An April’s Recantation

By Dennis Loo 

Since Dick Cheney recently had a heart transplant, I think it’s appropriate that I also have a change of heart. Those things that I said about you Dick, those criticisms I aimed at you and W., for misleading the nation into wars, for engaging in torture, I mean, “alternative interrogation techniques,” for spying on every American and anyone communicating with Americans, for negating Congressional intent by hundreds of signing statements, for not coming to New Orleans sooner in the face of Katrina, for not addressing global warming and peak oil, I take it all back.

You were right and I was wrong: global warming’s a myth, New Orleans needed urban renewal by storm, those levees didn’t need maintenance and we so much more needed those marshes to be converted into golf courses for those of us who understand the really important things in life: golf, business power lunches, fine food and women, making deals and living high on the hog. The liberation of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of Pakistan, the huge tax cuts to the wealthy, these are the things that you were spearheading and I didn’t see that what you were doing was really the right thing after all. Those people abroad really do love us and those people in those Occupy protests; they’re just a bunch of malcontents!

And my dear President Obama: those criticisms that I wrote about you starting from so early on, even before you became president, I take those back too. I said that you were not what so many people thought that you were, but they were right and I was wrong. You are the hope and change president. You have changed the way people perceive reality: when you say that you’re going to close Gitmo, you knew that people would think that you really meant this in your heart and soul and that if you ended up abandoning that promise, that they would still believe in your words and your secret intent to do the opposite of what you’re actually been doing.

Even now, you’re proving this to be true as people think that you will do things that you’ve been postponing from your first term. The drones that you first proposed to W. to use in Pakistan, the escalated use of them that has occurred under your term, the threats you made to use them against your daughters’ dates, the execution of Al-Alwaki and his 16-year-old son, the suspension of habeas corpus, the preventive indefinite detentions, the NDAA, the extension of the Bush tax cuts, the assertion of “sovereign immunity,” the further incursions on women’s abortion access and your suspension of the morning after pill for young girls, these are all wise measures and those who don’t understand how wise they are don’t understand the nature of empire. I see the light now. I was blinded by silly principles like the rule of law and morality. I understand now that the point is to say that you uphold the rule of law but that in the pursuit of terrorists we must override the rule of law. Morality is what we say it is.