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The Declaration of Independence ... from Dubya
(With apologies to Thomas Jefferson)
BY JOHN SUGG
Dear Mr. Bush: It is quite likely, considering the blank, empty smirk with which you
greet the world, that you may not recognize the document I, with humility and not
arrogance, update below. The original was the statement of men who staked their
lives to affirm our right to live free; and they penned their names in abhorrence of
and opposition to a tyrant with whom you share more than a name.
Although the repeated mendacities of your administration are beyond comprehension
-- far greater by many powers than your predecessor's peccadilloes with Whitewater,
White House travel agents or even Monica's semen-stained dress -- you earn credit
for telling one chilling truth. Shortly after your brother enabled your undermining of
our democracy by illegally disenfranchising thousands of Florida voters, followed by
the five Republicans on the Supreme Court halting recounts and selecting you
president, you made a surprisingly candid jest to congressional leaders, saying:
"If this were a dictatorship, this would be a heck of a lot easier." Laughing at your
own humor -- a malignant hahaha considering the hundreds of thousands of
Americans who have died battling tyranny and totalitarianism - - you then quipped:
"Just so long as I'm dictator."
The nation should have paid attention.
When in the courseof human events, it becomes necessary for a people to dissolve
the political bands imposed on them by their rulers, a decent respect to the opinions
of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness -- and this great nation codified these Rights in a Constitution
and Amendments that are regarded by the world as mankind's greatest beacons of
Freedom.
Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, and whenever
Government usurps power for its own end and for the immoral enrichment of elites, it
is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
...
Perhaps Americans won't be forced to embark on a new revolution, Mr. Bush. But
the path you have set for the country may make that inevitable.
Like Rome, you are transforming our society from a republic to an imperium that
seeks to subjugate its own people and dominate world affairs with nuclear weapons
and threats of "first strikes" against those you, with mercurial disregard for history
and logic, deem evil.
Your affinity for the word "evil" raises questions of how in touch you are with
reality --
you embrace horribly repressive regimes, from China to Uzbekistan to Malaysia; you
seek to ignite a new Vietnam in Colombia; yet you cheer the attempted overthrow of
democracy in Venezuela. You side with Libya in opposing an international court that
would bring war criminals to justice -- your Alice-in-Wonderland congressional allies
have passed a law that would allow us to invade the Netherlands to "rescue"
Americans on trial by the court. That invasion may happen -- in Europe, news
agencies (studiously ignored by mainstream U.S. media) report with substantial
documentation that our military was complicit in the torture and slaughter of
hundreds, possibly as many 2,500, Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners, many of them
roasted to death in sealed cargo containers.
In the one area of the world where U.S. authority needs to be applied -- the Middle
East -- you have totally capitulated to the awful Ariel Sharon, a man committed to
only one tactic, endless war. Yes, Yassir Arafat is awful, too (he was elected by
majority of his people, however, a claim you can't make). And, yes, Israel absolutely
should have peace and secure borders. But your non-solution of placing the entire
burden for re- engaging a peace process on a people who have suffered under 35
years of military occupation is just, well, loopy to a degree that's almost criminal.
Put another way: Have you no morals, Mr. Bush?
A Prince whose character is marked by every act which may define a Tyrant is unfit
to be the ruler of a free people. It is fitting for the People to ask: To whom do you
answer?
Your constituency is obvious to those who look -- the band of lawless corporate
marauders who seek to loot the world's wealth, squander the planet's resources and
gamble with American workers' salaries and savings. It is not too extreme to say that
you run a quisling puppet government for the pinstriped corporate warlords.
Theodore Roosevelt, a real president, commented: "The things that will destroy
America are prosperity-at- any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-
first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life." Even Teddy
couldn't
have envisioned the corruption and avarice of your corporate friends. These
boardroom thieves -- to whom you have handed control of the government and
economy -- have seen their wealth increase by as much as 4,300 percent in the last
two decades, paid for by the stagnant real incomes of most Americans. Whereas
America's foundation was freedom, truth and justice, your base is Enron, Global
Crossing, Tyco, Carlyle Group, Halliburton and, most recently, WorldCom.
Moreover, pandering to raving religious fanatics -- whose brand of Christianity bears
scant resemblance to the teachings of Jesus -- you and your attorney general, John
Ashcroft, threaten to substitute democratic rule with an intolerant theocracy.
Many of the Founding Fathers -- notably Washington, Jefferson and Franklin -- were
not Christian at all, but were deist, the closest thing to atheist or agnostic in their
time. They greatly feared any mixing of government and religion, and sought to
establish an impenetrable wall between the two.
Yet, when last week a federal appellate court in California sensibly ruled that the
phrase "under God" in the official Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional -- it
equates patriotism with acceptance of the monotheistic deity -- you slimed our
nation's founders by declaring the decision was "out of step with the traditions and
history of America."
The cowed and servile Congress anxiously echoed your silliness. A true leader
might, instead, have observed that our nation's founders would not have confused
symbols and rituals with real patriotism, and that they would have tolerated -- indeed,
encouraged -- differences in beliefs and customs.
More than one true patriot has observed that it is the scoundrel who is first to wrap
himself in the flag -- just what you repeatedly do. Your vice president and your
attorney general have declared that criticism borders on treason. At Ohio State
University last month, those who would exercise their most American right, peaceful
dissent, at a graduation ceremony where you spoke were told they would be ejected,
denied their diploma and arrested.
When a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to reduce Citizens
under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. The history of the
present Prince, George W, is a history of repeated injuries and deceptions, all having
in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny. To prove this, let facts be
presented to a candid world.
The document that conceived our nation goes on to list the grievances against that
earlier George. It is remarkable, Mr. Bush, how many of the complaints have
parallels with your administration. But a few stand out:
He has reused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public
good.
You, sir, have gutted environmental protections, cutting hundreds of millions of
dollars from research and enforcement, abandoning deadlines for decreasing
pollution, shifting the burden of toxic cleanups from corporate polluters to taxpayers.
You have snubbed the Kyoto Treaty that would seek to halt disastrous global
warming -- at first belittling scientific proof, and then admitting the evidence but
denying that any effort was worth undertaking.
You have assaulted hard-won advances in health care and public safety. You have
cut billions of dollars that would have gone to the nation's neediest children and
families. You have attempted to force poor women into marriages that are often
abusive. You even have sought to end a program that gave free books to poor
children -- and, not surprisingly, you scrapped funding that taught children about the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Citizenship.
You have beggared the government, turning surplus into a massive debt that will be
paid by future generations. Even worse, you increasingly shift the burden to the
middle and working classes. With your $1.35 trillion tax cut, 43 percent will go to the
wealthiest 1 percent of the population. The poorest will be lucky to get a dime.
He has kept among us Standing armies. ... He has affected to render the Military
independent of and superior to Civil power.
Mr. Bush, you have used the Sept. 11 tragedy to expand the military budget to an
unimaginable $400 billion -- knowing full well that all of our expensive toys were
insufficient to stop madmen armed with $5 box cutters. You have reignited the
nuclear arms race by changing policy from the elimination of weapons to the
warehousing of old bombs and the creation of a new generation of hell-toys.
As substantial documentation shows, your saber rattling may itself have played a role
in 9-11. As has been reported by a few courageous journalists, your administration
had ongoing negotiations with the Taliban to build an oil -- your favorite substance --
pipeline. As Salon.com reported June 5, "When those talks stalled in July [2001], a
Bush administration representative threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if
the
government did not go along with American demands. ... [That] raises new questions
as to whether the U.S. military threat to the Taliban ... could have prompted al-
Qaeda's Sept. 11 attack."
What is clear is that you and your administration had plenty of warning about
possible terrorist attacks. Yet you and your aides paid no attention, stripping funds
from counter-terrorism programs to fuel new Pentagon hardware and the
misbegotten "war on drugs."
Following the attack, you lied, claiming you had no warning. If this were a
parliamentary democracy, Mr. Bush, and if we had a Congress with backbone, there
would have been calls for a vote of no confidence. When you should have been
vigilant, you were vacationing. And, Ashcroft, knowing the danger to airlines,
protected himself and left citizens at risk.
Shame, Mr. Bush, shame.
Now with unrestrained bellicosity, you threaten wars elsewhere. How ironic that you
target Iraq -- when just prior to your election, Dick Cheney's Halliburton Co. through
two foreign subsidiaries (to skirt U.S. laws) struck deals worth $24 million with
Saddam Hussein's government. When the cash was on the table, Cheney apparently
saw no evil.
Repeatedly, you have trumpeted news of "threats" of terrorism to deflect attention
from your administration's failings, especially the revelations about what you knew
and when you knew it. When Jimmy Carter went to Cuba, you mined for votes in
Miami by claiming Fidel Castro was brewing bio bombs, in all likelihood a fabrication.
Ashcroft blurted the news about the "dirty bomb" to obfuscate your belligerent
attitude toward constitutional rights.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice. ... He has made Judges dependent
on his will alone.
First, you declared that we were at war (which, incidentally, if the goal was to
capture
Osama bin Laden, we haven't won). But the bad guys, you said, weren't entitled to
protection under the Geneva Convention. Then, you rounded up 1,100, maybe more,
"suspected terrorists," depriving them of rights. And, since 9-11, not one has been
charged.
You began hacking away at the Constitution with your unilateral decisions to create
military tribunals, and rebuffing any assertion that the courts had a right to review
your dictates.
All along, you promised that U.S. citizens' rights would be protected. You lied. Again.
Last month, you pronounced that you and you alone have the right to overturn the
Constitution, and, relying on the most dubious interpretations of a 60-year-old
Supreme Court decision, declare when a person is an enemy combatant (hell, Jose
Padilla was a barely educated street gang banger).
Mr. Bush, if we let you, you will have taken away the most sacred and precious
freedoms that Americans enjoy, the right to due process, the right to a trial and a
jury
of peers, the right to legal representation.
Meanwhile, the FBI is again being transformed from honorable crime-fighters into the
Thought Police. Overturning three decades of restraint, following gross abuses under
J. Edgar Hoover, agents again will be infiltrating religious and political groups,
snooping into private lives, reading our e-mail and listening to our conversations --
all
without a shred of evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Let's not forget the PATRIOT law. It allows the government to enter and search our
homes, without informing us. It allows the feds to tap phones and computers without
probable cause of a crime.
Most egregiously, the law would define almost any act of civil disobedience in protest
of government policies as "domestic terrorism." Plus much, much more.
Trampling rights is horror enough. But the reason sold to the American public is pure
sham. It wasn't for a lack of intelligence that Sept. 11 happened. You had plenty of
information. Yet, you bungled, you failed to properly analyze and then act prudently.
It's absurd to say that the FBI, with 27,000 employees and a $3 billion budget, is
impotent before a gang of Third World madmen.
At the very least, you are guilty of incompetence and negligence. It is too frightening
to think what is left to be uncovered about your actions. After all, a little more
than a
month ago, the press and public recoiled from the suggestions that you might have
had any, even a little teensy warning before 9-11 of bin Laden's intentions.
But, whatever the degree of your culpability, what's clear is that the terrorist
attacks
ended the discussion about the questionable legitimacy of your presidency -- and
gave you the means to launch your quest to be what you wistfully told Congress you
aspired to be: a dictator.
Mr. Bush, for the good of the nation: Resign.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
07.03.02
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