QandO

May 24, 2004

The Double-Standard Mambo
Posted by McQ

John Leo points to something which has been plaguing political discourse in this country for years:

The Iraq war has turned out to be a festival of double standards. Just about everybody who insisted on an apology from President Bush for seven months of pre-9/11 failure to confront terrorism demanded no such apology from Bill Clinton for his perjury and assorted lying and for eight years of doing almost nothing about terrorism. Democrats who are purple with rage that Bush went to war without U.N. approval rarely mention that Clinton did the same thing three times--in Bosnia, Kosovo, and in Operation Desert Fox (the bombing of Iraq in 1998). And those in the news business who have spent so many months admiring the moral authority of the U.N. have basically looked the other way as evidence accumulates about corruption in the oil-for-food scandal.

These sorts of double standards do nothing to elevate or add to political discussions in this country. They're standards of convenience based on politics and power (or the pursuit thereof). If its helpful to your political cause, then its either right or wrong, depending on which will help. But 4 years later the same situation is now viewed and decried in the opposite manner since it now hurts your political opponent and helps your candidate.

Meanwhile many sit on the sidelines shaking their heads while watching this charade and listening to those perpetrating it talk about "honor", "truth" and "being straight with the American people".

In a pig's eye.

And it isn't just something the left does:

Not all double-standard winds blow from the left, of course. Consider the debate over Donald Rumsfeld. Many Republicans who are loudly defending him took an opposite position over Janet Reno, author of the botched raid in Waco, Texas, and thus the leading example of ministerial incompetence under Clinton. Consistency principle: Both Reno and Rumsfeld should have resigned. Reno was responsible for more than 80 deaths, including women and children. By sitting on the Abu Ghraib story for months, Rumsfeld has dealt a crippling blow to the American effort in Iraq. Even if he is not implicated in orders that may have led to the abuse, he surely is guilty of failure on a grand scale. Rumsfeld, like Reno, should have quit. Neither would have lasted two minutes in a British cabinet, or in any properly run private enterprise.

I never felt Reno should have gone over Waco (although I think it should have gotten much a closer examination than it did ... like the anal exam Abu Ghraib is getting (and btw, John Leo, Rumsfeld didn't "sit" on Abu Ghraib for months)). But his point is valid. If what Reno did in accepting responsiblity for Waco was good enough for Republicans to be howling for her head and demanding her resignation, why in the world isn't Abu Ghraib good enough for the same sort of howling and demanding from the left?

Responsiblity, after all, is responsiblity.

We could all come up with literally hundereds of examples on both sides.

Double-standards, it seems, are applied every time the power changes in DC and the "in's" become the "out's. " Politics as usual in the good old US of A.

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