BY KAREN WEBB

An open letter to President Obama:

You have a lot of nerve talking about justice and the use of “moral imagination.” Well, that Amicus brief in defense of John Yu, regarding the right of advisors to escape the results of their own really bizarre “moral imagination,” was not my idea of morality in any form.

We must honor “agreements among nations of human rights” and still you allowed your Justice Department to excuse John Yu after the Bush Administration took his idea of “moral imagination” and used it to throw the Geneva Accords in the toilet and now your justice department has flushed the Accords into the sewer of your version of “moral imagination.” You should be aware that the term, “moral imagination” is going to come back at you like acid reflux after chimichangas with hot sauce.

And there is another example of Obama’s “moral imagination:”

You said we should be noticing our similarities and not majoring on our differences. Well, I noticed a similarity right after I puked on hearing about the Amicus brief. We can excuse, cover-up and justify abuses with the worst as well as our fine friends like China, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan. The Bush Administration and all the others can excuse anything in time of war and so can you. There were several guys at Nierenberg that used the “I was just an advisor and didn’t think they would really do it”-defense and it didn’t work in 1945 and it should NOT work now.

You said we should “fight oppression and strive for justice.” Right, and the way to start is by allowing actual abusers, torturers and sadistic jailers to escape retribution by saying that they were taking the advice of the Bush Administration and the administration gets to say they were taking the advice of their advisor, John Yu, and all advisors to leadership are exempt from any form of punishment whether criminal or civil.

I was listening to the speech on NPR and I heard an expert on something other than basic decency say it was a powerful and “self-effacing” speech. As my old man would say, “horse hockey.”

That was the most artful and articulate effort at butt-covering, past and pre-emptive,I have ever heard. The Bush speechwriters are loving the content and Bush is jealous of the delivery, but I am having to resist the urge to barf on my keyboard.

– Karen Webb lives in Moore, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer