In all other instances, Bushco has merely defined all opposition as "terrorist". That's neat but fallacious! Worse --it's utterly useless if a real war is to be fought. It never was. In fact, opposition by an indigenous population to an aggressive invader is recognized as "legal" by any standard of international law. People have a right under international law to defend their homeland. Given those facts, one is hard pressed to find a single real terrorist in Iraq.
Is there no Democrat who will state the truth about Iraq? When will the Democrats begin with the most obvious truth: the war was begun upon a pack of lies? When will the Democratic party find the courage to state the fact that the war against Iraq was and remains illegal by every international standard insisted upon by the United States itself. When will the Democrats at last discover that the attack and invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with "terrorism" or with 911? Everything said by Bush about Iraq has been a lie. And the lies continue. Let's make this simple for the party of the "loyal opposition": the war was and remains a crime; it's morally wrong; it's a blunder from which the U.S. may never recover.
Let's be blunt: the Democrats have failed to gain a single point from Bush's numerous and assorted calamities because they've offered no real alternative. Americans are ahead of all politicians on this point.
The sins of omission, in the one case, and the sins of commission in the other, will forever link the word "evil" with the Bush administration. Certain themes recur whenever "evil" is talked about. The Nuremberg psychologist, Dr. Gustav Gilbert, thought "evil" to be an "...utter lack of empathy" and Hanah Arendt wrote of the Banality of Evil. Both concepts are consistent with a practice of the American right wing: blaming their victims. Many of the most infamous Nazis (Adolph Eichmann, for example) were just numbed bureaucrats doing a job. Others were "just following orders". The commandant of Auschwitz asked: "Is it wrong for a rat catcher to catch rats?"
Evil is often associated with the "Faustian Bargain". In literature, one literally sells one's soul to Ol' Scratch. But in real life, the Faustian Bargain is not so easy to spot. One sells one's soul in many ways. One sells one's soul by trading one's free will and conscience for material or other "gain" --bribes, high paying jobs, a home in suburbia, graft, campaign contributions.
Most corporate employees are bought and paid for. They have little choice but to support the evil corporation, the cancer merchants of big tobacco, the despoilers of the only environment we will ever have. Mere employment has no moral dimensions if the employer is in all cases benign --but what is to be said of the legion of company types who toil daily for Halliburton and, by proxy, Dick Cheney, Darth Vadar to Bush's evil Emperor?
In yet another example, I give you the Democratic Party. By refusing to oppose Bush with any effectiveness and, in fact, enabling some of his most repugnant and tyrannical measures, the Democrats have literally sold the soul of the party and worse --they done so at a discount. As Rick told Ugarte in Casablanca: "I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one."
I would think normal people would find the idea that laws can be broken in order to carry out state sponsored atrocities, such as torture and wars of aggression, to be unthinkable. And, in normal times, I suppose, they are and most certainly should be. But the idea of "normal times" is seductive. There is every reason to believe that those lower echelon bureaucrats who carried out Hitler's crimes of aggression and genocide thought the times to be normal. It is sign of abnormal times that lawyers and bureaucrats worked assiduously to make Nazi atrocities legal ex post facto. In the Bush administration, that job has fallen to Alberto Gonzales.
