Djelloul Marbrook

It’s interesting how eager both the left and the right wings are to pull the trigger on Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, who has written a book confirming many of our worst suspicions about the Bush Administration.

If he knew his bosses were lying about Iraq and Valerie Plame, the CIA undercover agent whom they treacherously outed, why didn’t he speak up, save thousands of lives, dollars and damages? That’s what many of his critics of the left and right are yowling.

As a man, perhaps a damned fool, I’ve spent at least half my life trying to figure out why I acquiesced in certain wrongs, why I was wronged, why I wronged others. I think it sometimes takes a long time to square yourself with the events in which you’ve played a role. I think it sometimes takes a while to figure out who your enemies were and are. And, yes, if you can’t make mid-course corrections you haven’t grown up.

Why did the Germans acquiesce to Nazi horrors? Why did the French gang up on Dreyfus, a loyal citizen? Why did we wantonly slaughter the Native Americans and enslave Africans out of greed? Why did Spain enslave the Indians?

It takes time to wake up from some nightmares. It takes time to reset some moral compasses. Sure, I know some people make decisions as fast and surely as John Wayne in his movies. I’ve seen men and women do just that, and I’ve admired them. But it’s not a universal gift. Sometimes I’ve risen to the task, but not always. It seems to me there are an awful lot of self-righteous people out there throwing stones at McClellan.

I’m willing to believe McClellan examined his soul, reviewed his part in wrongdoing, and made a decision to write about it. I don’t hear Dick Cheney or Karl Rove apologizing for ruining the career of Valerie Plame, a loyal American. I don’t hear the Administration saying it was wrong about anything when it can’t even account for $9 billion lost in Iraq, vanished. I don’t hear the networks apologizing for selling us all those retired generals pretending to be analyzing the war and all the while knowing they were paid Pentagon stooges pitching the war.

So what’s all this hullabaloo from the all too righteous on both sides of the political spectrum about a young man who seemingly got sucked into horrific deeds by people who had been his patrons and mentors? What’s so hard to understand about that, considering that we have all been suckered?       —DM