"Superman Scooter"

Harper's Magazine: By Scott Horton

...Moreover, this episode tells us one of the most deeply guarded truths of the Inner Party of the Neocon movement, namely: the ends justify the means. That is, to accomplish a goal accepted by the Inner Party, you are entitled to do anything—break the law, by all means, and indeed set the law into oblivion if you can. That explains the fate of the Geneva Conventions, which were, alas, simply inconvenient—they got in the way of the notion that no rules can stand between us and the accomplishment of our objectives. For the Nietzschean Neocon man (let’s call him Übermensch or perhaps even better, Scooter Libby), there are no rules; they exist for the people of the herd. And that explains the indignation when the rules for the herd are applied against Scooter. ...

I remember one afternoon sitting with Elena Bonner, the doyenne of the movement, in her apartment on Moscow’s Chkalova Street, turning over the case of a poor refusenik who was being persecuted by the KGB. And Bonner lectured me: “You need to remember one tactic of the totalitarian mindset, a tactic that belongs to the basic training of KGB cadres. They frequently accuse their victim of doing exactly what they, in fact, are doing. Why? It has a double utility. It forces the victim to use his meager resources defending himself from false challenges. But more importantly, it deflects attention from their own scheming and plotting.” Well, that turned out to be exactly the case in the matter we were discussing.

And the more I think of the charge of “politics” and the case of Scooter Libby, the more it strikes me that the charge is absolutely true. There is no question whatsoever that the prosecutorial function in the United States has been radically politicized. The Neocons have provided the ideological rationalization for it, and the White House has overseen the process from the beginning. Now Bush’s deus ex machina intervention to save Libby from time in prison should be taken as the ultimate proof of exactly that politicization.