Duplicity at Home and Abroad

Tyranny in any guise, the medal bedecked uniform of the military dictator or the meticulously pressed pin striped suit, steals the unalienable rights of the citizen, and we have been robbed! This administration assumed power; it did not receive the consent of the governed. Its actions have not secured the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness; rather its actions have fostered insecurity, restricted freedom, and cobbled the pursuit of happiness. A review of this administration's abuses of power tells the tale, and we need only reflect on a few of these abusive actions to prove the case.

The peoples' freedom to authorize their government to go to war in their name cannot be exercised correctly or legally if the arguments presented by the administration have been fabricated to delude the people. Yet that is exactly what this administration has done: it raised the specter of WMD because it would "sell" to the public; it lied brazenly to the people about the existence of nuclear weapons; and, perhaps the most insidious lie of all, it gave the people reason to believe that Iraq participated in the terror that brought death to 3000 Americans on 9/11. None of these purported facts are true. 

Nothing a government does has more lasting impact on its citizens than war. To rouse a nation to pre-emptively invade another without provocation forces on its citizens an implicit moral responsibility grounded in the belief that the action is justified. Such justification did not exist; it was manufactured by a group of men for their ulterior motives unknown to the American people. The consequences have been devastating: American soldiers die daily, the cost of the invasion mounts beyond comprehension, more than 7000 innocent Iraqi civilians have died, unrecorded thousands have been maimed and injured, an estimated 30,000 conscripted Iraqi soldiers, many young boys, have been killed, the cultural heritage decimated by bombs and looting, streets, homes, hospitals, schools, water and energy plants destroyed, horrendous unemployment, crime everywhere, and a people distrustful of the Americans with many determined to throw out the occupiers at any cost. The moral responsibility can no longer be couched in justifiable terms; it becomes now a moral responsibility of restitution due the Iraqi people. Yet, no one in this administration will take responsibility for this turn of events; no one will pay the cost, only the American soldier, only the soldier's family, only the taxpayer. 

What protection of American life has this pre-emptive invasion secured for our people? Prior to the invasion, no American woke in fear that an Iraqi would cause them harm. Prior to the invasion, Iraq did not provide sanctuary to terrorists. Prior to the invasion, Americans enjoyed the approbation and sympathy of people throughout the world. Prior to the invasion, Americans united in compassion and charity for those who had suffered the atrocity of 9/11. Now 135,000 soldiers wake to the imminence of death; now terrorists flock to Iraq to foster the fanaticism that fuels terror; now Americans have become the pariah of the world, the cause of the terrorism that we set out to eradicate; now Americans stand divided not united as they contend with the deception fostered by this administration. Rather than protecting American life, the administration imperils American life around the globe. 

That reality becomes the more frightening when we remember that the "war" against Iraq became a threat just before the 2002 fall elections, announced in September before the UN, the best time to "sell" a new product following the August vacation break. The selling of Saddam's demise coincided not only with the fall elections but also with the UN report on the inhumane catastrophic conditions in Palestine and the second invasion of the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin. Iraq, as the administration knew all too well, would dominate the news relieving the administration of responsibility to intervene in the Israeli invasion just as it released Sharon from any fetters Washington might impose on his savagery. The deception held until Bush declared the aggression over in Iraq. In the interim, Bush took his case to the UN. 

Some in America took heart when the administration appeared to balk at the continued construction of the Israeli security "fence" that ostensibly protects Israeli citizens even as it secures the future inclusion of Zionist settlements that exist illegally in Palestine territory; perhaps this concretion of duplicity would even wake the sleeping American public. But the fence continues, a fence constructed of slabs of cement garnished with barbed wire and electric currents, the kind of impediment used to corral cattle and wild animals in zoos. And how does the administration demonstrate its anger at thwarting the Commander's orders? By withholding millions in the supplementary Israeli aid package, monies earmarked for years down the road ensuring that nothing will impede the building of the wall. Avraham Burg put it succinctly: "The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of those is operative any longer It turns out that the 2000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies." (The Observer, 9/14/03) 

Last March I spent time in Prague visiting the Jewish ghetto there. Walls surround much of that ghetto even today, walls constructed by the authorities when the Catholic Church through an edict of the Third Lateran Council decided in 1179 that Catholics should not come in contact with Jews who had resided in Prague since the 10th century, something like the situation in Palestine where the indigenous population (say Palestinians), lived since the 4th century CE. That edict resulted in the "ghettoizing" of the district, forcing 7,000 Jews to be packed into a network of putrid, squalid alleys where personal indignity rotted beneath the wall that separated those in power from those imprisoned. Now we have a government that acts in our name, like the Lateran Council deciding for Medieval Catholics whom they shall meet with and whom they shall spurn, as it allows and provides the money to a sordid regime in Israel to wall-in a population in their own land even as that regime defies the world community by refusing to give back the land to the indigenous people to whom it rightfully belongs. America's absolute support for the Sharon government, despite the terrorism it levels at the Palestinians, and its obvious belittlement of the PLO, mocks the roadmap it proffers as a solution to the crisis. How can a people so treated construct an "Israeli wall of humiliation"? How can an American support a President who acquiesces to such degradation of a people?