NO SELF-INQUIRY FOR MALFEASANCE

The War in Iraq has been judged as the most profligate misadventure in the history of U.S. foreign policy. But, kudos to the Brits, who have a governmental system that holds inquiries which, while lacking any threat of accountability, at least tries to ascertain the facts from the prinicipals involved.

A Brit asked in rhetorical fashion (and perhaps with some incredulity): "Tell me--does the US government never hold public, sworn inquiries the way the British do? Is no one going to be called to give an account of why the US chose to invade Iraq?"

My answer: Yes, the American system of governance never holds public sworn inquiries the way of the British system. The hauling of governmental officials before an investigative body conflicts with two leading principles of American political culture: Our highest political leaders must never be accountable for actions they take while in power; and, whether their official acts are "illegal", especially the starting of wars, is utterly irrelevant. Instead of formal investigations, we wreathe them post-incumbency as elder statesmen who bask in media reverence.

It is then left for historians to investigate the Iraq War fiasco, about which, in any case, the consequences, still developing (and they could be dire), will not be clear for decades. The early histories, though, are already in print (e.g., Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq [2006], by Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas E. Ricks).

It will, also, be left for our children and grandchildren to ask of us how it was that nearly an entire country--from the intelligence and defense establishments, including the U.S. military, to Congress (failure of oversight) and nearly the entire mainstream media--could have gotten it so horribly wrong (count up the hundreds of thousands dead and even more maimed, the several million refugees, and the near total physical destruction of Iraq).

Ultimately, though, the American citizens themselves will have to answer why they were not more responsibly awake, even unto being comatose, during the hard-selling of an illegal, shoddily planned, tragically executed war. Not so difficult to blame another nation as delusional, as we did the German people--"Hitler's willing executioners" (as a book title has it)--for their cooperation with the murderous Nazi regime. But, it is not even in the realm of possible national self-reflexivity for America to look inside--the deep structure of its cultural psyche and institutions--to see how it is that we could allow the prosecution of such massive horror on another people.

Our grandchildren might want to know.

DEEP STRUCTURE OF AMERICAN CULTURE AND ELECTORAL REALISM

Recently while surfing political blogs, I came upon the phrase, "the prison-house of masculinist framings of the subject [of the presidential electoral process]", advising that feminist true believers of Sen. Hilary Clinton should understand that if she were elected president, she could exercise power only to the extent that her program was masculinist (and thus be "imprisoned" by the masculinist framing of the exercise of power in America). The example of Margaret Thatcher's hyper-masculinist administration was proffered as proof.

My fear is that the word "white" must be interpolated immediately before "masculinist," so that the meaning acknowledges that the road to the White (prison?-)House is dualistically masculinist AND white (at least for now). Can Sen. Obama avoid this dictum? How far must he travel down that same road, exhibiting both characteristics, to have real hope of electoral success?

However, on the (literal) face of it, I'd say Sen. Clinton IS less privileged than a black man running for the highest office, due to the nationalistic American ethos of masculine power. America, overall, it seems to me, wants and psychologically needs to see itself as the most powerful force on the Planet (witness its puerile exercise of power internationally).Thus a woman struggles electorally against this ethos, at least in some sectors of the American electorate.

Yet, I understand that, historically, black males were emasculated. I also observe that Sen. Clinton is patriarchalizing her image; but I thought the feminist movement was in part to allow freedom to choose one's identity (even a manufactured persona). Not so, evidently, in American politics.

So in context of the deep structure of American culture in terms of its self-concept re the exercise of power, the paramount question of the present presidential election cycle becomes, to what extent have black males overcome historical emasculation by American society compared to the degree that that same culture will allow a woman to masculinize herself--and get elected to the most powerful office in the world?

Sen. Clinton understands what it would have taken to get a woman elected president in America. Sen. Obama? Let's see what kind of road he must tread down. It's difficult to see that it will be the one of his own choosing. In Sen. Obama's case, too, in this pessimistic view, the electoral path just might be a ride in a paddy wagon to an ideological prison house driven by what America thinks it needs.