Clear as mud

By Capt Fogg

Is there any concept murkier than Moral Clarity? When John McCain tells us Barack Obama lacks that sticky, opaque and thoroughly uncertain medium through which events must be seen, he's really telling us that what John sees as morally imperative is simply opinion that can't otherwise be defended.

What do we see when John asserts that Obama isn't being honest or possessed of good judgment for suggesting that the US should lead by example, by thinking twice before invading? When he asserts that

If he [Obama] really thinks that, by liberating Iraq from a dangerous tyrant, America somehow set a bad example that invited Russia to invade a small, peaceful and democratic nation, then he should state it outright,

he must be asserting that massive bombing, huge civilian casualties, the destruction of a country, its roads, its schools, it's institutions of learning and culture, its homes, its businesses, the exile of millions of families and the distribution of the spoils to friends of the president, is a morally clear way to remove one particular dictator while ignoring all the rest. I think Obama was saying it outright.

Such morality as McCain praises is best cloaked with the smoke of burning bodies, and of course it has been. Is it really necessary to point out the way McCain describes disputed territory as a "peaceful and democratic nation?" It should already be obvious that he's indulging in convenient fantasy. It should be obvious that when he insistsObama is morally unclear for suggesting that the US, riding alone on its moral high horse "won" the cold war, that his idea of clarity is about waving flags so you can't see the truth.

If I were one to write aphorisms, perhaps I could produce something cute about avoiding those who tell you that morality is clear, but those who won't accept that won't accept it because morality for them is simply a sleazy excuse for sacrificing others for your own gratification.

Perhaps if John McCain thinks that this war and its shock and awe was a good thing and has produced good things sufficient to justify more killing and destruction than did the man we removed from power, perhaps he should have the guts to say it. He should have the guts to admit the trumped up, fabricated, forged and ever shifting excuses Bush used to initiate it instead of justifying it with sleazy sophistry sold to war lovers. He should have the honesty to step away from the crepuscular casuistry he uses to insinuate that attacking Iraq had anything whatever to do with morality or anything to do with punishing al Qaeda.

To me, the fact that McCain lacks anything like the leadership qualities, the education or the intelligence to be the President we need is beginning to take a secondary place to the increasingly ineluctable conclusion that he's a flim-flam artist of little talent selling the moral, ethical and practical failures of his predecessors as salvation.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)