The Cancer Eating America's Soul

After eight years of a Bush/Cheney co-presidency the new President and Congress will have some difficult choices to make. Beyond the immediate concerns, we have tremendous problems staring us right in the face over the next few years. So, the tendency for some will be to adopt the "let's move on" mantra that will push for ignoring the lawbreaking and corruption of the Bush/Cheney administration in order to be able to truly focus on the future.
This is what many people said after Watergate, and President Ford moved this meme along by issuing a pardon. But there are some who point to that pardon and the insistence that moving on was the best medicine and say that it was really just a treatment of the symptoms, not the cancer. The black disease was left behind and spread throughout the Republican Party and emerged unchecked under the guise of a Unitary Executive philosophy of governance promoted by Dick Cheney and others.
I fear that as President Barack Obama will encourage a "let's move on" course. I know a President McCain would.
But I hope, that as Obama says those things to soothe a damaged public psyche that behind the scenes his administration and Congressional leaders will begin the process of finally learning the truth behind the corruption and malfeasance of the Bush/Cheney years.
As it emerged from the darkness of apartheid South Africa formed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help the victims and the perpetrators find justice, healing and forgiveness.
America needs a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times wrote about this yesterday:

"The first step of accountability isn’t prosecutions. Rather, we need a national Truth Commission to lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing. That was what South Africa did after apartheid, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it is what the United States did with the Kerner Commission on race and the 1980s commission that examined the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Today, we need a similar Truth Commission, with subpoena power, to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11."

This country will remain polarized as long as it refuses to fight and treat the cancers that are eating it up from within. We have to move forward and deal with the difficulties ahead, but we also have the resources and the time to take an honest look back at our failures and face our shame that is in our recent past.