Errors Should Not Be Consequence-Free

Via Daily Pundit, we get a great summary of one of the biggest problems with the soooooofter, niiiiiiicer version of the U.S. this side of political correctness, namely that of the abdication of the duty to enforce consequences upon those whose failures cost American lives. Letting bygones be bygones is only appropriate AFTER we figured out what went wrong (and fixed it) and who screwed up (and fixed that too). I am glad someone has recognized this squishy nonsense for the failure and danger that it is and has spoken up about it.

Every time we get a bipartisan, blue ribbon commission to investigate anything, the only thing you can be SURE that will be investigated is how to put out some ambiguous bunch of gobbledy-gook that muddles the water and defelects blame from anyone of consequence, in either party. For instance, former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy "Pants Burglar" Berger, pled guilty so stealing secrets and unlawfully removing classified documents re: national security and all he had was his security clearance suspended (and if Hillary is President, he will get his old job back, yikes)...George Tenet had no idea what was going on as CIA director under Bush or Clinton, is the sitting CIA director leading up to 9-11, and this flunky gets a Medal of Freedom awarded to him by Pres. Bush...the 9-11 Commission actually had several avowed Clinton hacks on there, two of whom had actual, direct roles in creating the conditions that allowed 9-11 to happen, so big shock that this "comprehensive report" didn't suggest any, you know, actual changes or accountability. Read the whole thing, but if some government hack's failure leads to an American city flattened and radioactive for several generations, it won't be time for finger pointing, it will be tar, feathers, and gallows time...just saying 'sall.

"I said we are not in a position that is even as good as sub-optimal. All of the forgetting of the past, the eschewing of spilt milk, the rejection of recrimination, has led us to a place where we have Muslims rioting around the world at anything even remotely perceived as a slight; at Pakistan making a separate peace with the Taliban running Waziristan; at the specter of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, standing astride both the Straits of Hormuz and Iraq's oil fields, at Hizb'Allah in effective control of Lebanon on behalf of its Syrian and Iranian masters, of an Israel in strategic tatters, of a Saudi Arabia funneling hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of willing, even suicidal, bodies into a myriad of Islamist terror organizations, of a "Palestine" openly governed by avowed terrorists, a Europe succumbing to the twin maladies of demographic pressure and malignant political correctness, an American president who has retreated from his own stated positions of bellicosity focused on Islamist terror, an impending Vietnam-style collapse in Iraq, and a crushing political defeat for those who advocate effective war on the regimes that support the Islamic terror surrogates of every shape and style.

Spin it how you will, this is not a good place to be. Yet here we are. Do you think, then, that it might be permissible to inquire who screwed up, and how did they screw up in order to bring us to this place?

Here's my first suggestion as to one thing we could do right now: Put the finger on every mistake we have made, including naming the names and placing the blame on those who made the mistakes, and even, if at all possible, imposing some sort of punishment on those who screwed up so badly.

In this world, you get what you pay for. And if there is no price on error - in other words, if error is free, then, amazingly enough, you're going to have far more error than you ever believed possible...especially if you refuse to even examine what those errors might have been, and penalize those who committed them."