"Moralizing" About Torture, Regardless of the President

This past Sunday, Rahm Emmanuel said this:

STEPHANOPOLOUS: The President has ruled out prosecutions of CIA officials who believed they were following the law. Does he believe the officials who devised the policies should be immune from prosecution?

RAHM: Yeah, what he believes is, look, as you saw in that statement he wrote. And I think, just take a step back. That he came up with this, and he worked on this for four weeks. Wrote that statement Wednesday night, after he made his decision, and dictated what he wanted to see and then Thursday morning I saw him in the office, he was still editing it. He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided. They shouldn't be prosecuted.

STEPHANOPOLOUS: But what bout those who devised the policies?

RAHM: But those who devised the policies --he believes that they were -- should not be prosecuted either. And it's not the place that we go -- as he said in that letter, and I really recommend that people look at that full statement. Not the letter, the statement. In that second paragraph: This is not a time for retribution. It's a time for reflection. It is not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back, and in a sense of anger and retribution. We have a lot to do to protect America. What people need to know, this practice and technique, we don't use any more. He banned it.

As annoying as that was, it just was just backing up Obama's previous rhetoric on the matter on a larger stage. What pissed me off more was the completely predictable reaction among certain sections of the netroots that has driven me insane over the past couple months.

I say predictable because early on Monday morning I made a bet with myself on when the first diary trashing those in favor of prosecuting torture would appear on the dailykos rec list.

I guessed 3 pm.

Nope! Try top of the rec list at 1 PM!

A summary of the diary, titled "I call BS on all this torture(d) moralizing. . ."

I don't like torture either, but stop bitching!
Health care is important! We can't have HHS working on a health care plan while the justice department looks into who should be prosecuted. If you enforce international law here, progressive agenda fails. DO YOU WANT THAT?!!1!

If you really think it's worth torpedoing the progressive agenda for those causes, then you should make him do it.
So unless you've actively mounted an campaign against something that happened two days ago, then you should shut up because you're a moralizing jackass.
THAT'S REALITY.

And if you think I'm exaggerating, go and read the diary yourself. He manages to take two sentiments I strongly believe in (FDR's idea of "make me do it", and people bitching and moaning about bitching and moaning) and completely bastardizes them in order to fit his/her point.

First off, if you're talking about the "make him do it" dynamic, that usually doesn't apply for an idea that already has massive amounts of public support. Second, people HAVE taken action in the form of petitions, letters, and calls to congress, so the whole "stop bitching and do something" argument doesn't really fly.

There are two trends that have become commonplace in some corners of the netroots since the election, and they are beginning to drive me out of my mind:

• Criticizing the administration automatically leads to accusations of harming the message/administration/agenda, regardless of the criticisms' merits. People will tell you they agree with the criticism, but that the person should not be saying it because it makes them look bad. This could just be me, but I tend to lay blame with the person who made the crappy decision, rather than the person who pointed out how crappy the decision was.

• The overwhelming attachment to personalities rather than core beliefs and values. Put it another way, if President Hillary Clinton had made this decision, the dairy above would never have been written, and there would be several scathing indictments of the Administration in it's place. (In fairness, some rec-listed diaries attacking the one above showed up later in the day) I'm not making this argument to say that Hillary Clinton would have done something differently (in fact I'm nearly 150% sure she would not have), but to make the point that the person making the decisions should not radically change your perceptions. If Dennis Kucinich or Howard Dean told me that we should give a trillion dollars of our money to hedge fund managers, it doesn't change the merits of the idea. If John Edwards or Russ Feingold tells me that we shouldn't investigate those who legalized torture, it DOESN'T CHANGE A FUCKING THING.

Some politicians are far better than others, but at the end of the day they are vehicles and nothing more. You give them a pat on the back when they do something you like, and you raise hell when they do something crappy. That's the power structure these people understand. This idea that if you cheer loudly for all aspects of someone's agenda - they will magically push through a more progressive agenda was borderline insane when it was suggested a few months ago, and it's just as nonsensical today.

We have a president who is shockingly honest about what he believes (for politician standards), and he shares quite a few goals with the progressive movement. Let's applaud and assist him when he shares our values, and let's raise hell when he does crap like this.

Update: Apparently some form of pressure has worked in keeping this issue alive, and forcing Obama to tweak his statement, now saying that Eric Holder will look into what to do next. We'll see what happens with this specific issue, but my main point about the relationship between Obama and the Netroots remains true. There is arguably no more critical dynamic for progressive politics going forward for (hopefully) the next 8 years, and it will be intretesting to see if the relationship evolves.