ACCOUNTABILITY DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE

(Here is the fourth, and mercifully the last commemorative entry, written about six years ago, and now being posted as part of a series on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the American war in Iraq.)

When an haughty neocon makes his arrogant prediction that the war in Iraq should be a cakewalk, whereas things turn out exactly the opposite way, can he be allowed to get away with his mendacity?

No, yet he does get away! Where are all those scoundrels, who have duped us into this war under patently false pretenses? Some still there, most “kicked up” to better-paying jobs, and none at all punished!

I see no accountability here, none at all!

When the current George W. Bush Administration turns such deliberate mendacity into a national policy, at the expense of all reason and facts to the contrary, can they be allowed to get away with their mendacity?

No, yet they do get away! The great American system of government has an accountability provision for an aberrant public official. It is called impeachment. Only it does not seem to work anymore, as there exists an odd impression among the American political elite that starting any impeachment process against the sitting President must be unhealthy for the country. True, there is nothing to gloat about whenever impeachment is becoming an issue of serious consideration, yet totally removing it from consideration, on the grounds that it is going to hurt the public morale, deprives the remaining branches of government of their only effective instrument of ensuring the accountability of the Executive Branch, and turns the principle of Separation of Powers into a sad joke.

What is the meaning of accountability, when nobody becomes accountable for a tragic mistake, costing this country and others, horrific losses in blood and treasure, her national honor and international prestige going down the drain, and the worst thing about this mistake is that it was not even a mistake at all, but a colossal and deliberate deception of the worst possible kind?!

With regard to the advisers and promoters of the preexistent idea of going to war in Iraq, there is no meaningful accountability here either. There is only one reasonable solution to this problem. Those who cannot be made effectively accountable for their actions are not to be allowed into the government, or even close to the government, as its advisors and consultants.

Here is a pertinent passage from the treasury of human wisdom, the generous legacy of that great ancestor of ours, whom we used to call our Western Civilization, whom we have disowned and spiritually dismissed, on the beckoning of others.---

“It occurred to me that I should find much more truth in the reasonings of each individual, with reference to the (practical) affairs in which he is personally interested, and the issue of which must presently punish him if he has judged amiss, than in those conducted by a man of letters in his study, regarding speculative matters that are of no practical moment, and followed by no consequences to himself.” (From Dèscartes’ Method, Book I)

Here is an excellent repudiation of the practice of employing those below the radar screen, unaccountable, so-called armchair philosophers of politics, and a very reasonable appeal for the practical wisdom of such practitioners who cannot afford abstract speculation, but stand to lose from their errors of judgment, in real terms. Unless America wishes to surrender her foreign policy making to charlatanism, subversion and chaos (and this is not too much of an exaggeration), her government employment practices ought to stipulate that all foreign policy practitioners be made accountable, in clear and unambiguous ways, for the probity of their strategic advice and of subsequent policy decisions! Unless they personally stand to lose from the bad advice they give to their bosses (at least in such forms as public censure and disgrace, a career-ending banishment from public life, etc.), they will surely continue to pursue false agendas (rather than employ better judgment, which, I suspect, they may still possess to some degree, yet prefer to conceal, for certain ulterior motives) with arrogant impunity.