Accountability

By Carol Gee

Accountability is a word we have heard used a great deal this year. It as if the concept were new to the American experience, given the lack of same in the previous administration. As I think about it, the word means that people are held to account. Or people take the natural, normal and logical consequences of their own actions.

Though President Obama is often too reluctant to hold officials in the Bush administration accountable, he does not set that same lax standard for himself. I believe that he expects to suffer consequences for his decisions and actions, as a man and as President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of the military. What are some of those consequences? They might include feelings of embarrassment, ambivalence, or worry and being subjected to criticism, among many other outcomes. But our President is not deterred by such. In that same vein he is willing to feel the pain, perhaps even anguish, associated with his decisions to send members of the military into harm's way.

President Barack Obama met the caskets of the most recent war casualties at Dover AFB before dawn Thursday. Arriving just after midnight, he and several other officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, paid respects to 18 U.S. soldiers and DEA agents killed in multiple tragedies in Afghanistan. The President also met with the families of the fallen Americans. It was the right thing to do. On Twitter Josh Marshall posted a very moving set of Dover images at TPM Photo Galleries. The pictures of the President's middle of the night experience are particularly poignant.

That anyone would dare to say that President Obama's trip to Dover was inappropriate is an absolute outrage. How dare they criticize this good man with so much weight on his thin shoulders! He is holding himself accountable for his wartime decisions by accepting the normal consequences. The feelings of sadness, solemnity, regret, frustration and perhaps even anger come with his POTUS territory. And he has stepped up, as he should have.


(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)