I caught President Obama’s address to the Lincoln Society Banquet last night, and amid Obama turning the address towards his efforts to get the stimulus bill passed — something that I thought was kind of risky and unnecessary — it was hard not to be struck by his mention of how after the Civil War, Lincoln ordered that no Confederate soldier should be punished. The parallel with liberals’ feelings about prosecuting the possible crimes of the previous administration didn’t need to be said, and like clockwork a number of allegedly liberal commentators dropped their recent insistence on charging Bush and his administration members with crimes, and gushed over how great of a speech Obama gave. It was a tremendous speech, yes, but on this particular point about how Lincoln pardoned Confederate soldiers, Obama’s logic is flawed.

As many commentators have pointed out in the celebration of Lincoln’s 200th birthday, as dire as the crises our nation faces now may seem, they are miniscule in comparison to what Lincoln faced in his presidency. The attacks of 09.11 may have brought the horrors of foreign hatred of the United States to our soil, but the Civil War killed about two hundred times as many Americans over a much longer period of time. The war eviscerated this country — North and South alike — in a way that none of us could even hope to imagine, and to further punish the Confederate soldiers who had lost so many of their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, would have been abject cruelty. The Confederacy and Union alike had suffered enough, and the important business of rebuilding the country and assisting the newly-freed slaves needed to be done.

As bad of a drubbing as the Republican party might have taken in the last election, and as unpopular as Bush and Cheney might be right now, there has been no real suffering, either on their part or on the parts of the other people in their adminstration who were responsible for everything from the gutting of civil liberties to lying us into a war that killed thousands more American soldiers. For all their unpopularity, these men and women still have their supporters, particularly in big business, and will be able to lead cushy jobs sitting on the boards of Republican think tanks and companies, and giving speeches, for the rest of their lives. Contrast this to the misery that millions of American families are going through right now in the wake of the global economic crisis, brought about in large part by their mishandling of government and the role it should take in helping to regulate the market to prevent catastrophes like the one we find ourselves in now. Perhaps we should not worry about punishing the Bush/Cheney "soldiers" — congressional Republicans and the propagandists who advanced the Bush Doctrine on television and the radio — but for the Bushes and Cheneys and Rumsfelds whose actions led to the deaths of so many Americans, and so many innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians, for the profit of companies that gave right back to the Republican party, justice must be served. If these men and women have committed crimes, then for the sake of our collective moral conscience as Americans, then we must not give into the Obama rhetoric of "looking forward instead of getting mired in the past," and bring those who have committed criminal acts to justice, so that future leaders of this and other countries will not be tempted to repeat the malfeasance of the previous administration.

I still remember after the invasion of Iraq, when the Weapons of Mass Destruction were not found, and voices began to be raised about the conduct of the invasion, and support for the invasion began its precipitous drop. At a time when Congress should have been investigating the war, its eyes were focused on the Super Bowl halftime show that featured Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction." At a time when our American soldiers were giving their lives in the deserts and streets of Iraq, Congress instead inflated a relatively benign and altogether stupid MTV-influenced visual into a national moral outrage. I don’t question that it was great politics — it played well to their base and helped energize them — but it was an obvious and nauseating diversion from what was unquestionably more pressing and relevant business for this nation. After the nipple slip wore thin on everyone, instead of turning to the war, we got congressional investigations of steroids in baseball, which served to again divert us from the questions that should have been asked about the invasion of Iraq.

As the first hundred days of the Obama Administration tick away, and little is done to investigate not just the previous adminstration but also the corporate fatcats who were equally (if not more) responsible for crashing our economy, let’s look at who is being investigated by the authorities right now. Perhaps the most scrutinized public figure right now is Michael Phelps, as South Carolina police have arrested and questioned several people to try to press charges against Phelps for the bong hit he was photographed taking. Ignoring the futility and stupidity of putting this much effort into trying to nab someone for smoking weed — I could understand this much effort to punish him for his drunk driving, but trying to put potheads in jail is possibly the biggest waste of law enforcement resources of this generation — do they really think that they’re going to find someone to narc on Michael Phelps? Whoever drops the dime on Phelps is going to have nearly every Hannah Montana fan in the country saving up their allowances to put a hit on him or her. In addition, instead of going against all the corruption on Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether or not Apple lied about Steve Jobs’ health to try to shore up Apple’s stock price. In addition to being wasteful of SEC resources, at a time when we desperately need to root out those people responsible for this economic crisis and get rid of them, I think this is also highly disrespectful of Jobs and his fight to stay healthy. Fans of Jobs and Apple should be on the streets protesting this action, even if the protestors’ signs are likely to cost twice as much as other signs, and not work nearly as well, but they’ll still get lots of praise for being so ergonomic and pretty.

I realize that President Obama and his administration are not behind either of these diversions, but they’re still diversions from what should be the single most important government investigation since Watergate. Just as those of us outside of the political and media mainstream were responsible for getting the media and some brave politicians to finally ask the questions that needed to be asked about Iraq, we must be vigilant in making the mainstream media and politicians of all stripes answer the questions that need to be answered about the conduct of the previous administration and their big business friends, and to bring to justice those who have commmitted crimes. Reconciliation and forgiveness are noble concepts, but for those who have lost their jobs and homes in the economic crisis, and friends and family members in Iraq, justice demands that those who have wronged this country be held accountable for their actions.