More Notes From Nowhere

By releasing the torture memos and then rebuffing calls for an independent truth commission, the president is doing much worse than cementing a reputation for compromise: He's siding with the rightwingnuts and with all the Congressional pols -- Republicans and some Democrats -- who want to bury the past. Does Barack Obama truly believe that "looking forward" without laying blame will erase what happened during the Bullshitter-in-Chief's regime? Does he really want to become known as the Eraser-in-Chief?

In another context, he might find it worth reading Benjamin Schwartz's article in the current Atlantic, describing how the Nazis established the genocide of the Jews as a pervasive "open secret" so that all Germans would be made complicit. Then, as long as I'm on the subject, he might read Nick Bravin's article in the current Foreign Policy, describing how Lithuania's chief war crimes prosecutor has -- tragically and absurdly -- targeted Jewish Holocaust survivors as war criminals. And finally he might want to hear Mandy Patinkin sing the Yiddish song Oyfn pripetchik, accompanied by images to remind him of history's worst war crime -- because he apparently needs that kind of reminding.

Postscript: April 25 -- From Josh Brown's point of view:
PPS: May 15 -- To release pictures of detainees being tortured like this one will "further inflame anti-American opinion" and put U.S. troops at greater risk, says Mr. Obama, who is fast becoming the Eraser-in-Chief. But ordering more drone attacks that kill indiscriminately -- including this strike in Afghanistan -- won't? Americans who voted for him believed he would spare the bullshit. Sadly, he is proving them wrong. I recall Paul Krugman saying way back before the Bullshitter-in-Chief was returned to power in 2004 that if "regime change" comes he hoped the next administration would "throw open the records" and not be "too magnanimous" to the BananaRepublicans. Five years later regime change has come, but that hope fades with each passing day.