Requiem for a scandal
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
Scandal
has become the bread and butter of political reporting. Not reporting
on punishment for crimes, but the naught details. “Scandal,”
wrote Marc Danner, “unpurged and unresolved, transcends political
reality to become commercial fact.” (NY
Review of Books,
December 4, 2008)
U.S.
scandals arose centuries ago, often deriving from imperial adventures
that involved breaking laws and lying or covering up. Each one
dramatizes the conflict between the values of a democratic republic
and an autocratic empire, between pious Christian facades and base —
but very understandable — motives, like greed, acquisitiveness and
even revenge. In 1898, God, for example, ordered President McKinley
to “take the Philippines,” as he informed the press corps of his
decision to take Manila Bay. The Dole family then benefited from its
investment in pineapples. McKinley wanted to convert the heathens, of
course. U.S. troops occupied the Philippines until 1933. A crazed
anarchist executed McKinley in 1899. Payment for his imperial sin?
“God
will punish you,” my mother used to warn me when I’d misbehave
and elude her castigation. I probably believed it because like most
kids, I automatically accepted my parents’ words as
gospel
even when they spouted old world mumbo jumbo. (My faith in their
authority got tested when my father told me I would die if I ate
shellfish, for example.) Similarly, like most American kids, I
learned that people who commit serious crimes should pay a penalty.
In civics class, kids still learn about equal justice. Cops arrest
rich or poor men sleeping under the bridge or stealing a loaf of
bread. At a certain age — adolescence? — it dawned on me that the
rich didn’t pay; only the poor. Hundreds of thousands of poor
people who smoked a joint, or snorted cocaine, occupy jails and
prisons. Bankers and brokers who scammed billions of dollars get
“bailed out” because they belong to the brotherhood of power and
privilege.
Who
will punish Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and the rest of
the mob that tricked the country into war? I’m not talking about me
breaking a neighbor’s window playing stickball. The abovementioned
“public servants” — and especially Bush — started two wars,
initiated torture as routine practice, usurped basic rights and
steered this country onto the proverbial reef of scorn. Since the
U.S. system operates on principles similar to my mother’s — we
must wait for God to punish them — I doubt I will feel any sense of
satisfaction in my lifetime. Modern empires don’t tend to punish
their malfeasant emperors — unless their policies directly impact on
a powerful section of the ruling clique. Nixon — undone by the
Watergate scandal — created special agencies to re-elect the
President and finance the re-election of the President. Like his
“plumbers” (top stop leaks to the press) these creations
circumvented the traditional government bureaucracies and made the
Establishment very uneasy.
Lying
and spinning, however, have become as American as apple pie. Kids
learn in school about George Washington admitting to chopping down
the cherry tree. Bush, no George Washington, had difficulty
confessing to misdeeds. Bush doesn’t admit lies or mistakes. In
2004, at the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner, he still insisted he
did the right thing by starting the Iraq War and even jokingly looked
under his desk for Saddam’s WMD and links with Al Qaeda. The press
corps laughed. They were his only pretexts for going to war. His
cabinet and advisers knowingly perpetrated lies or kept quiet. They
understood no casus
belli
existed. They collaborated in orchestrating for a stenographic media
an atmosphere for war.
All
of them have left or will leave office rich and famous. Neither
Congress nor the courts have punished these sinners. Yet, the whole
world knows Bush and company started a war without just cause and
transgressed on law and ethics in numerous other ways as well. The
media, which should be collectively screaming for justice, has
enjoyed reporting the scandals, the rises and falls of the rich and
powerful. Instead of exhorting the public to rise up in wrath, the
supposed fourth estate, with few exceptions, expresses sympathy pains
for poor lame duck President Bush, whose dramatic decline in
popularity
must truly hurt him.
The
Founding Fathers did not design the U.S. system for overseas empire,
but they did foresee continuous continental expansion. The President
would execute laws made by Congress, with rights remaining in the
hands of the individual states and the Courts, while somehow the
nation would acquire more and more territory
In
1787, James Madison understood the nation’s future as “laying the
foundation of a great empire.” He predicted westward expansion to
the Pacific and feared a return to monarchy when citizens had
occupied available continental land. To preserve “the Republic,”
Madison suggested, “extend the sphere,” which allows for “a
greater variety of parties and interests [and] make it less probable
that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the
rights of other citizens.” (Federalist X)
This
“extend the sphere” metaphor
has
guided U.S. history since the 13 colonies to the most powerful empire
in the world. The notion of an ever expanding republic, however,
created a duality that future generations did not resolve. Empires
require rapid decision-making, hardly compatible with more ponderous
republican institutions (Congress, local, county and state
governments).
After
World War II, to circumvent the cumbersome processes of the republic,
those who governed the now preeminent power in the world fashioned a
secret overseas agency capable of carrying out aggressive policies.
Cold War initiators added to the intelligence capacity of the CIA a
“covert” side. In the name of protecting the free (democracy and
republicanism) world, the men around Harry Truman started the Cold
War by lying: accusing the badly war-scarred Soviet Union of plotting
to take over Western Europe. After losing 20 million dead and even
more wounded, having 200 major cities destroyed and having little
food or clothing, it would take quite a stretch to see even an evil
leader like Stalin invading Western Europe — with the U.S.
possessing nuclear weapons.
What
ensued were institutionalized scandals: wars (with armies or CIA)
based on invented “security” reasons. Ironically, history books
do not record as scandalous Truman’s three year police action in
Korea, the CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala or the massive
intervention in Cuba culminating in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
Each one of these actions ran counter to the very law announced by
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson as he explained the post World
War II Nuremberg trials to the German population. An ‘aggressor’
is generally held to be that state which is the first to “declare
war upon another state;” invade it or attack it “with its armed
forces, with or without a declaration of war” or afford “support
to armed bands formed in the territory of another state, or refusal,
notwithstanding the request of the invaded state, to take in its own
territory, all the measures in its power to deprive those bands of
all assistance or protection.”
Jackson
declared that “no political, military, economic, or other
considerations shall serve as an excuse or justification for such
actions.” He compared illegal warfare to piracy and thus applied
“the principle of individual responsibility [as] necessary as well
as logical” to maintain peace.
“The
idea that a state…commits crimes, is a fiction. Crimes always are
committed only by persons.”
Like
the duality between empire and democracy, the Presidents
also
pursued
illegality from the highest office while preaching obedience to law.
Bush, the fundamentalist Christian, believes Hell is the proper place
for sinners. Imagine his nightmare of retribution, a variant on an
old joke.
The
Devil offers a grim W options since he was such a powerful figure.
In
Chamber one, Bush sees Nixon swimming in a hot, acidy pool, unable to
get out. Nixon’s skin is red and swollen with blisters.
“Don’t
swim,” snaps Bush.
The
Devil opens Door 2. Pappy Bush, breaking rocks and sweating profusely
has tears running down his cheeks. For each rock he splits, a new one
appears.
“Nope,”
says Bush
“Here’s
your last option,” says the Devil, opening Door 3. Clinton is
seated at an Oval Office type desk, looking satisfied. In front of
him is Monica, doing her thing.
“Hmm,”
says Bush, “Think I’ll choose this one.”
“Okay,”
the Devil responds. “You can leave now Monica.”
Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and author of a BUSH
AND BOTOX WORLD. His films are available on DVD from
roundworldmedia.com.
