Rumsfeld would later serve as one of the main driving forces behind removing Saddam as the sovereign leader of the sovereign state of Iraq and bombing that country into ruins. Rumsfeld would later be a main driving force behind the killing of more Iraqis than Saddam ever killed.
Rumsfeld, though no longer officially Secretary of Defense, was one of the people who tied the slip knot which embraced the neck of the man whose hand he'd previously shaken. The fingerprints of Bush and Cheney are all over that rope as well.
As has been written in article after article, Saddam was hung for crimes against the Iraqi people, crimes, indeed, against humanity while those who helped construct the noose are still committing crimes against humanity.
Like the Germans, far too many Americans have seen the need for The Patriot Act, the illegal wiretapping of their own communications devices and the signing papers making congress the paper tiger it is in this day of drastic measures.
Unlike most Germans in the 30s, many Americans today have been trying to tell those who would accept and defend The Regime's many ways of consolidating power in the hands of the Executive branch of government that they're missing the small but important steps by which The Regime is accomplishing this consolidation.
We were told that we needed to go into Iraq to rescue Iraqis from Saddam Hussein. However, who are we Americans going to turn to to come into The FUSA and rescue us from The Regime? Will the Latin American countries which The FUSA has its eyes on and which The FUSA is sending deeper and deeper into squalor come to our rescue? Will Hugo Chávez and the Socialist governments that are forming in Latin America join forces to invade this nation to help us carry out regime change, since we, as a people, don't seen to want to do it ourselves-sort of like The Iraqis?
In the 2006 elections, we elected the conservative Democratic Party to displace the even more conservative Republican Party. Voting in The Democrats was akin to running on ice.
Those that now have the chance to oversee the Executive Branch have already pardoned that branch for its crimes against humanity. There will not be punishment for murder. In fact, some of the Democrats are agreeing that we need to send more Americans to die in Iraq, even though every reason we were given for going into Iraq in the first place has been proven to be bogus.
The latest reason, to bring democracy to Iraq, should be a cakewalk now that Saddam is as far out of the picture as he can possibly be. So let's leave now and, like the founders of the United States of America, let the founders of Iraqi democracy do just that, found Iraqi democracy.
The Germans caught on too late. Hitler caused untold death and destruction before outsiders, not Germans, toppled his regime.
Maybe that's what The FUSA needs, outsiders to help us take the power out of the hands of an elite few who don't mind seeing others die to advance their personal goals. Maybe, instead of referring to America and it's "allies" in Iraq as The Allies, other nations should ally with each other, march into The FUSA and help us patriots change our government and help us return to a democratic method of choosing a government. Maybe France and Germany can bring us democracy.
Unless we wake up soon, it will be just as "too late" for us as it was for the Germans.
Michael Bonanno is a published poet, essayist and musician who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of his poetry can be found at The Poetry Corner at OpEdNews.He is an associate editor for OpEdNews.
Bonanno is a political progressive, not a Democratic Party apologist. He believes it's government's job to help the needy and that leaving the people's well being to the so called "private sector" is social suicide.His CDs may be purchased at CD Baby.
Perhaps Hussein had to be silenced as he knew too much....Now we will never know what he knew.
I believe that we are in a cycle, politically speaking, one in which we are swung to the right, and have been since the Reagan era. That man sowed the seeds for much of the destruction of our democratic processes and our economy as well. But I do believe that this pendulum will swing inevitably to the left, as it has before , several times in fact. It is sad that much death and chaos will continue before the swing occurs, very sad indeed.
How long it will take depends upon each one of us, how diligently we work to pull against the right, how much our consciences refuse to allow us to rest.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2388 comments)
on Tuesday, January 2, 2007 at 6:20:06 PM
I'm glad that you point out that supporting the Democrats as the lesser evil is comparable to the citizens of Germany electing Hindenberg in 1932 as the lesser evil to Hitler. Ralph Nader was indeed the progressive alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. But "safe states" David Cobb with his stategy of only making a serious attempt to campaign in states where there was no chance of his throwing the election to the Republicans was merely a retread of the liberal strategy of supporting the Democrats as the lesser evil. His vice presidential running mate Pat LaMarche, is on record as saying she wasn't even going to vote for herself unless the polls predicted Kerry would win 70% of the vote in her state. Those Greens who cave in under the pressure of the liberals hysterical accusations that "You got Bush elected!" destroyed much of the progress towards an independent third party achieved in 2000 and it is still an open question whether their caving in will lead to the demise of the Green Party.
Robert Halfhill Green Party member and Nader supporter
by
rhalfhill (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 257 comments)
on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 3:03:52 AM
and I almost did in 02. I would encourage you not to give in to despair and continue to work towards the emergence of a third party presence on the national scene.
It is certainly slow work given the way the two so-called major parties have things all their own way, but it is necesary and important work also. We will see more relevent candidacies than La Marche's soon enough.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2388 comments)
on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 7:24:47 AM
Some time ago, I jumped on a "Boxer For President" bandwagon. I even published a couple of letters I wrote to the good senator asking her to throw her hat into the ring.
When she traveled to Connecticut to support Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont, a true progressive, she proved to be a true Democrat and not necessarily a true progressive. I was disappointed and could no longer support her.
After almost totally disagreeing with John Kerry before Kerry's nomination in '04, Dennis Kucinich supported Kerry after Kerry was nominated. He said that "at least we have a chance (of progress) with Kerry." He said that voting for Nader, whose views lined up more with his own, would ensure a Republican victory. I hoped to show in the article that "voting against" a candidate is not necessarily successful. It's a whole lot more like running away from defeat than running toward victory. I would rather run toward victory than away from defeat.
He's once again running and my question is does he have a solid platform or is his platform so flexible as to support someone whose views he adamantly opposes just because that someone is a Democrat?
What would Kucinich do if he was ever elected president? Would he fight to get his initiatives like universal health care and his Department of Peace passed or would he succumb to the "realities" of congressional support (or lack thereof) after a feeble fight.
If all of the progressives in congress would either walk away from the Democratic Party and create a new party, maybe calling it The Populist Party or The Progressive Party (I know those names exist here and there) or would join the Green Party and if all of the people who say that they don't vote for Greens because a vote for Greens is a vote for Republicans, just imagine how strong the new progressive party or the Green Party would become?
As was mentioned, Green Party candidates have to start voting for themselves and the Green Party has to start taking itself seriously. The Green Party, in its methodology, is more like the Republican Party in that there is very little disagreement among its members. Unlike the Republican Party, Greens don't shut down opposition. They merely agree with one another for the most part. It should consider itself an opponent of the Democrats, not a supporter of some progressive Democrats.
As long as Democrats disagree among themselves on major, important issues like the Iraq occupation, universal health care and globalization, it's going to go nowhere – it can't.
We progressives need strong progressive candidates and, as long as progressive candidates need to battle for recognition within their own party, they're going to continue to be marginalized.
If progressives break with the professional political system, the system which includes both Democrats and Republicans and which takes corporate money under quid pro quo conditions, they will begin to be noticed and will stand out as viable alternatives.
What ever happened to the kind of courage shown by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 or Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and 1972? They saw that the major parties were stale and actually in agreement with one another and struck out on their own. We need people with that kind of courage to take the political fight where ever it has to be taken today.
It's time to suck it up, break with the two professional parties and work our "way up" to legitimacy. We may take some whacks in the beginning, but at least we'll be seen as a force with which to be reckoned and not as the "liberal wing of the Democratic Party".
by
Michael Bonanno (67 articles, 16 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 115 comments)
on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 12:00:22 PM
The paragraph in the above comment which reads "If all of the progressives in congress would either walk away from the Democratic Party and create a new party, maybe calling it The Populist Party or The Progressive Party (I know those names exists here and there) or would join the Green Party and if all of the people who say that they don't vote for Greens because a vote for Greens is a vote for Republicans, just imagine how strong the new progressive party or the Green Party would become?"
should read
"If all of the progressives in congress would either walk away from the Democratic Party and create a new party, maybe calling it The Populist Party or The Progressive Party (I know those names exists here and there) or would join the Green Party and if all of the people who say that they don't vote for Greens because a vote for Greens is a vote for Republicans would start voting for Greens, just imagine how strong the new progressive party or the Green Party would become?
by
Michael Bonanno (67 articles, 16 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 115 comments)
on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 12:04:55 PM
