On Accountability

Arrested for running nude
through supermarket, young
man says he was “just bored.”

I am wondering how long any organized group, be it a city, county, state, or federal government, a sports league, investment group, church league, restaurant, or any other organization can last when there is no accountability. At the moment this is, or I believe is going to be, a serious problem both for the U.S. government and the Unholy Church of the Unrepentant Pedophiles. I don’t care much for Christopher Hitchens, but I think he is quite right to point out that in spite of the virtually world-wide sex scandal involving that institution, no Priest has been held accountable. That is, at least none has been convicted of a crime or gone to jail even though their crimes have now been often made public. Whether the Pope himself is involved in this scandal I do not know. It would seem to be true, however, that the Pope’s insistence this is just “gossip” cannot be taken seriously. This scandal, which seems to grow worse with every passing month, has already cost the church millions if not a billion or more, and there is seemingly no end in sight. Will the church be able to survive this or will it eventually collapse?

Unfortunately, the same lack of accountability seems to be involved in our own government. Whereas it is known that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Yoo/Rice/and many others were involved in war crimes, some of these even admitted, there is no move to hold any of them accountable as near as I can tell. Apparently the hope is that everyone will just forget about it and it will eventually disappear, lost in the dustbin of history. But if there is no accountability in government how can such an institution continue to function?

It would seem to me that accountability is something that is fundamental to organization of any kind. If the members of an organization can do anything they wish and not be held accountable, that is the very antithesis of organization. That is, how can there even be organized life without accountability for failure to honor the organization? Are we to believe that individuals, like corporations, can be “too big to fail?” Can the obvious and even admitted war crimes of Bush/Cheney simply be ignored, swept under the rug, or excused because of their former high office? This seems to be what is about to happen. I suspect that however long it may take, this lack of accountability will bring down our nation. Citizens will refuse to respect the laws, criminal banks and insurance companies will be “to big to fail,” and someday the whole edifice will come crashing down. This may not happen in my lifetime, or even a longer time, but it would seem to me (at least hypothetically) inevitable.

Quite by accident I stumbled on Obama’s speech to our troops in Afghanistan. After a short time I had to turn it off. I suppose as Commander-in-Chief he had to say the things he said, but I thought it was an absolutely shameless performance. He insisted, for example, that he would not send our troops anywhere unless there was a good reason for doing so, but he was standing right in the middle of a situation where that was not true. There is no good reason for us to be in Afghanistan, and there is also little likelihood that we can in any way “win” or be successful no matter how long we stay. He said our presence in Afghanistan was vital for American security. I do not believe that even for a moment. Al Quaida seems to consist of at most a few hundred criminal individuals, mostly in Pakistan and in other parts of the world. There are said to be very few in Afghanistan. The Taliban are no threat to the U.S. and never have been. Obama said we have to help the Afghan people defend themselves from the Taliban. The Taliban are themselves Afghans, they didn’t descend on that unfortunate place from outer space or even from other parts of the world. In any case the Taliban are a problem for Afghans. To assume they cannot deal with their own problems (as they have for thousands of years) is nothing but blatant paternalism, just as is the assumption they desperately want our form of democracy (or the democracy we foolishly seem to believe we have). Furthermore, if our presence in Afghanistan is so critical for our national defense, why are we at the same time desperately trying to figure out how to get out of the mess we have made?

LKBIQ:
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce

TILT:
Rice is the second most cultivated grain after maize.