As IF Times

link Cleaver: If Obama wasnt president, we would be ‘marching on the White House’ – The Hills Blog Briefing Room.

Apart from the racism that this sentiment represents, the truly astounding aspect of this announcement is the blatant stupidity and naivete.  It’s all but saying that policies coming out of the White House are horribly wrong and ineffective, especially to the Black community.  Hello! Rational people have been saying that for years and only now it’s become obvious? 

Barack Obama is the standard bearer for a number of constituencies which pushed him into the world’s highest office.  By liberals of course who were keen to demonstrate their willingness to embrace a non white candidate.   By youth because he was someone closer to their age than option B at the time.  By Latinos and other minorities because he represented a possible movement towards their sensibilities.  But especially by Blacks since he was one of their own and finally, some measures would be taken to address their issues of inequity in society.

It would be useful to look at history and note that some of the biggest human tragedies happened because of misplaced idealism granted to a member of that particular society.  By some counts the death of between 45 and 75 million Chinese by starvation during the Great Leap forward was orchestrated by…a Chinese, Mao Tse Tung, surely one of the biggest mass murderers in the history of man.   We’re not sure if those who died were pulling for the homey in Peking.  Josef Stalin didn’t care too much about the native blood since he was responsible for about 23,000,000 people’s death through starvation.  Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il haven’t exactly treated their own countrymen particularly well either, apparently disposing of  over 2 million of them over their terms in office.  During the terror reign of Idi Amin in Uganda, apart from being one of the 300,000 or so killed while he ran that country, you’d have a good chance of being eaten as well.

We could go on to list statesmen such as Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Min.   The point is, having a common racial heritage in all of these cases didn’t prevent people from being victimized in their own countries.  People who think that just because they happen to share a trait with someone in charge puts them on the insider’s list for favours are…well, they’re just dumb.  Would anyone ascribe any more trust to someone who was left handed just because they also happened to be a lefty? Or redheaded? Or bald? 

On the religious front, I’m sure lots of people happily absorbed all the earnest pleadings of James Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert before it was discovered that in fact they were the wolves among the lambs.  We know that Bernie Madoff was considered a mensch in the Jewish community until somebody asked for a cheque.  

The kind of identity politics being played out today ironically reduces the chances of anything being done which can benefit the most people.  Somebody will always feel aggrieved and the irrationality of their tribalism prevents the ability for society to move forward in a cohesive way.  It makes no sense to support someone who is unsupportable.   The bottom line is, if he’s a goof to you, he’s a goof to all.

link George Bush’s torture admission is a dismal moment for democracy | World news | The Guardian.

Usually topics such as this don’t particularly lend themselves to skewering humor.  What does however, are the people who portray a disturbingly invalid perspective of such a topic.   Thankfully, over in this part of the world, we are spared from having to read the nonsense that emanates from the U.K.’s  rabidly left wing bird cage liner, The Guardian.  Over here, we know that op-eds in The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and most amusingly, The Huffington Post, are so outlandishly left wing in their views as to be comical and dismissed as delusional prose.  In Canada, we have of course, The Globe and Mail.

Today, when reading an ‘inflammatory’ headline, all you need to do is check the source to determine the general bent of the article and then virtually dismiss its contents if the source is any of the above publications.  The gentleman writing this particular article printed in The Guardian is by profession an academic and a lawyer no less.  On the heels of the release of George Bush’s memoirs, Decision Points, this Phillipe Sands latches onto the President’s admission of allowing waterboarding as evidence of international crime:

“…George Bush’s straight admission that he personally authorised waterboarding – an act of torture and a crime under US and international law – marks a dismal moment for western democracies and the rule of law. When again will the US be able to direct others to meet their human rights standards? Certainly not before it takes steps to bring its own house in order…”

People like Sands and academics in general are ground zero for the  disease that affects much of western society today.  The inability to distinguish the big picture from small minutiae hampers them from advancing  intelligent thought and in fact detracts significantly from their credibility.  What most academics lack and thus mitigates their views,  is much real world experience.  Cloistered as they are in their circle of peers, the predictable result is what is clinically referred to as cluster coitus.  Actually, it’s a more earthier expression, but most will get the drift.  Ideas and theories are circulated, propagated and validated in their community, which sadly, are then transmitted to the fertile minds of naive students as being gospel.  Once some intellectual dogma is anointed as inviolable truth, there can be no questioning of its merits.  Sounds eerily similar to a certain religious group. An obvious example of this misguided mindset is the acceptance of socialism as the desired model for societies despite having zero evidence over the history of mankind as to its effectiveness.  It’s forgotten that they live in a world of academic theory.

Another concept so roundly embraced by all ‘civilized’ societies and brought to issue here by Mr. Sands, is the rule of law.  I’m all for it. Laws generally protect the public from the individual and the individual from the public.  In an ideal world, everyone lives and lets live.  No one encroaches on someone else’s property, no one tries to convince anyone else of the superiority of their faith.  No one tries to convince anyone else how peaceful they are under threat of being subject to being bombed if they don’t believe it. Tell that to the erstwhile Cat Stevens. 

One of the principles most people would easily subscribe to is, thou shalt not kill. Sounds good on paper.  In real life, there are those whose crimes against the humanity of their own people are so heinous that a few years of hard time, counselling and then a stint in rehab just isn’t adequate.  It’s possible that guys like Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung and Saddam Hussein were just misunderstood, but on the weight of the evidence, is the world really worse off without them? 

 In the case of being ultimately responsible for the welfare of hundreds of millions of people, a nation’s leader has the obligation to consider their interests above the comfort of a few enemy combatants.  Especially during the course of war.  I think we can all agree that President Bush did not take the task of questioning the Al Queda captives lightly and presumably not for any personal amusement.   During that time of duress when nothing was known as to scale or type of impending threats, it defies common sense to worry about the sensibilities of some combatants versus the safety of an entire nation.   I think most people would consider that not dying in a fireball is preferable to a few guys getting a bit wet and offending the philosophical convictions of some academics. 

So spare us the moral tsk tsking of guys like Sands.  It’s fine to pretend to champion high minded principles, but in the real world, there are those who view ill advised application of principles as a weakness.  I don’t know who first expressed the saying that if people were willing to be sheep, there are many others who are willing to be wolves. 

This whole diatribe brings to mind the classic and best scene from the 1992 movie, A Few Good Men, featuring Jack Nicholson as Colonel Nathan Jessup when interrogated on the witness stand in the death of a young marine.  From the website IMDB.com:

“…Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to… “