Lucy Steigerwald has a thoughtful piece published at Antiwar.com, delving into the significance of friendships between members of the upper crust who superficially appear to have nothing in common. But they do have something in common, they are both initiates of the Political Class, a group for which party, policy, right and wrong have no meaning. Money, power, and influence is what matters to them.
Should war criminals be forgiven, or shown courtesy, if they can affect a hokey, warm demeanor? How much should charm be taken into account when weighing the amount of contempt directed at someone? Charming people can get away with a lot. Some can even get away with instigating a two-decade war of attrition against the poorest of the Mideast, as part of a national act of revenge.
Steigerwald makes an important point about guilt:
“Only a handful of people ever grasp that the small, bureaucratic parts they play in war or surveillance count as a moral failing. Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg understood it, and risked his freedom for it. Chelsea Manning has sacrificed hers. Edward Snowden left his home, perhaps permanently, in order to try to save it from the war-fueled surveillance state. The late Congressman Walter Jones went from being the architect of the embarrassing “freedom fries” name change on the cusp of the invasion of Iraq to a man permanently guilty about his part in a terrible wrong – as he should have been.
This is not through a desire to see Jones (or anyone else) suffer. His guilt spoke to his character. He was a good enough man to realize that he couldn’t fix what he had helped break, but that it was an obligation to try to alleviate some of that subsequent suffering.”
A capacity for guilt, and the ability to face the actions that led to that guilt, is a hallmark of good character. Does Bush feel even a modicum of the guilt that Jones did? It is doubtful, and no amount of country charm can make up for it.
