Re: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print
Does it ever occur to people like Cohen that the Bush administration's response to 9/11 wasn't really a frantic lashing about to deal with an incalculably frightening and disheartening event? Within weeks after the event, the Patriot Act sprung from the drawer of a Justice Department attorney intact -- a complete architecture for undermining civil rights in an era of unending war and indeterminable threat. No, that was an act of calm prepossession, as if the events that apparently made it necessary were somehow preordained, if not necessarily prescribed.
Does Cohen and his cadre ever wonder why the Bush administration moved so swiftly and readily toward a usurpation of power -- the consolidation of control into the "unitary executive" branch? Again, the swiftness and sureness of these OVP-led actions betrays not a sudden fright -- a search for answers though the midst of dark nights of the soul -- but rather the execution of a thoroughly reviewed and vetted strategy -- one just waiting for the right event to precipitate its execution.
Does the wise man like Roger Cohen consider that the company the Dick Cheney lead before "reentering public service" was so completely prepared to operate as the outsourced provider for military services -- that its capacity was an almost hand-to-glove fit for the military operations deployed in the Middle East? Was this the sudden and striking response to a global crisis comparable to that executed by the US during World War II? Or was it evidence that Cheney and Rumsfeld and their minions had been preparing these plans for over a decade -- again with precision and refinement, and executed with the calm resolve of a weekend corporate golf outing?
Does Cohen wonder how a large component of the real horror of the abuses of Abu Ghraib were conducted by a band of privateers, indemnified from accountability by the administration? Could it be the case that 9/111 galvanized this posse of "broad shouldered" men to disrupt the military chain of command sufficiently to remove all accountability except for the few "bad apples" captured on cell phone cameras? These patriots doing the dirty work of democracy -- for $1250 an hours billed by CACI, Inc. of Reston, VA. Was this the panicked and irresolute action of a nation swaying as it developed a response to an unseen, incalculable horror? Or was it further proof of a monstrous architecture, lovingly conceived and hatched inside right-wing think tanks through the Clinton era -- as the BJ kabuki played to its sad denouement?
Cohen's intellectual fraud in this piece is that he conflates the "torture issue" with all the wrongs committed by BushCo during its reign. In his construction, by facing some of the ugly facts of one tiny side note of the most monstrous strategic miscalculation in the republic's history, then somehow we can claim to have had our collective "accountability moment" and move on. But the failure to expose and recognize the fact that the Bush administration's activities were clearly NOT those of a flailing and reactive group, but were instead marched out in order as off a giant GANTT chart on a wall in the White House sub-basement. that is the real danger that this post recognizes and which the commentary amplifies. Lots of people (Richard Clarke, Ron Susskind, Naomi Klein, et alia) have demonstrated that the Bush administration's actions were clearly preordained and predetermined to a frightening degree. Cheney sought establishment of unitary executive. He and Rumsfeld executed a well-established plan for privatizing the military. The frightening pictures from Abu Ghraib were a distraction from the fact that private companies were doing most of the torture! Did that thought only occur in a post-9/11 environment? Given what we know now, it's impossible to think that it wasn't pre-ordained.
