No Remorse
By Derrick Z. Jackson
The Boston Globe

When teenagers show no remorse for mistakes, we call in
the therapist. When killers show no remorse, we want life
sentences or death row. When the United States makes deadly
mistakes, remorse is unnecessary, because, of course, it is
never our fault.

Thinking we could nail Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant,
Ayman al-Zawahri, our military launched an air strike into
a Pakistani town just over the border from Afghanistan. We
smoked 18 people at a dinner that al-Zawahri was allegedly
going to attend, but apparently skipped out on. The
provincial government claims that four or five foreign
militants were killed, but local witnesses said women and
children were among the rest.

This is of small concern to the White House. President Bush
has never apologized to the Iraqi people for the three years
of carnage done in the name of weapons of mass destruction,
weapons that were never found. Bush always dodges the need
to show remorse on the premise that "we are up against
people who show no shame, no remorse, no hint of humanity."

He long ago maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to
ignore our own inhumanity. Our bombs and bullets have now
killed several times more innocents in Iraq than were killed
during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But the rationale
for a remorseless occupation continues to be, as one senior
White House official told me and a small group of
journalists in November of 2003, "There will be some
civilian deaths. It will be nothing like what Saddam Hussein
did."

With three years of denial, the reaction to the latest
mistake in Pakistan was predictably without feeling. Asked
yesterday if regrets were forthcoming, White House press
secretary Scott McClellan refused to talk about the
incident, saying only, "I think you've heard our comments
about matters of that nature in the past. If I have anything
additional to add, I will." All McClellan said was, "Al
Qaeda continues to seek to do harm to the American people."

On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off
the air strike by saying, "The biggest threat to Pakistan,
of course, is what Al Qaeda has done in trying to radicalize
the country... These are not people who can be dealt with
lightly."

The weekend talk shows had influential senators, both
Republican and Democrat, issuing remorseless support of the
mistake. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, a Democratic member
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, basically blamed
Pakistan for the mistake. "It's a regrettable situation,
but what else are we supposed to do?" he said. "It's like
the wild, wild west out there... the real problem here is
that the Pakistani government does not control that part of
their own country."

Mississippi Republican Trent Lott, who is on the
intelligence committee despite a career of unintelligent
comments on race and sexual orientation, justified the
strike and targeted assassinations by saying, "There's no
question that they're still causing the death of millions
of - or thousands of innocent people and directing
operations in Iraq." Bayh seconded that by saying to CNN's
Wolf Blitzer, "I agree wholeheartedly, Wolf. These people
killed 3,000 Americans. They have to be brought to justice."

But no one should dare attempt to bring America to justice.
Senator John McCain of Arizona played the game on CBS's
"Face the Nation" of issuing an apology and then immediately
qualifying it. At one juncture, he said, "It's terrible when
innocent people are killed. We regret that. But we have to
do what is necessary to take out Al Qaeda, particularly the
top operatives."

At another juncture, McCain said, "We apologize, but I can't
tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again."

The equivocation guarantees that it will happen again and
again. The world is our wild west. When we miss the villain
at high noon and the bullets fly past the saloon to kill
mothers and children, we still flip the barrel to our lips,
blow a triumphant puff, twirl the gun back into the holster
and say, "Darn sheriff should'a told everyone to stay
inside."

McCain said, "This war on terror has no boundaries. Clearly
Al Qaeda does not respect those boundaries, but I don't want
to equate our behavior with theirs."

The air strike in Pakistan reaffirms how our behavior is
plummeting in the direction of the evil we proclaim to
fight. At home, we are appalled by drive-by shootings that
take out innocent children. Abroad, the fly-by air strike
is the source of no remorse, with dead children and mothers
taken very lightly.

This is what happens when the government is run on a corporate model. We need to stop electing presidents with business degrees, and get rid of the ones we've got.