Turn off the life support: America is dead
By DOUG THOMPSON
03/09/07 "Capital
Hill Blue" -- -- Maybe, just maybe, it's time
to pull the plug on this failed democratic republic called The
United States of America.
Turn off the life support. Disconnect the IVs. Bring in the
priest for last rites. The US of A is brain dead with no chance
for revival.
Some 40 years ago, I lost friends in the heat and squalor of
Vietnam. They died in a war that never needed to be fought,
supporting a cause that didn't exist for a government that lied
to justify the fight.
A few years later, as a young reporter, I wrote about the
attempts of Richard Milhous Nixon to destroy the Constitution of
the United States. He failed because the system worked and both
Congress and the Supreme Court exercised their powers in our
system of checks and balances to restore order to a faltering
nation.
"The lessons of Vietnam and Watergate provide a roadmap for the
future," I wrote at the time. "With luck, our leaders can use
that roadmap to avoid the mistakes of the past."
Now, 33-and-a-half years after the Vietnam War came to an end
without resolution and Nixon left office without honor, I'm
losing family of friends in the heat and squalor of Iraq. They
die in a war that never needed to be fought, supporting a cause
that doesn't exist for a government that lied to justify their
sacrifices.
Another despot occupies the Presidency, an evil man whose lust
for power surpasses Nixon and who poses a far greater danger to
the Constitution. This time, however, the system is failing to
protect America from despots. George W. Bush rides roughshod
over a compliant Congress. The Supreme Court, packed with
knee-jerk right-wingers who helped put Bush in office in 2000,
abdicated its role long ago.
For a moment - a brief one to be sure - we held out hope that
the voice of the voters might be heard after the November
midterm elections. But turning out the corrupt Republican
leadership of Congress was not enough. Democrats who control the
House lack the balls to take Bush on and the razor-thin majority
in the Senate can't even get a vote together on a non-binding
resolution.
Democrats Thursday unveiled a plan to bring troops home by the
end of 2008 but Bush is already threatening a veto if the bill
gets out of Congress, which is probably won't.
In the meantime, we've learned that Bush lied about both the
size and cost of his "troop surge" that he claims will bring
peace and stability to Iraq. Not only are we sending more troops
in than he said, at a cost far higher than he projected, his own
general on the ground says they will have to stay longer than he
told the American people earlier this year.
Over at the U.S. Department of Justice, an contradiction of
terms if we over heard one, the FBI has lied repeatedly about
its use, and abuse, of the rights-robbing USA Patriot Act to
obtain information on U.S. citizens. I find it disturbing that
in all their rhetoric about restoring America to the people, the
new Democratic leadership of Congress doesn't say a damn thing
about repealing the USA Patriot Act, an ill-conceived bill
crafted by former attorney general John Ashcroft, and hastily
voted into law after 9/11 by shell-shocked representatives and
Senators who later admitted they hadn't even read it.
Today we learn that the federal government, at the direction of
the White House, routinely ignores the Freedom of Information
Act and hides more and more government documents under a cloak
of secrecy.
Both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid joined with Republicans to vote not only for
original passage of the USA Patriot Act but also to reauthorize
it. Bush has used the act to justify spying on Americans,
wiretapping without warrants and strip away the last protections
of the Constitution.
While Congress slept and the Supreme Court looked the other way,
the Bush administration has gone on its merry way seizing
absolute control of the United States government. He fired
independent thinking U.S. attorneys, replacing them with
lockstep right-wingers who share his view of totalitarian
control of government. He ignores the laws of Congress, issuing
"signing statements" that give him the power to do whatever he
wants. When the federal courts declared his wiretapping of
Americans illegal, he ignored the ruling and appointed an
in-house review panel that declared the program "legal."
It doesn't matter who controls Congress. Congress is a dead
institution, ruled by timid legislators who no longer exercise
any real role in the governing of this nation.
It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court may or may not do. The
President of the United States has declared himself a "war time
President" and granted himself dictatorial rights that no one in
Congress or the Court appears able to successfully challenge
him.
The America we used to cherish is dead, replaced by a ruthless
dictator. The America that more than 3,100 men and women died
for in Iraq no longer exists. We might as well pull the sheet
over Uncle Sam's head and prepare for the funeral.
Or can we, as a people, regain control of our government?
Perhaps, but doing so will require drastic measures. I'm not
talking about kicking out one party of political hacks and
replacing it with another: Been there, done that, witnessed the
failure.
We need to rethink this experiment called America. Maybe we need
to start with a clean sheet of paper. Maybe it's time to
recognize that our present America is a rotting corpse, devoured
from within by the cancer of politics, corruption, greed and a
lust for power.
Maybe it's time for a new American Revolution. After all, the
last one started because another guy named George tried to
destroy our way of life.
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