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Senator Paul Wellstone, accidentally killed six years ago, spoke against what became a senseless slaughter and a disgrace to our history.
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The then majority-Democrat Senate did not listen, but empowered George Bush to attack anyone at any time, an act of unprecedented political cowardice that thus far has accommodated the death of 4500 American soldiers and more than a million innocent others.
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And we did not listen. Intelligence, humanity, and even the lives of our children all became victims of flag waving.
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Even the protest movement fell prey to the most artful of the warmongers' propaganda alchemy: "Support Our Troops," transmogrifying peace activists into the "good Germans" of the Twenty-First Century.
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Why, you may ask, is our guilt made here visible again? To wallow in it hoping that will somehow merit redemption? To avenge the disgrace of our own complicity however innocently ignorant. No, none of the above.
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Think back when we were kids, when a gray haired teacher first tried to explain the reasons for studying history. And that high on the list was that history just might possibly spare us the pain of repeating the mistakes of the past.
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Now, reflect upon the partisan enthusiasms of the current political season. Has your choice pledged to clearly and promptly end the slaughter and destruction in Iraq within the logistical timetable for safe withdrawal, e.g. 90 days? Has your candidate learned from history the senselessness of waging war in Afghanistan, as attested by the failures of the Russians, and before them the British, and even Alexander the Great?
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No? Why not? From what does your enthusiasm flow? To merely evict a tyrant from the White House to be replaced by some sort of "change" sponsor smacks highly of the classical "lesser-evil" proposition. And this is what we'll settle for?
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Surely somewhere among a population of 300 million Americans there is someone of the integrity and the champion caliber of another Paul Wellstone. It's high time we stopped kowtowing to our partisan pipers and resolved to find such authentic champions.
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