Today’s Topic: Freedom is Worth Dying For
This administration’s lawyers are arguing cases across America demanding that national security will be damaged by law suits being allowed to continue. The administration’s puppet appointees, all dancing on the same apparent string, are talking about Americans dying because of information becoming common knowledge but which they don’t want becoming common knowledge.
National security will not be damaged by information getting out about how an inept and dissembling administration has infringed upon the rights of millions of Americans. Americans, however, may well die by some types of information becoming common knowledge and this is the price that any American may well pay for being a free and true American.
A true American realizes that the piece of paper upon which the Declaration of Independence was written symbolizes the ideas of a people desiring to be free.
A true American realizes that the pieces of paper upon which the Constitution of the United States of America was written defines the function and process of government.
A true American realizes that the addition of the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution define what the government may not do to its citizens. Thus, in turn, the Bill of Rights was essentially establishing a method for the people to continue to define the rights of the people and place limitations on what actions the government may commit in the people’s name.
These three documents, so hailed throughout the free world as the one true aspiration of a brand new country to garner freedom for its people, are just the same ideals that hundreds of thousands have freely given their lives to support and uphold.
However, we currently have some 3700+ dead American soldiers who have paid the ultimate price for their country when their country wasn’t straight up with for which they would be dying. We have 58,000+ dead American soldiers from another war where their country wasn’t straight up with them. And these same administrations were not straight up with the American people, who let and often encouraged their children, husbands, fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters and sisters to go fight for the lies.
Don’t blame me for making a comparison between Iraq and Viet Nam. The President did it himself in a total flip-flop from his previous denigration of anyone wanting to make that same comparison. I believe it was in the Rose Garden where he spoke of a reporter’s children being in danger when such comparison was made. He said it not once, but emphasized it at least 3 times more with different reporters. To me it sounded more like a threat than a prediction of terrorist activity.
Let me be clear about this so as to head off any ambiguity. This administration’s war on terror is a farce and the war we are fighting in Iraq is for reasons not given. Ever. The reason is that you cannot fight a concept such as terrorism with men and weapons. You can kill a terrorist, but you cannot ever kill terrorism. Once the lid is off the can of worms, the worms will escape.
In fact, even this country used terrorism one hundred and fifty years ago when we gave the native Americans blankets from the hospitals of the dead from smallpox. Even further back, during the plague outbreak in Europe, invading forces would catapalt plague victims over the walls to infect the people within the fortresses.
Terrorism has been around a long, long time and nothing George W. Bush says is going to change that. The fact is that the term "hearts and minds" comes from the concept of terrorism, for terrorism is the method to destroy the hearts and minds of the people terrorism is being perpetrated against. Winning the hearts and minds is a far harder job to do, and it has to be persued with such a ferocity and equal handedness that terrorism doesn't have a place to stand.
All of the misdirection that has been the sum total of justification for this illegal war in Iraq is just that, misdirection. The American public does not know why we are in Iraq, and they probably never will if they don’t stand up for the documents that created America instead of standing up for some person who thinks George W. Bush and the President are the same thing.
You see, the President is a position listed in the Constitution, with its appropriate place and duties and powers. George W. Bush is just a man. True, a man legally sworn into the position of President by the Chief Justice of the United States, but just a man in the long run.
The concept of the position of President is a person whose face represents the will of the American people to the world. When the will of the people and the face of that representation are in conflict, the people have the right to demand action to terminate that person’s representation of America’s people to the world.
It is unprecedented in American history for a President to make a bald face proclamation that his policy is America’s policy regardless of what the greater than "super" majority of the American people want. This is exactly what George W. Bush told the people when he said it didn’t make any difference if only Laura and Barney supported him. He had decided and his decision would stand. This is utter bullshit and the very reason that Congress was given the power to kick a President out of office.
Least anyone may want to forget, the Republicans were so against the positive programs instituted by Bill Clinton that they immediately began investigations trying to tie him up in a defensive position and even tried impeachment. They tried impeachment even when they knew that the American people did not want Bill Clinton impeached.
Now the Democrats are in power in both Houses and can’t come to the ultimate and moral conclusion that virtually everything George W. Bush has done in office leads to a "pattern of practice" which demands impeachment. For indeed we have proof of high crimes and misdemeanors. The clemency requested in the Military Commissions Act for any intelligence agents of the state, regardless of their actions indicates guilt on numerous levels. For there is no requirement for advanced clemency if laws are not being broken.
Bush’s demand for a new law protecting the Telecomm industry from lawsuits for their complicity in his illegal surveillance indicates guilt on the part of the industry and the intelligence community. Again, there is no requirement for advanced clemency if laws are not being broken.
My question is how can the government ask for laws specifying clemency for acts not committed if these acts aren’t being committed? After all, we have the promise from the President and the Vice President that there are no violations of laws, and yet laws get changed to allow the same actions they protest do not take place. For if bad men can break good laws, then where does that leave bad men who need not obey any law? The circular argument itself indicates that not only have laws been broken but that they will continue to be broken whether or not "clemency" laws are passed.
Why? Because George W. Bush sees himself as something other than the President of the United States whose duties were defined in the Constitution. Perhaps he deems himself God’s sword in the face of the unrighteous? George W. Bush has tried to make himself above the law whilst degrading the concept of the President of the United States throughout the world. And he’s had plenty of help from Richard Cheney as Vice President, whose position as a placeholder and President of the Senate are his only defined duties. Obviously Mr. Cheney has far outstripped the original meaning of the Founding Fathers.
Unfortunately it appears that George W. Bush thinks he is the American people’s hero and protector. No, let me amend that. Unfortunately George W. Bush STILL thinks he is the American people’s hero and protector, even though he hasn’t shown one iota of obtaining such lofty goals throughout his entire life.
Now it is true that some men rise to the occasion and become something far greater than any previous experience in their lives might have suggested, but this has not happened to George W. Bush. A true-life hero who actually fought a war and protected his men was Audie Murphy (amongst so many of whom George Bush cannot measure himself). George W. Bush couldn’t muster enough guts to actually even attend to his Air National Guard commitment, much less actually become the hero of the "Homeland".
And if George W. Bush is really depending on the axiom that "winners write the history", Georgie boy is out of luck again. Tim Robbins said something on Bill Maher’s Real Time that I’ve aid for along time now. And that is if one can say that this administration made the mistake of attacking Iraq due to inaccurate intelligence rather a wanton act of aggression, then we’re talking about way too much fuck-up for the American people to accept.
A list of fuck-ups would not be on the resume of the American Hero. And no American Hero would endanger the rights of the people in order to save the people. I’ve said it before and yet I’ll say it again. The oath of the President of the United States does not have one thing in it that suggests the President has a responsibility for saving the lives of the American people. No, rather the oath specifically says that the President vows to defend the Constitution of the United States. One cannot defend the Constitution if one is trying to kill the Constitution and steal the freedoms of the American people.
Now some might say that the Executive branch needs the additional power to fight the war on terror, and to that I’d have to say that any war is taken into consideration under the Constitution. But when we have the evidence that this administration considers itself above the law of the nation, and yes, of the world by virtue of the treaties we’ve signed, then we are already starting with an administration that is thumbing their collective noses at all they swore to uphold.
Six plus years later we have all the proof we need to say that this administration is an American political abomination. And historically we have all the proof necessary as to how dear we hold our freedoms. The proof is in the math and the math says the difference is how many of the millions of Americans have fought and of those who have died protecting the Constitution as to how many deaths this administration is willing to foist both on the innocent Iraqi and our brave troops. And sadly in the number of rights this administration is willing to trounce in order to preserve their secrecy and possible greatness in American history.
If there were one iota of reason to be in Iraq then the majority of Americans would still support the war effort. But the fact is that we are not at war with anything in Iraq. There are no Iraqi troops nor central command, nor even an acknowledged leader. The United States is an invader with only the intent of an invader holding an occupied country. We ousted the evil tyrant and disbanded his armies. Regardless of the hype and the numerous reasons given to cover our invasion, the United States is only in Iraq for her riches of oil resources. This is plain and simple.
The problems have arisen from this administration thinking they could simply install a puppet government of some type of new and heretofore unknown democratic values and walk away with all the documents signed so that Shell, ExxonMobil and Phillips/Conoco could waltz in and have control of the oil for at least 30 years.
In fact, if the Iraqi parliament had already approved the oil law Bush would have immediately declared victory and brought our valiant troops home.
Surprisingly, however, we still have the fight of our lives ahead of us. This administration’s goals and ideals are being transferred to the newest batch of Republican presidential candidates, all speaking the same words and making the same frightening claims of fighting terrorism in a country where that terrorism was created by our actions and our presence least they follow us home when we leave. At least three of them admit to not even believing in the physical sciences that support evolution. One wonders what other sciences these people reject out of hand.
And so you see, our enemy is not only Bin Laden and his minions, but our own policies and actions which adversely affect freedom and democracy throughout the world.
I guess I should distinguish Senator Ron Paul as being the one different Republican, but I’d rather point out that the Republicans don’t have a decent candidate and the best Democrat candidate is Ron Paul. For if this country truly wants a republic based upon democratic goals, then neither party is offering up the level of leadership this country needs to come back from the edge of the abyss.
As good as Ron Paul seems, and as well as he appears to understand the true problems associated with America sticking our collective noses in everyone else’s business, his solutions are specifically Libertarian and that could turn into isolationism.
Don’t get me wrong. As much as I’ve been on the apparent liberal side during this administration’s misuse and abuse of powers, you have to remember one thing. I said before that this administration had taken everything so far to the right as to make the center farther right. This has been born out by Hillary Clinton’s stance on Iraq as being on the extreme right of the left. The same goes for Joe Libermann. The center is no more the true center and the right has extended itself so far that the progressives are now closer than ever to mainstream. Obviously something is far out of kilter here.
But just because the political ebbs and tides have moved the political boundaries, don’t believe that the centrality of the American people has been susceptible. Yes, the American people have been susceptible to the fear-mongering of this administration, but when I look at my father I see a man amongst men, who stood up for their country willing to lay down their lives for the freedoms this administration has worked to abandon. When I look at many of my Viet Nam veteran brothers I see men who have been displaced by that war and extensively reminded of their traumas in this war. And yet not one of these men or women would hesitate to protect the Constitution of the United States even if it meant dying right now.
And these are the freedoms that are worth dying for. These are the reasons to throw yourself on a live grenade to save your buddy’s life, and these are the reasons that our freedoms have remained intact for 231 years. The costs to Americans has been tremendous during our history, but the cost of losing it all now at the hands of a blathering idiot who wields the title of President of the United States is far greater.
There is nothing shown by this administration and those who would follow in the same footsteps that will inspire such patriotism as our history documents. And this is one of the problems with having a professional military (need I mention a professional mercenary force?). They are trained to do their jobs even if they are seeing freedom being taken away from their countrymen in leaps and bounds. Their jobs mean the possibility of dying, but their patriotism would be better spent in protecting our freedoms than our individual lives.
At least the Bush administration has succeeded in one thing.
They have succeeded in perverting the very basis of the existence of our country and undermining the bedrock upon which it was founded.
5:46:12 PM 
|
