The primary reason that we do not have a democracy is not the corruption of Congress, although that comes in a close second. The primary reason is that Congress has no power, having given it all to the president. A democratic society cannot coexist with the presidential powers seized by Bush and now being maintained and expanded by Obama. A democratic society does not have secret government agencies, secret laws, laws rewritten by the executive, one man with the power of war, one man with the power of the purse, one man with the power of treaty. Yet President Obama, who to his credit has said he will end torture and close one of the many places where we detain people outside the law, last week wrote a signing statement telling Congress not to interfere in his Constitutional power to make treaties, despite the fact that the Constitution says two-thirds of the senate must approve any treaty.
We are being sold changiness when we asked for transformational change. We're done with extraordinary rendition, but rendition will now be ordinary. We have no more enemy combatants, but we are detaining hundreds of combative nemeses. We're going to use non-combat troops to do our combat. We'll get healthcare reform in which a public option means private insurance mandated by the government. Blackwater won't have to leave Iraq because it's changed its name. Is this what you voted for?
Yesterday I got an Email from Amnesty International asking me to object to Obama reviving Bush's policies. Well, they never died and they are not policies. They are what we used to call crimes. Also yesterday, the ACLU finally, finally, finally -- FINALLY! -- came to its senses and asked the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor and enforce the law.
And yet too many in the peace movement don’t want to talk about the law, even the laws against aggressive war. Many don't even want to talk about wars, preferring to talk about military spending. And we must talk about military spending. We must. But doing that alone will not end wars. And the wars are just as bloody no matter who is sleeping in the White House.
We may even end up halting some weapons programs, especially weapons that don't work or are designed to fight the Soviet Union or the Japanese fleet. But this Congress and president want to increase the overall budget for killing. This will be a victory against corruption on behalf of the greatest moral corruption known to our species. We'll end up recruiting more troops and buying better weapons that kill more people. This will miss President Eisenhower's point when he said that
"EVERY gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
For what we're giving to bankers we could give tens of thousands of dollars to every American, but for what we're spending -- including indirect economic costs -- on the occupation of Iraq, we could give $100,000 to every Iraqi.
Let's get our priorities straight -- including ending wars not just because they are badly fought or corruptly managed, or even because they cost money, but because they kill human beings.
End the occupations.
End the missile strikes.
Close the bases.
Bring our brothers and sisters home.
Prosecute the war criminals.
And create a truth and reconciliation commission that reconciles the United States with the other 95 percent of humanity.
Power to the people.
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