An Immodest Proposal

Today we find out, of course, whether Obama and his team are more Macchiavellian or more Moronic. I'd say that they are smarter than I've given them credit if Obama extended the hand of friendship to Lieberman while he ordered the rest of the Democratic Senators to avert his wrath by stabbing Lieberman in the chest, back and sides and voting him out of the DHS Committee Chair. As I said to Mr. Aimai last night I haven't even read Mach. or Sun Tzu, at least not since a more impressionable age, and even I know that the Prince or the Emperor shouldn't have to do his own dirty work but can't leave enemies behind.

But by the time I've done typing this, sometime today, Lieberman will already be accepting the tearful thanks of his colleagues for not having burned a cross on his own lawn and for not actively donning a klan robe and hood while parading up and down the country fomenting race hate. His incredible, generous, restraint at calling for a cease fire *after* Obama was elected will be celebrated in Senate song and story. More... Meanwhile, to the rubes, it will be explained that he "apologized" for traducing the Democratic party and Obama and that he "promises" to full investigate any and all breaches that the party of death and its muslimgayodictator may cause in good order after January 2009.

So, that being said, I have little hope that Obama will start taking my advice. He did darned well without it during the campaign and I'm pretty sure he will do tepidly well without it for the rest of his term. But all modesty aside it would be a masterstroke.

Here's the plan. He goes to Bush and says "I *order* you to pardon all the CIA and army torturers, and I *permit* you to pardon your cronies like Cheney but at the same time, and on the same documents, you *will* pardon all the tortured foreign and domestic prisoners in all the secret prisons all over the world. At the stroke of midnight we will open all the prisons and release *all* the prisoners. That makes those prisoners and their treatment the problem of the host countries. They will be angry with us for putting them in that position, but on the other hand it shifts the focus from our past wrongs to their current ones and makes all the international negotiations public and above board.

On the day after inauguration Obama takes credit for this solomonic solution and says that he can neither rescind the orders of pardon nor does he wish to. Its bygones be byogones day! Now he's issuing an executive order putting the entire executive, military, and civil sides on notice that an illegal order, coming from any superior anywhere in the chain of command, may not be obeyed. No secret orders. No criminal orders. Its a refresher, of sorts.

Its an imperfect solution with many drawbacks but it has its good points, too, which frankly no other one does.
aimai