Who's Responsible? What me?

I've dealt with the issue of moral responsibility in several postings at this blog (also see this). I've found these efforts somewhat unsatisfying, perhaps simply because I haven't plumbed the depths of the political and ethical assumptions that bolster the cravenness of those who mouth ethics while they bomb innocent men, women, and children in their campaign of world moral sanitation. ....

In his intrepid clarity, Glenn Greenwald has hit the bull's-eye on moral reponsibility. Homing in on one especially craven example of this ehtical turpitude, Greenwald locks, loads on William Kristol's recent rhetorical gambit to shift blame for the Iraq debacle onto those who opposed the invasion:

What we see now are the rats on the sinking ship scrambling around desperately to point fingers in order to ensure that the blame and the consequences are heaped on someone – anyone – other than them. For Bill Kristol to go on national television and blame the Bush Administration and our country’s military for the failure of his war is an act that is as despicable as it is revealing of the true magnitude of the desperation of the war proponents.

And then we have those self-defenders who will sink a level lower than even the level to which Kristol descended by seeking to blame war opponents for the war’s failure. At least Kristol had the intellectual honesty and decency to try to shove the blame onto those who actually influenced the prosecution of the war (the Defense Department and the military). These blame-war-opponent types are actually trying to blame their own failures on people who control nothing and influenced nothing.

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