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real watcher
7/11/2002 (7:04) |
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Article & Essay: A Malignancy On The Republic
The domestic political threats are the real threat to America.
By Regis Sabol
America, July 4, 2002 -- On this, the 226th
birthday of the signing of the Declaration of
Independence, the United States of America
faces the dangers of terror from without
and, even more frighteningly, the dangers
of corruption and greed from within what
the British novelist C. P. Snow called 'The
Corridors of Power.'
Not since Richard Nixon and his henchmen
attempted an executive coup de'tat to
subvert the Constitution has the United
States been more threatened. John Dean,
counsel to Nixon, described the Watergate conspiracy as 'a cancer on the
presidency.' Thirty years after a botched second-rate burglary eventually exposed
Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, Haldeman, Erlichman, Colson, and company as felons in
that enormous conspiracy, we face an even greater danger. What we have now is
a malignancy on the republic.
A right wing conspiracy of enormous proportions involving the executive,
legislative, and judicial branches of government is methodically undermining not
only the civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, but also the system of
checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers to ensure that no one
political party, no small group of powerful forces could hijack their great
experiment in democratic government. Yet, that is exactly what is happening in
America today.
Since taking over the White House in what the respected journalist Daniel Schorr
aptly described as a judicial coup de'tat, George Bush and his junta are
methodically converting 'a nation of, by, and for the people,' into a plutocratic,
oligarchic, authoritarian corporate state in which all real wealth and power rests in
the hands of the few at the expense of the many.
The Bush administration has junked international treaties approved by Congress
and signed into law, rolled back federal regulations, also signed into law, that
protect the environment and all Americans who have to live and breathe in that
environment, and made a mockery of civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of
Rights. With the approval of a lap dog Congress, it has pushed through fiscally
irrational tax cuts that amount to nothing less than welfare handouts to the rich at
the expense of most Americans.
Perverting a National Tragedy
Worst of all, George Bush and his co-conspirators have taken obscene advantage
of a national tragedy of epic proportions to achieve their reckless agenda under
the banner of patriotism and national unity. We should never forget that Bush,
when speaking at Republican fundraisers, repeatedly refers to 9/11 as 'hitting the
trifecta.' In horse racing parlance, that means Bush got lucky. In other words,
nearly 3,000 people died to provide a convenient excuse for why the budget
surplus inherited from Bill Clinton went down the tubes because of Bush's tax cuts.
They have used the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to declare endless
war on an ephemeral enemy that justifies pushing through a $45 billion dollar
million military budget increase that will do little to help us win the Bush 'War on
Terrorism.' Will a missile defense shield or space-based weapons protect us from
the kind of attacks that occurred last September? Of course not. Will more
submarines, aircraft carriers, jet fighters, and tanks, thwart terrorist guerrillas? Of
course not.
What this budget will do is allow Secretary of War Donald Rumsfield to pour
billions into wars against enemies that don't exist, fatten the pockets of military
contractors whose campaign donations helped put Bush in power, and satisfy
pusillanimous Congressmen whose own ethics do not go beyond these same fat
cats who keep them in office. It will also suck the United States Treasury dry of
funds for any social programs that may actually strengthen America by improving
healthcare for all citizens, education, Social Security, and other programs that
would benefit the many and not the few.
Smoke and Mirrors Patriotism
By and large, the American public does not view 9/11 as terrorist attacks by
Muslim extremists against what they saw as symbols of American economic and
military power. Thanks to the Bush propaganda machine, they have become
attacks on liberty and freedom. On July 3, CBS news anchor John Roberts called
9/11 an 'attack on freedom.' New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a sickening
display of political opportunism, described the victims of the World Trade Center
attack as heroes in the war to defend freedom. That would have certainly been a
surprise to the luckless thousands buried in the rubble of that attack. With the
notable exception of the valiant firefighters and police, the other victims thought
they were just at work making money for their families. But that didn't matter to
Bloomberg.
Indeed, politicians -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- the media, and the public
accept that the United States is in a state of war. Against whom? Can military
actions against violent militants legally and legitimately be considered a state of
war? Yet Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield have used the 'War on Terrorism' to
justify our military adventure in Afghanistan, the purported purpose of which was
to capture Osama bin Laden 'dead or alive.' We haven't done that, but we are still
bombing Afghan villages and killing civilians. We are also sending advisors to
counter terrorism in the Philippines, Columbia, and anywhere else on the globe we
perceive 'evil.'
A Splendid Little War?
The primary locus of Bush's 'axis of evil' is, of course, Iraq. Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfield, and Bush, Sr., are just itching to invade Iraq and topple Sadam
Hussein. They continue to feed the public a daily diet of propaganda painting
Hussein as the root cause of all terrorism, even though most evidence indicates
that countries the Bush administration is on speaking terms with are the more
likely culprits. (Consider this: most of the 9/11 attackers came from Saudi Arabia,
our most important ally in the Middle East.) Bush Sr., you will recall, likened
Hussein to Hitler.
The extent to which Bush has used the mantra of patriotism to achieve a state of
permanent war became obvious when the two most powerful Democrats in
Congress, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Dick
Gephardt gave their wholehearted support to Bush's plan for covert actions in Iraq
to remove Hussein. (Isn't the whole idea of a covert action to keep it a secret?)
Daschle and Gephardt pretty much indicated that they would support an actual
invasion of Iraq.
Just what are they thinking? Does anyone remember the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution, the legislative miscue that led to the folly of Vietnam? Do they think
this is going to be 'a splendid little war?' Do they think invading Iraq is going to be
like the Gulf War or our little adventure in Afghanistan. Well, it's not. Any invasion
of Iraq will result in casualties on the scale of the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Ashcroft's Private War
For Attorney General John Ashcroft, 9/11 was just what he needed to advance his
Bill of Rights-busting, theocratic agenda for America. Even before a toadying
Congress nearly unanimously passed the odious USA PATRIOT Act, the FBI was
picking up anyone from the Middle East they could find and throwing them in jail
without benefit of habeas corpus or any of those other inconveniences. Thus, we
now have the curious paradox of two foreign nationals facing criminal trials under
the American system of justice while two American citizens remain locked up in
military brigs without benefit of counsel for as long as Ashcroft deems fit.
Never mind that Ashcroft has made a mockery of the Constitutional concept of
separation of church and state by declaring Jesus our only king and holding daily
prayer sessions with top staff in his office. Never mind that he made a mockery of
his avowed belief in state's rights by devoting valuable Justice Department
resources to fight California's marijuana initiative for the seriously ill and Oregon's
Right to Die law. Never mind that he made a mockery of his own promise to
Congress not to let personal beliefs interfere with his duties as attorney general by
filing a brief involving the Second Amendment that overturned 60 years of
government policy regarding private ownership of handguns in a relatively minor
Supreme Court case. And never mind that Ashcroft made a mockery of his
post-9/11 claim to being committed to stopping terrorism after he had already
previously turned down a Justice Department request for $305 million to
investigate terrorist activities.
A Complicit Congress, a Constitution-Blind Supreme Court
Congress, by its failure to live up to its constitutional responsibilities, has also fed
this malignancy destroying the fiber of our republic. Led by one-time Republican
majority leader and now minority leader of the Senate Trent Lott and his House
cohorts Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay, Congress has taken a wrecking ball to the
nation's economy, creating enormous wealth for one percent of Americans and a
lingering recession for the entire country. With the aforementioned PATRIOT Act, it
has smashed the Bill of Rights. It has stymied an election reform act approved by
Congress itself. It has threatened the future of Social Security. And it is on the
verge of approving an outlandish military budget that will bankrupt the country.
Even worse, Democrats in both houses have been accessories before and after
the fact of these legislative felonies.
Equally complicit in the destruction of our Constitutional system of checks and
balances is the Supreme Court. Not since the Courts that issued the infamous
Dred Scott decision justifying slavery and the equally infamous Plesy vs. Ferguson
ruling that codified segregation have we had a court do so much damage to the
Constitution. Led by the unholy trio of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence
Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, along with Justices Kennedy and O'Connor, this Court
has overturned a presidential election and put George Bush in the White House. It
has methodically stripped away civil liberties and individual protections guaranteed
by the Bill of Rights. And, lastly, it has taken its own wrecking ball to the wall
between church and state that the Founding Fathers had so carefully constructed.
With Bush and his cabal in the executive branch, a sufficient number of Republican
(and Democratic) minions in Congress, and a Supreme Court, the majority of
whom, are committed to reshaping America in their own narrow reactionary
image, one can only ask this question: is there a doctor in the house to cure
America of this malignancy before it destroys our nation?
Regis T. Sabol is a contributing editor to Intervention Magazine. He is
also editor of A New Deal: an online magazine of political, social,
cultural, literary, and artistic thought.
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