Rational Philosophy

Early news of the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes had the distinct whiff of smoke about it; the kind of smoke that hints at the existence of fire. The sad story had all the hallmarks of a not-so-wily White House cover up. The protestations of ignorance from all corners; the silent finger pointed at the lone and lowly scapegoats, I mean maverick lawyers at the CIA… I’m sure that many of us had the same question: could this really have happened without the knowledge and endorsement of the White House?

Today we have a glimpse of the smoldering coals of that fire. At least four lawyers close to the administration weighed in on the question of destruction, apparently, among them Alberto Gonzalez, the long arm of the war. And a former senior intelligence official speaks of the “vigorous sentiment” of some White House big wigs in favor of destroying the tapes. Why? Because at the time the Abu Ghraib detention scandals were making the administration and the country look bad, as if we lacked principles and decency. So came, we may presume, the principled and decent voice of power: Let’s burn those incriminating tapes.

I’ll go out on a short and sturdy limb and predict that the US administration also had a hand in Pakistan’s quiet release of about 100 detainees who had been held on suspicion of terrorist involvement in secrecy and with dubious legal grounds or outright lack of same. One of whom was so sick and malnourished that he died about twenty days after being left on a garbage dump.

What philosophical lesson can we take away from the miserable conduct of the present administration? An odd aspect of the Bush presidency seems to be that the man himself hasn’t garnered more ill will. And therein perhaps lies the seed to the lesson.

Bush is the president by title but not by function. He’s the front man. Bush has been more truly and firmly manipulated than the American public. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Fieth, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the hawkish bunch, all with their overlapping and dangerously ulterior motives have molded the clay of the hapless Bush. The plan, but for one fatal flaw, would have been perfect. Bush is so clearly incapable of complex subversive maneuvering that the country was duped into thinking he mostly meant what he said. He probably mostly did mean what he said having been fed the uncomplicated black-and-white surface ideology of his puppeteers.

Here is the point: The American public has been manipulated. Bush’s wranglers used a political system short on insight and long on hype to get an unqualified stooge into the highest office of the government. When that can happen, the system needs revision. The public needs to use the lessons of the last few years to allow itself to yield to wisdom and to carefully evaluate the policies, strengths and weaknesses of the current batch of candidates. The beauty pageant is a distraction. We owe it to ourselves to get wiser, to dig deeper, to understand the motives and motivations of the hopefuls so that we pick the one who is the least corruptible, the best intentioned, and the most effective. Sound bites be damned; America needs a real president again.