I am trying to understand the Democrat's mentality and their reasoning for not impeaching this President and not pulling the funding for Bush's militarism. I have heard over and over again that it's not the fault of the Democrats. Yesterday I read an article that got over 35 comments right here on OpEdNews about "Democrat Hating Lefties", that everyone lauded (Well, not everyone) as being Sooooo sensible and realistic. I am perplexed.
I saw another incantation of George W. Bush today. This is the kinder, gentler George Bush. This is the George W. Bush that wants to "work" with the Democrats (probably because Nancy Pelosi said that impeachment is off the table), and do the things that are "right" for this country. Some woman asked him why he said that we were winning the war and now he says that we are not. He gave her some roundabout answer that I couldn't fathom, so I know that it's still the same George W. Bush.
Let me ask everyone reading this what they think will happen if the Democrats give Bush the 130 Billion dollars that he wants to fund this war. Will this be an intelligent approach to ending this war? Are the Democrats actually buying this story that Bush is selling, that this is somehow a War on Terrorism? The last time that I looked, the only nations that have been involved in using terror as a tool are The United States and Israel. Let's leave Israel out of this though. They are not my problem. This country and what it does in the world is my problem and I am trying to address it, for my own piece of mind.
Did or did not this war come about because of claims by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction? Is it now supposed to be "Politically Correct" that I should forget that we were lied to and that the real reason that we are there is to stop radical Islam? If we went to Iraq to stop radical Islam, then why didn't the government say we were going to the Middle East to fight radical Islam? These are things that I want to know. We have been lied to since this whole thing started. I distinctly remember that I did not believe a word of what was being said during the build up to the invasion. Am I just clairvoyant or smarter than the politicians that voted to authorize the use of force and then authorize the funds for the use of force? Somehow I doubt that.
Now we have people saying that we should give the Democrats more time, we should understand how things work.. I believe that I already know how things work. This isn't the first war that I've seen my country wage. This isn't the first time that I've seen people use ideology to advance their warped perception of the world. With all apologies to Mr. Andrew Bard Schmookler, I am not buying your argument. If you want to go pedantic on people, than I can play that game, and call you an apologist for the Democrats. The truth is the truth. This will be the second time that they will have enabled Bush to wage a war of aggression. Are we supposed to give everyone three chances? Are we supposed to believe that they are any better than the Republicans? If they are, than how are they any better? Is it because they say they are? They were elected on the premise of dissatisfaction with the way Bush is handling the presidency, not just the war.
People revolted against the Republicans because they saw the lies that lead up to this war, they saw this power grab he calls the "Unitary Power of the Executive Branch", they also revolted because of the scrapping of the Magna Charta and the Writ of Habeas Corpus when they enacted the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Let's not stop, I'm on a roll. How about the NSA Wiretapping of American Citizen's telephones and computers? The people voted against more than just the war, but the overriding thing that made people cross party lines, and to vote in a mid-term election for the first time in their lives, was this war in Iraq.
Let's talk in practical terms for Mr. Schmookler's sake. If the appropriation of 130 billion dollars is passed with the Democrats blessing, that will mean that this war will go on until Bush leaves office. In that time of roughly two more years, that means another 1500 American soldiers will die if we extrapolate by 5 per day. That means that this war would have cost us approximately 550 Billion dollars by the time Bush leaves office with 3500 dead and many more wounded and permanently physically or mentally disabled. That is not taking into account the money that will be needed to expand the Armed Forces, and the money needed to provide pensions and medical care, sometimes a lifetime of care to those severely wounded, and the cost of the human suffering to the people that lose loved ones. This is not even taking into account the Iraqi death toll and the destruction to Iraq itself.
Somehow, this war has gone from stopping a mad dictator with weapons of mass destruction to bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. Neither one of those scenarios have ever been close to why we are really there. We are there to put in American and British military bases, and to make sure that the oil under Iraq goes into the American pipeline. We will, if Congress approves this 130 billion dollars, in my opinion, be at war with Iran within the year, if what Bush has done in the past is any precursor to what he will do in the future.
These are my reasons for feeling that the Democrats are about to make the biggest blunder they have ever made. When the 2008 elections come rolling around (assuming that Bush is not made President-for-life under some War Powers Act), the American people won't trust anything any politician has to say. I am not supporting this, but I wouldn't be surprised to see an armed revolution taking place because of the reluctance of the corporate politicians to take any action against the war. I say corporate politicians, because that is at the bottom of all this country's problems. As long as the political parties are carrying the water for their corporate handlers, we will never see the will of the people done in Congress. When is it time for Americans to standup and tell these phony politicians that we can not be patient any longer? When are we going to get savvy enough to realize who controls these politicians' actions and change the way political campaigns in this country are financed? When are the citizen's going to become responsible for what their elected officials are doing in their name?
Do you actually believe that most people in the world hate us because we have more than they do? Do you buy the line that Bush throws out that "They hate our Freedom"? That's a big load of crap. When I was in Germany in 1980, most German's lived as well as any American. We are not the most affluent country on Earth. That is what the "spin doctor's" would have you believe. Most industrial "first world" countries on this planet have better healthcare systems than we do. There is so much that people could take the time to find out about. The more people know, the harder it is for the politicians and corporate people to influence you. One of the hardest things in the world is to make a person believe that someone who they think cares about their well-being is lying to them. It is almost impossible. The first thing people do is to go into a defensive posture and refuse to believe anything that they hear. That is what most Democrats are going through now.
I had hoped that the Democrats would deliver on their promises, but I see that I was only deceiving myself. It still could happen that the Democrats could stand up and deliver, but every day that passes makes that seem more and more unlikely. Frankly I'm a little worried. This situation can't go on. This nation is about to implode on itself and only by all of us working on the same sheet of music will we be able to divert disaster. The first thing we must do is to tell these Democrats that we expect them to live up to their end of this bargain, and if this world is still here in 2008, we won't forget what they did if they do indeed authorize another 130 Billion Dollars for President Bush's War.
Go out to a rally; write your Congressman or Senator (or both). Talk to your friends, write an article, march in the street, but DO SOMETHING! I was 18 in 1968, I know how this game is played, I've been to this movie before, and now, like back then, I didn't like the script. Together, we can change how this movie ends.
Tim was banned from the site for posting private email from the publisher to him on his blog, and then attacking the publisher and the site in emails and articles. OEN has no responsibility to publish articles from people who attack the site.
Tim's accusations that he was banned for his political positions are untrue. Check his articles. He repetitively wrote about and had published exactly the things he claimed he was banned for doing.
Former Chairman of the Liberal Party of America, Tim is a retired Army Sergeant. He currently lives in South Carolina. A regular contributor to OpEdNews, he is the author of Kimchee Kronicles and is currently at work on a new novel.
Why does the country do what the President and congress say? Even when a majority or more don't agree. What makes citizens obey the laws and willingly allow themselves or their brothers to submit to punishments for their "transgressions"? Please don't even say patriotism or civic duty, we submit to the brute force of overwhelming power.
You want change? Then you have to get the citizens in the civil brute force business to help. I bet in your town just like mine, the people are aware that the police tend to work primarily for the interests of the well heeled and connected. That's right, the police enforce the class structure. The class structure that's inculcated from the very beginning of a man's public education and social indoctrination. But I digress, The first line of defence to what the Established order( or status quo) will declare Civil Disobedience is the Police. The Police are backed up by the national Guard and so on right up too the US Army if needed.
Let me take you back to( I'm 54) our Halcyon days of the early 70's and the civil Disobedience of that time and in particular, Kent State. There for just a brief moment the USA had Civil war. Brother killing brother. The one brother protesting his countries involvement in the Viet Nam war, the other brother being a member of the US Govt civil brute force patrol. This second uniformed brother was following his duty and the lawful orders from on high to quell and contain this protest by any means possible. There it is. That lawful order thing that will make a brother shoot a brother even if in his heart he might think it's wrong.
Treason is an ugly thing. But if you want change, You will have to get the military to refuse to fight this corporate war. You will have to get the police to refuse to enforce this class structure and status quo. Think about it, What makes GW so strong and what gives him so much power in this world? And what is a bunch of peace activists marching in the street compared to that? Don't think Ideally now. Yes, they will let them march and carry signs. But even that they have already proven only up to a point. But real change? True upheavel to the social order? That will have to start from inside the Civil brute force, status quo enforcement unity. So at what point does a Military coup in the USA become less to be afraid of than the status quo?
We're not there yet. But you keep talking invading more countries wholesale over bogus, manufactured intel claims or pie in the sky Ideolgical premises. Detaining American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants. Curtailing even further basic civil liberties and freedoms. And last but hardy least, NUCLEAR WAR. Then we as a nation will only be able to stop this spiraling madness by joining with the entire military and police in some kind of, if not a coup, at least a civil refusal to cooperate further with the status quo.
Now that would make for some good Television!! LOL Imagine with me for a moment. The White house surrounded by the Police, Military and 300,000,000 citizens of the USA all calling for GW or whoever is President at that time, to put down the Bat Phone and come outside and have a chat. Now that would be a reality Show for the ages, and a reality check for the Status Quo.
Thanks for giving me this space.
Hoss
by
"Hoss" David P. (51 articles, 5 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 338 comments)
on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 5:26:25 PM
What it will take is economic collapse, and that's exactly where we're heading.
Even the most brutal, thuggish mercenaries in the world will turn on their paymasters when they don't get paid. That's why they're called mercenaries. They're not in it for the ideology, they have families to support and car payments to make. Our economy is a house of cards, and the day it crumbles is the day you'll see Bush and Cheney leaving the White House by helicopter en route to Paraguay, with the Secret Service shooting at them instead of protecting them.
A stable economy doesn't import more than it exports. A stable economy doesn't run up debts it can't repay within several generations even with the most optimistic accounting. A stable economy has something set aside for emergencies instead of having to borrow today to make the interest payments on what it borrowed yesterday. A stable economy doesn't spend billions on foreign aggression when large numbers of its own people are homeless and millions of its children don't have enough to eat. A stable economy doesn't deregulate, subsidize, and refuse to tax multinational corporations that outsource jobs, invest elsewhere, and despoil and pollute the environment for profit. A stable economy doesn't engage in drug-running to fund covert (black-book) operations. A stable economy doesn't engage in war-profiteering. A stable economy doesn't have a currency backed by nothing more than faith and printed up as needed to bolster the stock market. A stable economy doesn't have housing and stock market booms and busts that cause suffering to millions of hard-working people. A stable economy is built upon production, not upon credit.
You don't have to convince people to take to the streets. When their jobs are outsourced, their cars repossessed, and their homes foreclosed upon, they'll have no place else to go. That was the lesson of the Great Depression: When your neighbors are out of work, it is because they're lazy bums. But when you're out of work, there is an urgent need for social programs and a government that can create jobs. An economic collapse makes progressives out of even the most conservative among us -- if you can stop them from jumping out the windows of tall buildings. As long as the cops can get their paychecks and feed their families, they'll shoot their brothers if they have to. When the paychecks stop, they'll point their guns in the opposite direction. When the old VFW guy in the wheelchair who supports the war, supports Bush, and hates liberals, gets to the VA and finds out that his benefits have been cut, and he can't get his medicine and treatments any more, his political views change.
So when you tell your Congressmembers that Bush has been a bad boy and doesn't deserve billions of dollars for Christmas, and they give it to him anyway, don't despair. They are just, in their own deluded way, hastening the revolution.
"Revolution gonna come...." --Michael Franti and Spearhead
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 6:01:30 AM
2 comments
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