Look Over There!

On the counter as you entered our kitchen was a beautiful bone china cookie jar. It was a precious heirloom from my grandmother’s house. That cookie jar was even more precious when it was filled with my mother’s cookies. Of course, mom had rules that prohibited free cookie access. As a result, my sisters and I engaged in conspiratorial raids of that cookie jar.

The raids were well orchestrated collaborations with the single purpose of relieving the jar of its cookies. This included a location survey to determine the whereabouts of “mom.” Then one sister would distract “mom” while another sister or I raided the cookie jar. The distraction worked best when it completely encompassed my mother’s attention to provide sufficient time for a full cookie jar raid. When mom got close to the kitchen during a raid – the call line was: “Hey mom, look over there!” This made sure mom was looking anywhere but where the actual raid was taking place.

Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, GOP poet laureate Mike Huckabee, Michael Steele and the choir of Republican Pundits are on a cookie jar raid. Well, actually – they are more focused on the “Look over there!” part with a hope that we forget entirely about the cookies or jar. All they need to do is keep focus on the distraction – any distraction, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Whoever or whatever the distraction is – the answer Newt, John, Mitch, Mike, Michael and their minions offer is that it is not George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or anyone from the dishonored Bush Administration. Listen closely: “Look over there!” Anywhere! Forget the cookie jar.

Before we sold our souls to politics, political parties and rabid punditry, the United States was a democratic republic established by revolutionary founders under a Constitution. We lived in one nation under God who gave us moral strength in a home of the brave and land of the free. Our respect for “the rule of law” was a guiding light, a source of pride that blended with a sense of moral strength and patriotic furor. It was our defense of freedom, the blood of our founders, the greatest generation, our value for the rights of others, our respect for human dignity - all that made our country a land where laws and moral strength blended into a free and proud people. These are the actual cookies in the jar of democracy. Cookies so valued that we cannot live without them – even if we forget them for a moment.

Let’s deal with it straight up. Waterboarding is torture as a matter of fact and as a matter of law. There is no moral exemption. It is straight out illegal – a crime. It is a crime that does not survive the “good information” exemption. If you consider what someone may say during torture, truth appears secondary at best. It is a crime even when there may be some thought that torturing a terrorist who may be responsible for thousands of lost lives may be sold as morally just. It is not. This compromise cannot be accepted. There is no party excuse.

The point is we, the people of the United States, as a country that survives on the moral strength and blind justice of its laws and Constitution with no person above the law, cannot excuse torture. Nor can we protect those who chose to abandon our great history, our Constitution, our laws, our moral strength to allow torture. The choir of Republican Pundits are far more interested in politics than truth, the moral strength in the character of the American people or actual respect for our laws. If we keep listening, perhaps we will all end up just tossing our cookies. “Look over there!”
John F. Kostyo