Lingering Ruminations on the RNC (ugh)

You know what really amazed me about the RNC?

The fact that each of the speakers at the RNC, Thompson, Leiberman, McCain and Palin (et al.) went on and on about the problems of America but never, ever mentioned the Bush administration or any of the principals who have master-minded the mess we’re in. Of course, they want to distance themselves from Bush/Cheney and company – Bush delivered his speech from the White House; Cheney was in the Caucasus shilling for Big Oil – that’s easy to figure.

The amazing thing is the deceitful, callous panache, if you will, that was displayed by those hard-working spin-meisters who crafted the speeches at the RNC. Any writer will tell you that would be incredibly difficult to be able to bring up the Iraq debacle, the faltering economy, record home foreclosures, rising unemployment, the power of lobbyists, and so on, pushing all of the right ‘hot buttons’ for voters without ever mentioning or alluding to the fact that all of these problems lay directly at the door of the Bush administrations and the GOP.

Granted that the Dems – inept, complacent bunch of craven goldbricks that they are, with few exceptions – have done next to nothing since gaining control of Congress but rubber stamp the decrees from the Imperial Palace at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the big problems were well out of the gate by then.

And then to top it all off with calling McCain/Palin a pair of Mavericks and a ticket for Change! Wow! Mavericks that run with the herd and change that won’t actually change anything. Amazing chutzpa!

Of course, it could be called worse things.

They're At It Again!

Like murderous 2-year olds, you can't take your eyes off of them for a moment. They're making war with an ally, now!

The Bush and Cheney Gang - who else!? While the ridiculous spectacle of personality politics in the US distracts us, Bush/Cheney are attacking Pakistan.

Again and again!

Killing hundreds of men, women, children and - oh, by the way, the occasional member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

My, my. Do tell! There are Taliban and Al-Qaeda member in Eastern Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan? In the Tora Bora Mountains! There!?

This is not news. This is the same old info we’ve had since before the Russians bailed on their Afghani adventure. The CIA and the ISI recruited and hired those thugs to harass the Ruskies. The thugs did a pretty good job and they continue to do a pretty good job at harassing occupying forces. And they’re still in the same area of the world where the USA armed them.

Of course, with the Bush/Cheney eyes on a different prize, they were not so interested in finding some Arab with bad kidneys in a cave and bringing him to trial. (What would you imagine we could all learn from several days of Bin Laden’s testimony in a witness box?)

A third of world oil reserves! Makes your head spin! Bush could revive Arbusco Oil (and probably run it into the ground)and Cheney would probably get free virgins and a gazillion bucks a month in retainers from Halliburton just for his rolodex.

But I digress…

US forces are attacking our ‘key partner in the War on Terror’! What the f… is with that? I suppose Bush/Cheney and their round-table of socio-paths figured the Pakistanis wouldn’t mind if the US killed a few dozen people in the Tribal Areas for a ‘good cause’. Of course, they were advised against such an insane, immoral action by the Intelligence Community, but did they listen? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

You’ve got to give credit where it is due, though. This is a tried and true tactic for winning the war on terror; it’s proven successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a nutshell, here’s the plan: make every person in the region hate the US for brutally murdering a family member or loved one. Then everybody in the region, man, woman and child, will share a culturally rooted vow to affect terrible, bloody vengeance on the USA.

That will take care of ‘collateral damage’ for good; whoever’s on photo-op detail at the White House will simply read the teleprompter and sign the executive order making ‘them’ all terrorists.

Ipso facto…

Presto change-o! Nobody’s an innocent because they’ve all been defined as ‘evil terr’rists’ by Imperial decree.

Then we just nuke ‘em all and take the oil.

American Exceptionalism

Of all of the tenets of the secular pseudo-religion, Americanism, the principle dogma is that of American Exceptionalism. Put simply, the precept of ‘American Exceptionalism’ is the notion that the American people, the American way of life and the American form of Democracy are a result of holy providence and are of divine origin and inspiration. It is a most pernicious concept; one upon which most, if not all, of the other false creeds of Americanism are based and to which most if not all of America’s failings can be attributed.

On August 20, 2008, Andrew Bacevich, a conservative historian, Boston University professor and retired colonel who spent twenty-three years serving in the US Army, appeared on ‘Democracy Now!’ to discuss his new book entitled “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism”. He stated, “Well, this is not an idea that’s original with me. It’s clear that from the founding of the Anglo-American colonies, from the time that John Winthrop made his famous sermon and declared that “we shall be as a city upon a hill” a light to the world—it’s clear that, from the outset, there has been a strong sense among Americans that we are a special people with a providential mission.”

A providential mission. This is precisely where this precept becomes dangerous.

Is America exceptional? Yes, most definitely; the Republic of the United States of America is exceptional. It was exceptional at its inception and it was founded by exceptional men. There is no rationally sustained argument which can negate that. The Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence are all exceptional documents, each with their own merit, historically, philosophically and in many ways besides.

The USA is exceptional, too, in the matter of freedom of speech and personal expression. Not only is this freedom at the core of the law of the land and boldly evident at the birth of the nation, but it has been internalized by all of its citizens for generations and occasionally even exercised by some.

America is exceptional for a whole slew of reasons. Only the most ardent ideologues would disagree in principle. It should be noted, however, that the term ‘exceptional’ does not exclude negative attributes or conditions. The canon of ‘Exceptionalism’, however, invariably connotes righteousness and imparts the odor of sanctity to all things American.

How America has shown itself by its actions to be exceptional but by no means righteous are many; exceptionally aggressive in foreign policy, exceptionally bellicose, exceptionally parochial, exceptionally arrogant and exceptionally reluctant to abolish slavery, to name a few examples. The point of this article is, however, not the failings of American policy but the debasement of America’s exceptionally high-minded principles by the sentimental attachment to the false doctrine of ‘American Exceptionalism’.

The danger of subscribing to the concept of ‘Exceptionalism’ is in the unthinking, unwitting belief that Americans and America have the sole, exclusive claim to being exceptional and thus according to the accepted precept, are righteous in all things. The danger of the wide-spread belief in such a notion by the citizens of a country should be obvious; it leads to chauvinistic, nationalistic policies such as ‘preventative war’, ‘regime change’ and empire building.

Moreover, the danger of such self-centered, imperialistic policies is compounded and exacerbated dramatically by the attendant belief that these policies and all policies of the USA stem from ‘a providential mission’. Citing ‘divine guidance’ to justify government policy nullifies rational debate and dissent, the foundation of democratic governance.

George W. Bush, a self-professed ‘man of God’, has claimed not only that his presidency is a ‘divine mission’ but that he, himself, is guided by his faith, by his God. In June 2002, for example, he sermonized to West Point graduates, “We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name.” Bush and his administration have made it abundantly clear that they do not want to hear dissent or debate on the matters of his ‘mission’. One need only recall Mr Bush’s disdainful frat-boy flippancy when faced with criticism or Mr Cheney’s rash and contemptuous disregard for the opinions of the vast majority of Americans on the matter of the occupation of Iraq to find verification for this assertion.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SypeZjeOrY4

The resultant atmosphere of zealous, self-righteous piety smacks of the same sort of religious-based fundamentalism that is derided and anathematized when proclaimed by radical Islamists, to offer but one example. When supernatural power, other-worldly agents and mystic intuition are the basis on which governance is determined, the natural world of humanity and the means by which humans chart the course of their lives (such as logic, rational discourse, education, and empathy) are undermined and disregarded as superfluous. In the more extreme cases, disputation of the ‘providential mission’ and ‘divine guidance’ is condemned as blasphemy and subject to harsh punishment; often ostracism or death.

While an unwillingness to adhere to ‘Americanism’ and the tenet of ‘American Exceptionalism’ might not lead to immolation or decapitation, those journalists who have dared to question the ‘divine inspiration’ and wisdom of Mr Bush’s ‘mission’ have most assuredly found themselves excommunicated and barred from the hallowed sanctum of the White House press room. Furthermore, citizens voicing their dissent by silently displaying placards or slogan-emblazoned T-shirts in the presence of administration officials have been arrested and sequestered. A careful examination of the public record will, most assuredly, provide many more examples of free speech being sacrificed at the altar of ‘Exceptionalism’.

The systematic ostracism of non-believers is clearly evidenced by the well-publicized “public demonstration zones” at the upcoming conventions of the two major political parties. These euphemistically named holding pens and detention centers for dissidents have been condemned by the ACLU and other Civil Rights organizations as a violation of the First Amendment Right to Free Speech. It is tragically ironic that one of America’s rightful claims to being exceptional is at risk because of the fearful over-reaction by those of the ‘Exceptionalism’ sect.

The tautological, circumlocutory argument of American Exceptionalism can be stated thusly: “We are on a providentially inspired mission and are guided by a ‘Higher Power’, therefore whatever our actions or policies, we cannot be in the wrong.”

Or as Elwood Blues put it, “We’re on a mission from God.”

Professor Andrew Bacevich put it this way, however, “…to view international politics through this lens of good and evil leads you to vastly oversimplify and I think also leads you to make reckless decisions.” It may be added that reckless decisions lead to reckless actions from which we will not find absolution in worldly or other-worldly courts by simply ‘sticking to our guns’ and muttering the mantra of American Exceptionalism.

A Summer Reading List for Madam Pelosi

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has been telling us over and over on television, on-line and in print that she can find no reason to put the impeachment of George W Bush back on the table. If Representative Pelosi cannot find adequate reason for the impeachment of Mr Bush, then she is simply stupid, blind or both.

Books detailing and documenting the many high crimes and misdemeanors of George W Bush (et al) have been written, published and have made the ‘Best Seller’ lists. Here is but a small sampling that is strongly recommended for Ms Pelosi’s summer reading list:

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush by Center for Constitutional Rights

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan

Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John W. Dean

The Constitution in Crisis: The High Crimes of the Bush Administration and a Blueprint for Impeachment by John C. Conyers and Elizabeth Holtzman

A Bird in the Bush: Failed Domestic Policies of the George W. Bush Administration by Dowling Campbell

The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn

The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America by Eric Alterman and Mark J. Green

United States v. George W. Bush et al. by Elizabeth de la Vega

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, and Joseph C. Wilson

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky

Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values by Philippe Sands

The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens by Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper

Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney by Dennis Loo, Peter Phillips, and Howard Zinn

The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration by Jack L. Goldsmith

Abu Ghraib: The Politics of Torture (The Terra Nova Series) by David Levi Strauss, Charles Stein, Barbara Ehrenreich, and John Gra

Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush by Walter Brasch

Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution by James P. Pfiffner

Bush, the Detainees, and the Constitution: The Battle over Presidential Power in the War on Terror by Howard Ball

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer

Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Blackwell Public Philosophy Series) by Bob Brecher

Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law by Marjorie Cohn and Richard Falk

Beyond the Law: The Bush Administration's Unlawful Responses in the "War" on Terror by Jordan J. Paust

Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium by Chris Floyd

The Bush Betrayal by James Bovard

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program by Stephen Grey

Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War by Tara McKelvey

Torture Central: E-mails From Abu Ghraib by Michael Keller

Bush and Cheney's War: A War Without Justification by Homer Duncan

Bushit!: An A-Z Guide to the Bush Attack on Truth, Justice, Equality, and the American Way by Jack Huberman

The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America by Jennifer Van Bergen

The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency by Howard Zinn

Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond by Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, and Joseph C. Wilson

And last but not least…

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi

This should fill up your summer reading list, Madam Speaker. Do us all a favor and ask one of your aides to Google ‘Bush Impeachment’; I got 580,000 hits in 0.28 seconds on August 8^th.

Then, Madam Speaker, do yourself a favor: up-date your curriculum vitae and start preparing a defense against own impeachment for gross dereliction of your duty to the Constitution of the United States of America.

In the Company of Tyrants

The opening of the war crimes tribunal against Radovan Karadzic in The Hague and the recent indictment of Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court, invites a rather unfavorable comparison to the results of the policies of George W Bush; what has become known as the ‘Bush Doctrine’.

Corporate and independent news services have been all a-buzz now that Radovan Karadzic has finally been brought to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity after hiding in plain sight for 13 years.

An amended indictment against Karadzic was confirmed on 31 May 2000, and included one count of a grave breach of the Geneva conventions of 1949, three counts of violations of the laws or customs of war, two counts of genocide and five counts of crimes against humanity.

The case information sheet issued by the U.N. Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia charging Radovan Karadzic with genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia can be found here:

http://www.un.org/icty/cases-e/cis/karadzic/CIS-Karadzic.pdf

In the small office of the Association of the Mothers of Srebrenica, about 20 widows watched the broadcast of the initial tribunal hearing of Karadzic.

"I have not found one bone of my children yet and there he is ... alive," said Ramiza Music, 52, who lost two teenage sons, a husband and two brothers in the Srebrenica massacre. "Today I feel there is a bit of justice in this otherwise really pitiful world."

In the Bosnian capital, Alena Tiro, 42, said: "I'm happy and sad at the same time; happy because the world seems to be not as bad as I thought so far if it forced him to the courtroom. Sad because 100,000 people he killed are not watching this."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24114235-2703,00.html

A fortnight ago, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an indictment against Omar al-Bashir, the serving president of Sudan, who is also the military commander-in-chief of the country. This case sets a precedent as the ICC has never indicted a sitting head of state before.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, is confident of his case. "I believe that peace and justice should go hand in hand," he said, adding that justice can be a part of the peace process. But peace without justice cannot be sustainable. "I don't have the luxury to look away," he said. "I have evidence."

The current toll in Sudan's civil war involves hundreds of thousands killed, thousands of villages burned and millions of refugees on the verge of starvation. Al-Bashir's regular troops, along with the gruesomely helpful militias under his command, have waged an ethnic-cleansing campaign in Darfur for several years, under the pretext of a revolt by Sudanese rebels.

An estimated two million residents have been displaced and tens of thousands killed in the civil war in Sudan's Darfur region. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague says they are the victims of genocide and crimes against humanity committed by the government.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,565924,00.html

Considering the amount of blood on the hands of these two men is horrifying to be sure.

Pikers, I say.

Pikers and neophytes.

If one had the stones to compare body counts with George W Bush, Karadzic and al-Bashir are clumsy wanna-be tyrants and amateur despots.

With an estimated 4.7 million Iraqi refugees, and an Iraqi death toll of more than 1,250,000, George W. Bush should be ready to pack his bags and take up residence in The Hague, alongside Karadzic.

According to an extrapolation of the results of a survey published in the prestigious medical journal ‘The Lancet’, more than one and a quarter million Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of the American-British invasion of Iraq. The survey was conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimated in 2006 that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq as a result of the illegal invasion in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, was far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

This estimate is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December of 2005. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died has received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007: Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US invasion.

More than 4.7 million Iraqis displaced and more than 1.25 million Iraqis killed as a direct result of the Bush Administration’s illegal invasion and occupation of the Republic of Iraq.

Karadzic and al-Bashi, eat your black tyrant hearts out. You are in the presence of a Master of Disaster!

Lest some apologist for GW Bush protest that whereas not all of the Iraqi deaths can be attributed to military action hence not all the dead Iraqis can be laid at the door of the White House, it should be noted that according to the principles set forth at Nuremberg by the chief American prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson, any and all deaths, injuries and displacement of the civilian population that result from the act of invasion – the highest, most egregious of international criminal acts – must be attributed to the head of state of the invading nation and prosecuted.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm

Compared to the current crop of war-mongering despots, George W. Bush is without equal in the magnitude of his crimes against humanity.

In the words of the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, during his visit to the Tribunal in 1997, "impunity cannot be tolerated, and will not be. In an interdependent world, the Rule of the Law must prevail."

Let the nascent impeachment hearings proceed. Come what may, with or without formal charges of impeachment, those who seek justice must actively and diligently work toward bringing George W Bush and his Neo-con cohorts to The Hague to answer for their heinous, despicable actions before the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/index.php#iraqi

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

A Letter to the International Criminal Court

Here is a letter I recently wrote to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court asking that criminal charges be brought against George W Bush and Richard Cheney:

Sirs:

I write to you as a concerned citizen of the United States of America. Our republic and the world at large have been and continue to be endangered by the administrations of George W Bush and Richard Cheney.

According the recent report by the International Red Cross, the 'enhanced interrogation techniques' practiced by the CIA and the US military and approved at the highest levels of the Bush government make them subject to prosecution as war criminals.

In direct violation of the United Nation Charter and International Law, the US government under the leadership of George W Bush and Richard Cheney invaded a member nation of the UN, Iraq, under the most dubious of pretexts, over-threw the recognized government and continues to occupy the country after 5 years and with violent, brutal force subjugate the populace. The war has devastated the country in every category of assessment and left upward of one million Iraqi men, women and children dead. (Based on the estimate reported in the Lancet last year. http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf )

These are just two of what many believe to be among numerous criminal acts for which George W Bush, Richard Cheney and other top-ranking members of their administration should rightfully be charged as war criminals.

In the name of justice and for the good of the world, I beseech the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to bring charges against the people who are serving or have served in the Bush/Cheney administrations - including George W Bush and Richard Cheney - who are responsible for the kidnapping and torture of individuals and the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people as reported and documented by innumerable, verifiable sources.

In my most humble opinion, to fail to do so will undermine and irreparably damage the noble concept of rule of law and serve to encourage endless war.

Most Respectfully,

etc, etc

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111802397.html

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