Obama will represent only a minor change in American political affairs, even compared to G.W. Bush, because the same capitalist interests still hold all the power and will continue to arrange government policy to suit their interests.
My negative expectations were confirmed with the news that Obama has ruled out any prosecution of Bush Administration officials for violations of federal and international laws, that is to say for war crimes. This is a matter of policy, which extends far beyond government, and can be called “management insurance.”
Managers insure each other of immunity from responsibility, and safeguard their futures to act with impunity, by never acting in any way to bring another manager to accounts for violations committed against their employees and the general population. A manager only contributes to the prosecution of another manager when it is a matter of personal career survival, or revenge promising career advancement. (For you lawyer-types, I mean “prosecute” in the general sense of both legal and administrative proceedings, and “violations” as both statutory and policy violations).
A particularly egregious example of management insurance is described in a riveting article in the Nation magazine by Nick Turse, A My Lai A Month. Turse describes the case of Maj. Gen. Julian Ewell, commander of the US Army’s Ninth Infantry Division in Vietnam (from February 1968 to April 1969) and his deputy, Col. Ira “Jim” Hunt, who served as a brigade commander and as Ewell’s chief of staff. These officers implemented Operation Speedy Express in the Mekong Delta, whose purpose was
to pacify huge swaths of the Delta and bring the population under the control of the South Vietnamese government in Saigon. To this end, from December 1968 through May 1969, a large-scale operation was carried out by the Ninth Infantry Division, with support from nondivision assets ranging from helicopter gunships to B-52 bombers. The offensive…claimed an enemy body count of 10,899 at a cost of only 267 American lives. Although guerrillas were known to be well armed, the division captured only 748 weapons.
This was equivalent to a My Lai massacre a month for over a year.
Ewell and Hunt were obsessive about achieving high “body counts,” and directed their troops to essentially kill any living being, human or animal, that could be detected; and every such kill, including babies and water buffalos, was logged as a “Vietcong”. These officers saw high body counts as their avenue to promotions. The sheer horror of this policy and its careerist motivation was noted and even opposed by others in the Army, but none of these critics went outside of their management structure with their concerns, as a matter of career survival.
The results:
— The Army quashed its own investigation, burying the story from public and even Congressional view;
— a 1970 Newsweek magazine exposé was gutted to insignificance: “Buckley and Shimkin’s nearly 5,000-word investigation, including a compelling sidebar of eyewitness testimony from Vietnamese survivors, was nixed by Newsweek’s top editors, who expressed concern that such a piece would constitute a ‘gratuitous’ attack on the Nixon administration”; and
— “Ewell retired from the Army in 1973 as a lieutenant general…Ira Hunt retired from active duty in 1978 as a major general…Army records indicate that no Ninth Infantry Division troops, let alone commanders, were ever court-martialed for killing civilians during the operation.”
Pretty nice insurance for mere army generals; and some of you actually believed a new US president would support war crimes trials of a previous US president and his cabinet?! War crimes tribunals are always victor’s justice, they are imposed by the superior force of a successful invader or a successful revolution. It requires a “hostile takeover” to dump the previous management. US elections are not hostile takeovers.
Why was My Lai exposed and some limited justice dispensed? Because Ron Ridenhour (1946-1998), a soldier on active duty in Vietnam, heard about the massacre and gathered eyewitness information, and on returning to the United States sent thirty letters detailing his investigation to members of Congress and to Pentagon officials. This drew Seymour Hersh to investigate. Ridenhour had ensured the My Lai story was public, his great contribution. Operation Speedy Express had no Ron Ridenhour.
Needless to say, Ridenhour did not have a long Army career, nor achieve high rank nor gain a rich pension. But, was not his national service of far greater value? Yes, but he had punctured rather than maintained the US military’s and the Nixon Administration’s management insurance. Such maintenance is what high pay is awarded for.
You may think management insurance is corruption, and ask “why is our political class corrupt?” Why aren’t people like Ridenhour the rule rather than the exception? I think George Carlin gave the clearest (and most unsparing) answer, in 1996:
If you have selfish ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish ignorant leaders…Maybe it’s not the politicians who suck, maybe something else sucks around here, like the public…There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: The public sucks, fuck hope.
Carlin was a comic genius, but let me state his conclusion in a different way.
In 1846 a wagon train of emigrants from the Eastern U.S., the Donner Party, traveled to California but became trapped high in the Sierra Nevada mountains by deep snows (22 ft, 6.7 m) for four months, and suffered heavy losses due to starvation despite resorting to cannibalism. The members of the Donner Party were “pioneers”, “rugged individuals” intent to make their fortunes, whose only social tie was family, and for whom American Indians were obstacles (shooting Indians was not murder), and nature was for exploitation. The sad accounts of their family feuds, bickering, abandonments, thefts and murders could be taken as extreme examples of similar behaviors, and certainly similar anti-socialist attitudes we might witness among Americans in coming years as we descend deeper and deeper in the possible (probable?, inevitable?) economic depression awaiting us.
I just don’t see Americans pulling together indiscriminately during a real crisis of survival. Again, maybe I’m off, but I think our basic problem is a profound lack of character, which our political class honestly reflects; rather than that we are generally a virtuous population betrayed by a corrupt political class. It’s not “them”, it’s “us.”
The “people are good” viewpoint is orthodox leftism, as I was scolded once by an orthodox leftist who said the “people are bad” bias was a fascist tendency (the hint was clear). Obviously, from the point of view of organizing (e.g., a union) it is much easier to sell the idea and also be motivated by it, if your bias is that most people are “good”. My attitude reflects what I’ve learned from Buddhism, which is that most people are “unenlightened”, simply ignorant. Buddhism counsels compassion. It is the insistence on staying ignorant that I lose all patience with.
So, yes, it is maddening that Bush et al. will never get impeached (there is still time), tried by the Senate, or prosecuted for war crimes by the Obama Administration, or before any international tribunal. But, is this primarily a failure of Obama’s, or ours? Who elects these criminals and allows them to smirk their way through years of carnage and to reap very rich rewards? Who pays their management insurance policy? We have no innocence, and our stubborn ignorance is a worthless substitute for it. The rot comes straight out of us. Gandhi had a compassionate way of phrasing this: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
The leftist hope, and one I share illogically, is that it is physically possible for most people to become that desirable change — and call it what it is, socialism. Amazingly, it only requires a change of mind.