Fear is the great manipulator. Most people will do anything or follow anyone when they are afraid. The irony is we have never been in greater danger than after George Bush invaded Iraq, and transformed a remnant of terrorists holed up in Pakistan into a going global concern. We are in greater danger because, according to a former diplomat, within hours of the betrayal of WMD hunter Valerie Plame by this administration, every foreign intelligence service ran Plame's name through its databases to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities.
New battle lines are being drawn. They blur traditional left and right. We are seeing the emergence of "Constitutionalist" versus "Corporatist" forces, with alliances cutting across party lines. Unlikely allies such as Pat Buchanan and Naomi Wolf, Republicans like Bruce Fein, Ron Paul, and Dennis Kucinich are aligned one side, and the major candidate money machines like Hillary-Giuliani are on the other. The money machines will spar on social issues and taxes, but never say a word about the subversion of the republic taking place before our eyes.
As 60-year-old impeachment marcher John Nirenberg is proving, with his one-man trek this winter from Boston to Washington DC to demand impeachment, "These are the times that try men's souls."
"The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
A descendant of Thomas Paine is now the leader of a regional impeachment coalition. As we shop and consume our way toward tyranny and fascism, let us remember these words of Paine, and remember that as overweight, addicted, and alcoholic as we are as a nation, we are also one other thing: We are free. We are still free to demand these criminals be brought to justice. We are still free to demand they be impeached.
At Iwo Jima the American death rate was a man per minute for the first 60 hours of the assault, about 3600 men dead in less than three days. At Omaha Beach the death rate was even more appalling. In both instances, we fought against forms of government where you could be swept off the street in secret, kept in secret, tortured, released, or imprisoned indefinitely according to the whims of a government which had proclaimed you an "enemy."
Rich, poor, conservative, liberal, powerful, ordinary, we are all just Americans now.
On the web at http://YaliesForImpeachment.org
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