Forgive and Forget
for release 04-17-09
Dallas, Texas
by Lightning Rod

Forgiveness makes for better regularity. People who can't forgive are often constipated. The Poet's Eye is seeing this truth played out in the situation concerning the possible crimes of the Bush administration about torture.

Yes, we could imitate the Nuremburg Trials and pillory Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales, Rummy and George Bush for authorizing torture. What good would it do? Would it make amends for the crimes? No.

The Poet's Eye sees that President Obama is taking the right stance. Revenge doesn't work on the level of national politics. It would do no good to put George Bush on trial for what? Massive incompetence. Failure to curb his attack dogs?

The policies of the Bush administration concerning torture and fair-play in taxes and regulation were a disaster for our country. We suffered. Plus we have managed to plunge the whole world into a depression. But as President Obama maintains, it will do us no good to look backwards. We need to look forward. Our attention should be on correcting the problems rather than wasting time and energy trying to recriminate or punish the rats who got us here.

Obama has the gift of forgiveness. I'll bet he has no problem with bowel movements. He has the grace to know that it does no good to look to the past and to hold grudges. He is moving forward. He is correcting the mistakes, not dwelling upon who is responsible for them.

If we want to hang torture charges on the Bush administration, then we would have to go far, far back and include many more suspects.

This is the fact. What happened at Gitmo or Abu Graib is no different from what goes on every day in U.S. jails and prisons. I've been there, I know. When I was in the Texas prison system, I witnessed numerous events that would have not been permitted under the Geneva Conventions. They would make inmates stand on wooden Coca Cola crates for hours. They beat them physically and they locked them in dark confinements for weeks at a time and starved them.

The quibbling about what constitutes torture is a bit absurd to anyone who has ever been in a jail or prison. Simply being held prisoner and being locked in a cage is torture. Having your freedom restricted is torture. And according to your sensitivity, having a pea under a hundred mattresses is torture.

Imprisonment and interrogation are not pretty things. But they exist. They happen both in institutions and in our personal lives. To deny this is naive. The Poet's Eye looks kindly on the forgiving stance that our president is taking. If we want to recriminate about past abuses and errors we would have to try people post-mortem. I would like nothing better than to see George Bush hanging by his thumbs, but it would do no good.

I'm with President Obama, let's move on.

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. "
~ Lewis B. Smedes

No shit.

Some can and some will not.

The poet has good eyes.

I never thought he would be elected.

Now I think if he lives through his first term it will be a miracle.

But it happened once, it will happen again.

Something's gotta change.

Clay wrote: about Obama


I bet it is all that arugula he eats.



two on going wars and Pakistan crumbling
and one tin soldier rode away to his "Belief Tank" in Dallas

I can forgive but I can't forget.

it's nice to be able to go along with the prez for a change
no doubt
moving on i still cannot believe that old w bushwacker ain't in the wart haus with deadeye dick

heavanz

big D

maybe youll run into bushie at one of yer music venues thar