April 21, 2008

The "War on Terror" is also a war on us

We delude ourselves when we think that what is happening will just magically ‘go away’ with the next president. We delude ourselves when we think that an election is the cure for what ails us. We delude ourselves when we deny our own individual responsibility in changing the trajectory of where our country is headed. We delude ourselves when we think that nothing can be done to stop what is happening. We delude ourselves when we think that the ‘War on Terror’ is only a war on evil crazy terrorists.

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Recently I attended a showing of the film “American Blackout” and during the discussion that followed the film I stated the possibility that there may be no election at all considering the unprecedented powers that George Bush has put into play to declare martial law. One person in the room said that stating such a thing shows why there is no powerful anti-war movement, that such statements turn people off and make me sound crazy. In deference to the ‘vibe’ in the room I let this man have his say without argument only because every one else was rolling their eyes at his rant, but to those reading this who agree with what he was trying to say, let me ask you this: ten years ago did you think in your wildest paranoid “government is evil” fantasy that this country and your president, would lie us into war with a sovereign nation, or codify torture, abolish habeas corpus rights, squash the posse comitatus act, spy on Americans, or that a “Principals Committee,” made up of top level people in a presidential administration would gather together and outline and approve the use of "combined" interrogation techniques – TORTURE -- on terrorist suspects, and these leaders of YOUR COUNTRY would sit together in a room to openly discuss torture techniques, to approve of them, and then work together to circumvent and manipulate the law so that the archaic and ineffective practice of torture, which is absolutely illegal, could then become ‘legal’ and there would be no accountability for those who had approved it or practiced it? If I had whipped out my crystal ball in 1998 and told you this was where Reaganism, conservatism, neo-cons, corporate greed, and a do-nothing congress, and a do-nothing American public and more would lead this country, you would have said I was nuts – crazy – a conspiracy theorist, yet these facts are a very small taste of the very reality we, you and I, face here in 2008. And it’s not a conspiracy theory if it is FACT.


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