Quote of the mid-day from Michael Bérubé's worth-reading on the Chomsky and Krugman lefts:
No one on the American left believes that the United States was a happy land of benevolence and ponies prior to 9/11. But I believe that the theory of the unitary executive, the practice of indefinite detention, and the justifications of torture mounted after 9/11 are, in fact, qualitatively different from the policies of the American government before 9/11 and that no good purpose is served by blurring the distinction.
Perhaps there are some historical amnesiacs out there somewhere who need to be reminded of the bombing of Cambodia, the overthrow of Allende, and the funding of death squads in Central America lest they lapse into the belief that the United States “lost its innocence” (yet again!) when the towers fell. But if you are calling for an investigation into the crimes of the Bush Administration, as Krugman was, then it is absolutely critical to understand—and to persuade your fellow citizens—why those crimes specifically are worth investigating, why they are not just the same old same old on a different day.
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