The following is a response to, "Will War Crimes Be Outed?" (by Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith. The Nation. December 17, 2008):
We have a President, George W. Bush, who sold the invasion of Iraq first by tying Saddam Hussein and Iraq to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda; only it wasn't true, Bush knew it, and Bush openly and unapologetically to this day says, "So what?" He said it a few days ago.
We have a Vice President who says that the Bush administration would have invaded Iraq regardless of any tie to al Qaeda. This is even though the legislative resolution to use force is expressly aimed at those who attacked the U.S. Neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq attacked the U.S. Hussein said some things and did some things that irritated the U.S., but he did not attack the U.S. in any way contemplated by the resolution.
That same Vice President, Dick Cheney, openly stated that the U.S. should go over to the dark side. He said that the U.S. should be evil. He wanted and wants the U.S. to be the evil empire. He also said just a few days ago that Barack Obama should use the torture that Bush and Cheney, et al., have used.
The long list of other things these two and their long list of accomplices in high crimes have done is written. The daily newspapers in the public library archives show the trail and all the charges. These two men and the others have gone beyond even the mundane pale time and again. What are people to do?
The secular laws are clearly muddy. The U.S. Constitution ties itself, as the highest law, to the international treaties to which the U.S. is signatory, placing those treaties into the Constitution. They are incorporated by the reference in the Constitution and not as inferior or subservient provisions but on an equal footing with all other parts of that Constitution. That Constitution though grants the President supreme power to pardon all crimes. It makes no distinctions. The only appeals would be to original intent or to the "living, breathing document" position where the Constitution changes with the culture to counter the strict constructionist, literal interpretation: Muddy.
The only thing in the mundane secular law that clearly can prevent Bush from effectively pardoning all the high crimes of the Bush administration before he leaves office is a retroactive Constitutional amendment undoing any such pardons. No Presidential pardons for the crimes of his or her administration are valid. Think about all the arguments about which acts are the official acts of an administration. No Presidential pardons for the crimes of anyone working within his or her administration are valid. Think about outsourcing. How about removing all Presidential pardons? Think about taking away a President's ability to offer amnesty to promote the peace after a civil misunderstanding: Muddy.
The whole body is secular, although there are stylized allusions to and even expressions of the non-secular. Regardless, they are by and large secular. They are not religious or sacred documents. There is language in them that is sacred. Mixing, however, makes the fruit of the whole tree less than desirable and less than sacred.
The Christian is forbidden from punishing George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or any of the others. It is the proverbial Satan who charges, prosecutes, judges, sentences (condemns), and punishes. The Christian doesn't even charge in that sense. The object of the Christian is not to lead to sadistic punishment. Any punishment resulting from the words of the Christian will be the sympathetic and empathetic pain that the repentant heart experiences. That pain and suffering is purgative of evil. It is not harmful. It is healing.
The pain and suffering George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have dished out and still are is not designed to lead to that knowledge (science). It is not a connection that they understand. Their hearts are too hard. Their brains are malformed. They think with the hind end, the lower, the reptilian. They were abused and have not overcome. They have been hardened into more and more selfishness - spiraling down, down, down (actually bottomless) with no light ahead at all.
The truth is that the U.S. Constitution and the other documents are more akin to Bush and Cheney's mentality than to Christ's. Bush and Cheney don't give a damn about the U.S. Constitution, but that Constitution allows for the twisting that can arrive, and has arrived in the minds of the likes of John Yoo (professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law who authored the official Bush torture memos) and his ilk, at Bush and Cheney's highly immoral positions and actions. Jesus's sermons and teachings do not allow that immorality. They don't allow for any twisting. Only a misreading, a less-than-full-context reading, a failing comprehension, claims otherwise.
Why is the supreme law of the United States of America the U.S. Constitution rather than the words and deeds of Christ? That Constitution's stated aim is a more perfect union. Why follow that aim with inferior writing?
The following is as liberal and progressive as it gets:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish that the words and example of Jesus Christ constitute the Constitution of the United States of America.
Why is this position not also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations?
The U.S. Constitution, U.N. documents, and other international treaties all fall woefully short. Everyone who reads this knows it.
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