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Title: As If Bush Owned The World
Source:
www.opednews.com
URL Source: http://www.opednews.com/articles/op ... 60921_as_if_bush_owned_the.htm
Published: Sep 21, 2006
Author: Ron Fullwood
Post Date: 2006-09-21 10:42:43 by Ferret Mike
Keywords: None
Views: 102
Comments: 6
"A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free." -- Thomas Jefferson The way Hugo Chavez spoke about Bush's appearance before the U.N. General Assembly was chillingly on target. He said aloud what the majority of the international body gathered must have been already thinking. He was, "talking as if he owned the world . . ." Chavez said, "Truly. As the owner of the world." He echoed the words of the Iranian president who, earlier, cast the U.S. as an imperialistic warmonger bent on oppression. "By causing war and conflict," Ahmadinejad said to the assembly, "some are fast expanding their domination, accumulating greater wealth and usurping all the resources, while others endure the resulting poverty, suffering and misery. "Some seek to rule the world," he continued, "relying on weapons and threats, while others live in perpetual insecurity and danger. Some occupy the homeland of others thousands of kilometers away from their borders, interfere in their affairs, and control their oil and other resources and strategic routes, while others are bombarded daily in their own homes, their children murdered in the streets and alleys of their own country, and their homes reduced to rubble. "Is it Iranian forces that have occupied countries neighboring the United States, or is it American forces that are occupying countries neighboring Iran?" Ahmadinejad asked NBC's Brian Williams in an interview. It's frustrating to watch these leaders who Bush has so thoroughly demonized - who have their own problems with their own seemingly autocratic regimes - posturing against our country, and suffer the realization that our own despotic leader has yet to be deposed for his crimes against Americans. Problem is, the world sees a wimp with a big mouth when Bush swaggers around like he did in his address to the assembly, ordering their affairs, and we're left to defend against the blow-back. There could be economic isolation, political isolation, or outright hostility involving more attacks on the nation, in reaction and response to Bush's reckless muckraking. The American people are left to pick up the pieces of our democracy that Bush so willingly hurls around the world out of his dictatorial carpetbag. Bush and his warmongering supporters are dangerous for America. Anyone can pick fights, as Bush seems obsessed with doing. The question for America is, are we ready to fight more of Bush's battles for him? The leaders of the world are lining up against him/us. Only blundering idiots would allow Bush to turn the world into his personal fight club. We're the ones who are going to end up defending ourselves as we defend against his blundering interference in so many other nation's affairs. His manufactured mandate supported less by the will of the American people than by his corrupt exercise of the awesome strength of our military and the sacrifices of those who do the fighting and the dying. That's why seeking impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney is such an imperative. The ideological battle that we should be waging is against the Bush regime's hijacking of our country and the crashing of our democracy into the Iraqi desert. Now they want more bodies to fuel their occupations as they plot yet another assault on yet another sovereign nation. It's clear that Bush won't pull back from his military slap-fights with eyes closed unless he's forced to by the American people through the action of our representatives. We have to demand that they step up and hold him accountable, or face removal and censure for their own complicity in the imperious charade. It's not enough to satisfy ourselves that there are others pointing out that our country has spawned the likeness of the Devil. The majority of Americans, and those who we intended to lead us, merely stood aside and deferred to his manufactured mandate to conquer. It's amazing how Americans dismiss the aspirations and pride of these 'lesser' nations that Bush would dictate to as either a threat or an insignificance. We are very much past any point of grace that would allow the world to separate the responsibility for Bush's illegitimate crusades from our own intentions. Citizens of countries all over the world regularly rise up en masse against their own corrupt, despoiled regimes. We in the U.S. pride ourselves in our original struggles for freedom and liberty at our country's founding; likewise celebrating the struggle for the freedom and liberty of those pitiful citizens our nation once so oppressed. Yet, most of us are timid about challenging our government to continue to live up to and uphold those very ideals as they arrogantly engage our resources and our soldier's lives abroad for interests that they alone decide are in our interest. The majority of Americans have long opposed the Iraq occupation, yet Bush persists in behaving as if our democracy allows him to be the ultimate 'decider.' Thomas Jefferson had no sympathy for a federal government which had violated its compact with the governed. After he assumed office, President Jefferson, faced with the prosecutions of scores of Americans under the censorship of the Alien and Sedition Laws, released those charged and pardoned them. Writing in opposition to the Alien and Sedition act, Jefferson wrote that, ". . . whensoever the general government assumes un-delegated powers, its acts are un-authoritative, void and of no effect." Jefferson asserted that, "The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by compact, under the style and title of the Constitution of the United States, and of certain amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for general purposes, delegated to that government certain powers." Later Jefferson would describe his ascendance to office, and liberation of those prosecuted for speaking out against the government, as, "in its form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people." He also had a caution about the remedy of impeachment (of his Judiciary) that should merit our attention. "It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics," Jefferson wrote, "that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass." And, so it is that the future direction of our republic rests with our own responsibility to vigilance against the abuses and actions of those we intend to lead us; effective with our votes, our advocacy, and our involvement in every instigation of democracy that confronts us. In order to get our leaders to present America to the world as a reliable, responsible neighbor, instead of an aggressor and an adversary, we need to challenge them to live up to their responsibility to hold the Executive accountable. We need to speak and act as if we own the country. As a matter of fact, we do. Ron Fullwood, is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price
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#1. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
*********************************************** I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations. Arator pointed out this second quote on another thread on Chavez.
"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country." - Daniel Ellsberg Author, Pentagon Papers Metaphor of the Year nominee.
One has to wonder just what the reichwingers would recognize as unjust wars of aggression committed by the US government if Iraq doesn't do it for them or this sabber rattling against Iran.
They would probably accept anything done against a Middle Eastern nation right up to the point of blatant genocide (and some would even accept that). I used to cringe when I would hear leftist intellectuals talk about the dangers of having only one Superpower in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union. Not anymore. Although they were full of shit when they made references to the USSR being a "balancing force" in the world. Rotted out Russia more often served the interests of DC, than it ever countered it.
The "Cold War" was a gentleman's game in which the elite ruling apparatchik mafia government of the Soviet Union was propped up by the US for years while they dicked around in the third world spreading misery whereever they chose to fight their proxy wars. Then- by the 70's it became quite clear that the Soviet Union was teetering. With the use of widespread systematic terror being abandoned by the Soviet mafia government after Stalin's death - which is why their command and control system worked at all for a time- the USSR was in serious trouble. Riots were breaking out all of the Soviet Union - few of which made news in the West. A Soviet naval vessal actually revolted and removed their commissar political officers and its officers announced that they were a Russian vessal- not a Soviet naval ship (this was the basis of the "Hunt of Red October" story but it was a battleship and they were not trying to "defect" to the USA). This massive unrest all over the failing Soviet Union worried our secret government in DC. So what happened? Detente- in which massive grain shipments and other food products at well below market value were shipped to the Soviet Union and loans and credits and technology transfers were granted to the "evil empire." As Solzhenitsyn pointed out upon his arrival in America in 1978 - the US was intentionally propping up their "enemy" to keep the game going- to keep DC flush with military spending and their power growing and expanding. He saw the "Cold War" for what is was by 1978- a shell game. I love how Carter is hated by the reichwingers now. He cut off the grain shipments and loans and technology transfers to the Soviet Union. Then- the "anti communist" Reagan came in and resumed them! It is almost Orwellian.
Since Bush and his handlers like the mantle of "war president" and the national status of "wartime," the absurd posturings and dance on the head of a pin regarding war are never ending with them. That status is the refuge of a scoundrel, and this is the first three year war where an administration has not responded to war by mobilizing industry to answer the needs for new or repaired equipment and has allowed military hardware to deteriorate badly with no replacements in sight. It is also trying to politically have it's cake and eat it too by sticking to the back door draft of tapping the individual ready reserve to flesh out manpower fearful of the political fallout of a draft to do so. They know a draft is like gas prices and gets the marginally politically aware people down on their butts, and that can't be ameliorated and dispelled temporarily like gas prices can with a temporary drop in price. Because of the posturings and life in total denial of the facts, things are getting worse fast for these people. It is coming down to a situation like the deficit crisis where money raised can't address the principle of the debt. They are going to have to either grow up and accept responsibility for this war fiasco, or start another crisis to hide the way they mismanaged this illegal and immoral war. Tis is also the first war lasting this long where posturing by lowering taxes on the rich has occurred. They do want to jack up the tax load on the poor and shrinking middle class, but no President has even been so foolish as to offer pie in the sky nonsense like "the oil will pay for the war" - which it hasn't at all - and to cut taxes in the fact of war expenses in excess of five billion dollars a month. This whole thing reads like a Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland novel. Unfortunately for Bush, his horror story is nowhere near as light and amusing as the satire Carroll like to write.
He was, "talking as if he owned the world . . ." Chavez said, "Truly. As the owner of the world."
#2. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
The ideological battle that we should be waging is against the Bush regime's hijacking of our country and the crashing of our democracy into the Iraqi desert.
#3. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
#4. To: Burkeman1 (#3)
(Edited)
One has to wonder just what the reichwingers would recognize as unjust wars of aggression committed by the US government if Iraq doesn't do it for them or this sabber rattling against Iran.
#5. To: SmokinOPs (#4)
#6. To: Burkeman1 (#3)
"One has to wonder just what the reichwingers would recognize as unjust wars of aggression committed by the US government if Iraq doesn't do it for them or this saber rattling against Iran."
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