Saturday, March 3, 2007

What now?

[Originally posted on goofyblog 11.30.06]

Braying Donkey

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page as well as Contributing Editor of National Review. He’s written an assessment of the situation now that the Democrats have won majorities in both houses.

excerpts:
It only took six years for Americans to comprehend George Bush and the Republican Party and to realize that the Republicans were not leading America in any promising directions.

The lust for unbridled power proved to be too strong a temptation for normally cautious Republicans, who waved the flag and shouted “terrorist sympathizer” at every civil libertarian who attempted to defend the US Constitution, the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions’ proscriptions against torture, and America’s reputation from a nazified US Dept of Justice (sic) and a president who behaved–with the approval of Republicans–as if he were above the law.

In violation of his oath of office, Bush used signing statements to negate laws passed by Congress, not with a veto, but with his personal opinion. Bush, thus, elevated himself above the rule of law that has protected America from becoming a tyranny and made a mockery of the separation of powers that are a foundation of American liberty.
The question now is: what will the Democrats do?

Repeal
After the years of illegal war and the overnight destruction of civil liberties that were 800 years in their creation, the United States stands at a watershed. If the legislation that has been put on the books permitting spying on Americans without a court warrant, legalizing torture and self-incrimination, and repealing habeas corpus and the right to an attorney remains on the books, the United States will be a police state regardless of which party is in power.

If the Democrats are to make a real difference, their first task is to repeal the Orwellian-named “Patriot Acts,” the torture legislation, the detention without court evidence legislation, and the right-to-spy and invade privacy without court warrant legislation. The White House tyrant needs to be quickly told that one more “signing statement” and he will be impeached.

The notion that Americans can be protected from “terror” by giving up the Bill of Rights is absurd. Democrats are complicit in this absurd notion. Many were intimidated into voting for police state legislation, because they lacked the intestinal fortitude to call police state legislation by its own name. The legislation that has been passed during the Bush regime is far more dangerous to Americans than Muslim terrorists.

When, and only when, the Democrats have erased the Bush administration’s police state legislation from the books, thus restoring the Constitution, they should clear the air on two other issues of major importance.

Investigate
The Democrats must convene a commission of independent experts to investigate 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report has too many problems and shortcomings to be believable. Recent polls show that 36 percent of the American people do not believe the report. 9/11 became the excuse for the neoconservative Bush regime to launch illegal wars of aggression in the Middle East. The 9/11 Commission Report is nothing but a public relations justification for the “war on terror,” which in truth is a war on American liberty. As long as politicians with a police state mentality can cling to the cover of the 9/11 Commission Report, the Bill of Rights will remain endangered.

The other issue is the blatant corruption in the Bush regime’s contract practices. So many contracts are tainted with their connections to Republican power brokers that the taxpayers are being fleeced on the level of the Grant administration. Indictments and long prison sentences are in order.

Pull out
This leaves the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both are lost. Both invasions were illegal. Those responsible must be held accountable.

As the wars are crimes, they must be stopped. Having overthrown a stable secular regime in Iraq, the US have no recourse but to accept that Iraq will break into three states: In the north the Kurds will unite with the Turkish Kurds, and Turkey will have to deal with the situation without US interference. In the south, the Shiites will have an Islamic regime similar to the government in Iran, with whom the Iraqi Shiites will be allied. The Sunnis will be isolated in the middle without any oil. The US and Britain no longer have any role to play in the Middle East.

The Israelis have isolated themselves with their genocidal policies against the Palestinians. Intelligent Israelis are already sending their children out of the country.

Israeli peace groups have thrown up their hands in the face of the persistent intransigence of the Israeli government and the disregard of common sense. It remains to be seen if the Israelis can learn to care about anyone but their own kind.

Republican rule in the 21st century has devastated American civil liberties and American prestige and leadership capability. Can Democrats restore American liberties and leadership, or will a lust for power corrupt them, too, and cause Democrats to retain the police state powers Bush has created?

If the Bush regime’s police state legislation is still law in 2008, the Democrats will have failed.
Full article is titled Enablers or Enforcers here.

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