David Broder has rightly been subjected to more withering blogger scorn than I am capable of expressing, but that doesn’t mean I can’t add my mite. His recent column (Stop Scapegoating) advising against prosecuting torturers has been deconstructed here and here as well as elswhere, but there are many levels of absurdity in the column, so I will concentrate on a point I have not yet seen made.
As digby points out, Broder exemplifies the the beltway philosophy that holds that people in power should suffer no consequences for either mistakes or criminality. But he has gone even further in this piece.
Let’s start with his his injunction that Obama “stop the retroactive search for scapegoats”.
A scapegoat, as we all should know, was an innocent goat upon whom the Jewish people ritually transferred their own sins. The goat was then forced into the desert, where it died in expiation for the sins it had not committed. Jesus Christ, according to the Christian tradition, was the ultimate scapegoat.
Broder turns the meaning of the word inside-out. He argues that we should transfer the actual guilt of the goat to us the people:
Again, [Obama was right to release the torture memos], because these policies were carried out in the name of the American people, and it is only just that we the people confront what we did. Squeamishness is not justified in this case. (Emphasis added)
We, the people are the guilty parties because these people made the decision to torture in our names. That being the case, those who actually committed the crime should not be punished.
It’s an odd sort of logic. Now that Nazi comparisons have been legitimized by the right, we are free to point out that it’s a bit like arguing that the German people were primarily responsible for the holocaust, so it was inappropriate to punish Hermann Göring, et. al. And, as Broder demonstrates, God forbid we should have punished Hitler had we caught him alive:
Suppose that Obama backs down and Holder or someone else starts hauling Bush administration lawyers and operatives into hearings and courtrooms.
Suppose the investigators decide that the country does not want to see the former president and vice president in the dock. Then underlings pay the price while big shots go free. But at some point, if he is at all a man of honor, George W. Bush would feel bound to say: That was my policy. I was the president. If you want to indict anyone for it, indict me.
Is that where we want to go? I don’t think so. Obama can prevent it by sticking to his guns.
No, we wouldn’t want to put George Bush in the dock. Look how well it worked out when we gave Nixon a pass on Watergate and Reagan a pass on Iran-Contra.
But there’s something more profoundly repellent about Broder’s thinking here. To return to the Nazi comparison, the German people did accept their share of responsibility for the crimes committed in their names, and they are a better people for it. But Broder is not really looking for that. His reference to these crimes as “policy disagreements” gives him away. What he is really saying is that since we are all guilty, none of us are guilty.
Post a Comment