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Criticize. Ignore. Repeat as necessary

One of the great things about this country is that I can write the following sentence:

“Why in heaven’s name are we copying torture techniques that the Chinese Communists used on our own soldiers during the Korean War?”

I can write a sentence like that, and publish it, without worrying about a knock on the door in the middle of the night. About a sudden disappearance.

There might be a file somewhere, filled with similarly critical sentences written over the years under the very same byline. And if the thought were ever to occur to someone to consider me for some high-ranking government position, that same someone would probably go through that file and quickly think better of the idea.

Or maybe there’s no file at all. (Why flatter myself?)

And while I certainly don’t get invited to private briefings or state dinners at the White House, there are any number of other reasons—perfectly good reasons—for that, too. I can never remember which fork to use. I don’t even own a tuxedo.

So I’m free to criticize the people in charge, and they’re free to ignore me. Which is still a better deal than I’d find in plenty of other countries I could name. I understand that. I’m grateful for it.

Still…

Don’t you sometimes wish there were fewer things about the people in charge that were so ripe for criticism? Or—even better—that the people being criticized were paying even the slightest attention? Not to my criticism, necessarily—to anybody’s.

We’re inclined to criticize, for instance, when we see the news about the coercive-interrogation class held at Guantanamo back in December of 2002. About how the techniques being taught there came from a study of what the Chinese had done years ago to force confessions—“many of them false,” the stories emphasized—from American prisoners.

We used to call those techniques “torture.” We used to be better than that.

And now? Not so much.

We can’t be bothered to be better—not even when the actions we take, and the principles we ignore, only make things harder for us in the long run.

For instance: Which genius was it who decided it would be a good idea to give American oil companies, and America’s friends, the inside track on developing Iraq’s vast oil resources? To try to shut out the rest of the world? To have the State Department secretly “advising” the Iraqi Oil Ministry on drafting the contracts?

Hadn’t anybody in this administration heard the drumbeat of suspicion from the very first days of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”—that it was never about Iraqi freedom, that it was always about Iraqi oil?

Didn’t anyone remember? Didn’t anyone care how it would look?

And how about the State Department and the Commerce Department giving a back-channel wink and a nod to another American oil company looking to sign a lucrative development deal with the Kurdish regional government, even while our official policy was to oppose any regional deals until Iraq had adopted a national petroleum policy?

Did I mention that this particular oil company’s chief executive just happened to be a major fund-raiser for President Bush and a member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board?

Didn’t anyone care how it would look? Or did they just assume that their little secret would stay a secret?

That’s another one of the great things about this country: There’s always someone digging out the secrets.

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.