Rendition, Blackwater, Katrina, Torture, Guantanamo, Iraq, Abu-Ghraib, Uncontrollable debt, suspension of Habeas Corpus etc. What has become of America?
Politics in America has always been a "them" and "Us" sort of event. We have so many different outlooks and avenues of expression and thought. Political philosophy, social engagement, citizen responsibility to government, as opposed to government obligation to its citizens, political correctness and how it effects our societal morays and values is today, as always, wonderfully debated and the list goes on; yet somehow those differences have helped to make us the great people we are, which has in turn forged the social Democratic miracle America still is today.
Opposing thought and spectrums, with a shared love of county, liberty, freedom and rule of law have been the hallmark of American political discourse. We all love this county and our opposing thoughts, with few exceptions, have never really challenged that principle.
I still hold back the tears when I hear the Marine Corps hymn and unashamedly jump to my feet and stand at attention when old glory passes; And yet something has changed. Something has begun to change us as a people....Even I have changed.
Fear has gripped us as a nation. Tragically, some of that fear is of design by our own President and those Republicans and Democrats who abide his course. President Bush displays an almost total disregard for the "Rule of Law" in America while praising the repressed peoples in the world for seeking it in their own society.
Respect for the "Rule of Law" in society is the cement which bonds all other institutions, consequently making democracy possible. No President in modern history has successfully disregarded the U.S. Constitution with continued support by the U.S. Senate, House and the U.S. Supreme Court as President G.W. Bush.
We Americans, of every political persuasion, have struggled with fear before and battled the wrongs we saw, at home and abroad, knowing in the end, people would be free and the world would be that much better for us all. We sacrificed and shared one another’s burdens. We knew that oppression in the world could not prevail over any freedom loving people. We had a sense of good and evil which was so strongly tempered that even the most evil and powerful of perpetrators could not temp our resolve and moral compass to change direction. We were the United States of America where the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Statue of Liberty spoke for our nation and to our resolve to be free and to respect every inhabitant of this earth as a co-inheritor of its riches and wonders. That was our historical ideal and the progenitor of our purpose.
Unlike today, previous U.S. Presidents were the force which assured us that "fear" was the one thing America should not and would not live in or succumb to. Presidents from George Washington to William Jefferson Clinton refused to sell fear to the citizens who trusted them with the highest office in the land. Courage, resolve, and a true sense of duty and a vision of greater and more prosperous days were the call of those presidents.
Under the George W. Bush Presidency, with the obscure assistance of Vice president Dick Cheney, America has all but thrown out historical American imperatives regarding truth, Justice and constitutional mandated Rule of Law. This all made possible by a Republican Majority in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives whose keenly orchestrated campaign of fear, cloaked in Patriotic slogans and sentiment, would challenge the love of country of any citizen who dared exercise free speech which dissented from the Presidents and their own thoughts. This same House and Senate also facilitated the Presidents grip on hampering American freedoms through the passing of the "Patriot Act" and elimination of the FISA courts prior authority. Ultimately Habeas Corpus would be suspended as well. Consequently torture of suspected enemies was instituted as standard and an acceptable practice, referred to as "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques". Secret prisons were established through-out the world, with President Bush’s concurrence, primarily in countries where human rights violations were rampant and where torture is standard fare in government behavior. If we become like our enemy to defeat him; where is the victory?
Utilizing what was to be referred to as "The Rendition Program" secretly detained prisoners of the President, were transported from America, and other countries, to places where they could be tortured. All sense of balance has left our President and his executive programs. Thousands of non-combatant men, women, and children were detained in Iraq without charge, and with the concurrence of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, by the very same Americans who came to bring them Liberty, Justice and Rule of Law. None of which exist today in Iraq, after almost five years of occupation by U.S. and British forces.
American diplomats have, since the establishment of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, been subservient to the U.S. Military command in every aspect of operations which are traditionally, historically, and professionally State Department Diplomatic matters. The Iraq Reconstruction Management Office (IRMO), although a DoS program is totally dominated by active duty and retired U.S. Generals, appointed by the Secretary of State, who have a veto over any program which benefits, or involves the participation of the Iraqi people. These same retired, and active duty U.S. Generals have prevented almost any State Department progress in the widely acclaimed Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) where assistance programs of Rule of Law, City planning, Governance Capacity Building, and leadership were to be established throughout the Provinces of Iraq during 2004 until today.
Relative to the time it has been operating, the PRT program has had little progress. Much of the time the PRT development in Iraq was under way, the Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), was Ambassador David Satterfield, now senior advisor to Secretary Rice. David Satterfield was also the DCM during the time when the notorious Minister of Interior Bayan Jabr, Now the Iraqi Minister of Finance, was establishing the Iraqi police death squads, now credited by many with having murdered thousands of Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Baghdad.
Today, Minister Bayan Jabr is so feared within the Iraqi Government no-one will challenge him. During that time Ambassadors David Satterfield and Khalilzad stood by in the Embassy and did almost nothing whatever to prevent it. Likewise, relative to the PRT, neither was able to stand toe to toe with Rumsfeld or his Generals.
The State Department (DoS) leadership in Baghdad, during the time Ambassadors Khalilzad and Satterfield were present, from my perspective, was a failed leadership of almost no consequence in Iraq as it relates to assisting the Iraqi people to any degree. For that failed, ineffective, day late and dollar short leadership, Ambassador Satterfield became the most senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State. (Can anyone tell me even one significant accomplishment of the U.S. Secretary of State over the past seven years?) . Ambassador Khalilzad was appointed as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. (A great pat on the back).
In the meantime, our American Men and women are sacrificing, loosing limbs, fighting and dying while the DoS plays politics and remains subservient, in a Diplomatic mission, to the Generals of the Multi National Force Iraq (MNF-I) who regularly change names and tend to re-invent the wheel with every new rotation of commanders arriving in country.
Using the American tragedy of September 11th , 2001, as the pretext for launching a war against Iraq, which did not represent a threat to the interest of the United States, President Bush broke the long held traditional U.S. Presidential mantra against pre-emptive war. Later he launched another pre-emptive attack. An attack on the Constitution of the United States of America which has continued, under the same September 11, 2001, pretext, ever since.
Fear and deception have been two of President Bush’s most effective tools expertly utilized by his cabinet members and political appointees and the Republican Congress. For those he would secretly imprison, "torture & terror" have become the standard operating procedure. With the Executive office of the United States now cloaked in almost total secrecy, defiance and arrogance, no true numbers of those who have been secretly detained and tortured will probably ever come to light. America is a changed country.
Today, there is no evidence that President Bush’s policies and actions have made America stronger or safer. We are not more free and liberty’s bell does not ring somehow as it once did. The United States is today the largest debtor nation on earth. America, for the very first time in modern history, now uses mercenary armies to fight our conflicts in foreign lands and to police our streets right here in America, i.e., Blackwater deployment in New Orleans.
The precipitous, abrupt and ill-advised actions of President Bush have costs thousands of American lives, divided the American public, caused the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands innocent Iraqi people, displaced over four million Iraqi citizens, and has made a living hell of a sovereign country. America has assisted in installing one of the most corrupt governments in the Middle East. Within the Iraqi government there seems no moral imperative as government officials rampantly profit from the chaos in Iraq through their political parties and the militias attached to them, wherein the money flows almost as freely as the blood of our American men and women and that of innocent Iraqi citizens. The cheapest thing in Iraq today is Iraqi blood. Our President, through his policies in Iraq, has the Iraqi officials laughing all the way to the bank.
All is not lost. Through all of the Republican efforts to snuff it out, the American spirit lives and the American dream is being revived. Cynical skeptics!, You have not killed the American spirit with your noisey unbelief and fear! This is America, after all, and America is the sum of her parts which all, without exception, have experienced the hand in hand struggle for the life and health of this Union of States, having prevailed throughout its over 265 years of existence without fully centering itself at any single point, including Washington DC.
President Bush and his "True Believers’, although it may have seemed like it, were never big enough, smart enough, mean enough, rich enough, or diabolical enough to overcome the power of this collective union of people who have, individually and collectively, lived and died on the premise of Truth, Justice and the American way.
This regrettable time in our history, has wounded, but will pass, as other tragedies in our turbulent and wonderful history have. The deliberate effort to weaken our resolve as a free people, has only served to stiffen our tenacity.
"We The People" will recover our place, our inalienable rights and our position as the true and rightful power in our American Nation even as our forefathers, in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, so wisely articulated. We owe it to them and we owe it to the generations yet to be Americans.
We shall, as said so many other times in our history, overcome.
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