From shock to the awful truth

It's all happening so fast, each news cycle more dreadful than the last, and only shock and denial protects us. The media prattles, and the public---or that portion of it that can still afford the gas---hides in the malls.

But if we ever really do focus clearly, the next stage is anger. America has been disgraced, and every American disgraced with it. What has been going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably elsewhere is nothing short of sanctioned savagery.

We should be motivated by a cold determined anger to do something about it. These leaders have disgraced us. It's already abundantly clear, complete with paper trail, that all this started with Bush. He and his administration must go. If an election weren't scheduled for November, the only honorable course would be impeachment.

The frivolous self-righteousness of the rabid right against Clinton notwithstanding, impeachment of a president is a serious matter, especially in wartime, with troops fighting for their lives. So an election is better, and this one can't come soon enough. It is the only possibility to begin restoring any shred of honor, and any hint of decency.

The situation is so bad that however reluctant he may be to do anything that might endanger American soldiers, John Kerry must express this sense of our disgrace, and his awareness of the need to address it. This administration must be held accountable, and that means they must go.

It's worth noting that the prisoner abuse disgraces the U.S. military first of all, and honorable people within it are very aware of this. Apparently it was military officers in JAG units who tried for months to stir media and professional (lawyers) interest in this prison and torture issue, without success. So perhaps in addition to shock, one reason the media is unclear on this is that it also disgraces them.

There's been a lot of talk about the psychology of it all, but much of it has been misplaced. The psychology that gets to the root of it is the psychology of George W. Bush and his true believers.

Bush's rabid religious right supporters have unleashed their shadows into the public arena, not to deal with them, but to motivate policy and make decisions and judgments. Bush may be the most unreflective and fanatical of all, though in a slightly different way. He has convinced himself that his self-worth depends on being the war president. Politically it's a deadly delusion, for it is clear that if Bush needs to start wars in order to be the heroic war president, he will. It completely defines him. It defines his approach to every issue. Without war he would be lost.

War is his righteous instrument, his calling from his oddly Old Testament Christianity. His certainty---his staying the course---is fanaticism. It doesn't just mean keeping troops in Iraq until some reasonably stable government is forthcoming. It means destroying those he perceives as enemies. He sees the world in stark figures of his own delusions. Of course there are enemies. The Twin Towers didn't destroy themselves, at least not literally. But he can't see the actual threat of actual enemies clearly or deal with them effectively, when he is lost in a mirror of shadows.

The Bushies and their true believers see those foreigners as uncivilized, and so they commit the most scandalously uncivilized acts, and justify them with counter-civilized rationales. This behavior and these justifications unravel a hundred years of international law, and return us to the Middle Ages and the Crusades. Only it's not just European white men---this insidiously rational-sounding insanity apparently infects women, perhaps including the nation's highest ranking African American woman, and Asian-American and Latino-American administration officials and true believers. Americans all.

And why aren't we hearing more from Christian believers about this fanaticism? What kind of Christianity is this, operating in those prisons? American Christians are being disgraced.

But the news that has barely begun this week is writing on the wall another reason Bush must pray for re-election. It will postpone the possibility of his being charged in American courts with war crimes. Some of his underlings might not be so protected.