Saturday, June 23, 2007
CIA Admits to Decades of Illegal Actions
EXPERTS DECLARE MOMENT RIPE FOR SOCIAL LEARNING
This is an important development in U.S. foreign policy because a lot of the righteous anger that makes people want to blow Americans up is fueled by our hypocrisy concerning democracy and the rule of law. While the assasination of Iran's president in 1953 is notably absent from the list, the frank admission of illegal actions conducted by the U.S. government can help to undercut this perception. Viewed as part of the broad effort to repair the tremendous damage that Bush-Cheney has inflicted on our country and the world, it can help to lay the foundation for a moral foreign policy.
Like other recent positive developments -- the Democratic victory in 2006, the Libby conviction, legal judgments against excessive Bushian power, the possible shut-down of Guantanamo Bay, etc. -- the CIA admission may be evidence of a corrective mechanism at work in the American system. We should consciously foster this mechanism and ensure that everyone recognizes it as a collective effort by good Americans to step back from our batshit crazy reaction to 9/11. This can be a foundation for an approach to terrorism that goes beyond the technical aspects of smoking people out of caves, and embraces morality as a powerful "weapon" in our ideological "arsenal."
Amazingly, people around the world still want to like America. If Americans struggle mightily to repudiate the Republican rape and pillage factory, and grasp for a vision of the U.S. in the world that transcends old resource and culture antagonisms, people may start to remember why they want to like America. When people start to feel that, then we know that we will be making progress against Al Qaeda.
As the war in Iraq so clearly demonsrates, military victory is impossible without ideological victory. Americans are slowly learning that there is no more compelling force than doing the right thing.
This is an important development in U.S. foreign policy because a lot of the righteous anger that makes people want to blow Americans up is fueled by our hypocrisy concerning democracy and the rule of law. While the assasination of Iran's president in 1953 is notably absent from the list, the frank admission of illegal actions conducted by the U.S. government can help to undercut this perception. Viewed as part of the broad effort to repair the tremendous damage that Bush-Cheney has inflicted on our country and the world, it can help to lay the foundation for a moral foreign policy.
Like other recent positive developments -- the Democratic victory in 2006, the Libby conviction, legal judgments against excessive Bushian power, the possible shut-down of Guantanamo Bay, etc. -- the CIA admission may be evidence of a corrective mechanism at work in the American system. We should consciously foster this mechanism and ensure that everyone recognizes it as a collective effort by good Americans to step back from our batshit crazy reaction to 9/11. This can be a foundation for an approach to terrorism that goes beyond the technical aspects of smoking people out of caves, and embraces morality as a powerful "weapon" in our ideological "arsenal."
Amazingly, people around the world still want to like America. If Americans struggle mightily to repudiate the Republican rape and pillage factory, and grasp for a vision of the U.S. in the world that transcends old resource and culture antagonisms, people may start to remember why they want to like America. When people start to feel that, then we know that we will be making progress against Al Qaeda.
As the war in Iraq so clearly demonsrates, military victory is impossible without ideological victory. Americans are slowly learning that there is no more compelling force than doing the right thing.
