on simple faith in the truth coming out in the end. I sure hope it works out.

Read the whole brilliant thing.