President Bush, whom I believe bears all the traits of a total madman, threw a monumental temper tantrum yesterday in the White House Rose Garden, in front of the press and in front of America. His histrionics, unbearable to watch, demonstrated the same foot-stomping, hair-pulling sense of disbelief at being challenged that one might witness in the behavior of Saddam Hussein at his trial. And for the same reason. Each man has a tit, as grandma used to say, caught up tightly in a ringer.
As was the man he loves to hate, George W. Bush fears being accused of war crimes by virture, or the lack thereof, of his ordering or allowing the torture of enemy combatants, which is against Article III of the Geneva Convention. And some of those torturees, who have now been transferred from camps in Europe to Gitmo, are about to be interviewed by the Red Cross. Uh oh.
So, with a predictability we have come to expect from this administration when they haven't played by the rules, which is always, Bush now wants Congress to turn back the clock and make what he did yesterday legal today, which is the hallmark, if you will, of this administration's style of governance. Except that the word "hallmark" is often associated with something positive and this is nothing to be proud of. I call it the Wimpy strategy of governance, named after the character Wimpy on the Popeye cartoons. "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." Let me have what I want today, and I'll twist someone's arm to compensate for it later.
In six long, seemingly endless years, George Bush has broken every principle on which America was founded, short of being caught in a ski mask with his hand in a teller drawer at Bank One. Given his bratty tirade yesterday, I'm expecting that to be next. His tantrum has presented Americans with the most important choice they have had to make since deciding to break away from England. And breaking the will of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove may prove to be as lengthy and as difficult.
The matter of Article III could be settled rather quickly and to the better nature of mankind, but it would require America's possessing a Congress that contained men and women as thoughtful and honorable as those of the Continental Congress. Thus far, the current American Congress, with the notable exception of a few--too few, has proven to have all the honor of Benedict Arnold and all the teeth of the president's lap dogs Barney and Beatrice.
Amidst the throes of Bush's Rose Garden tirade, David Gregory was effectively shushed when trying to get a straight answer to the $64,000 question in which he drew a parallel between America's torture of others and others' inevitable turn to torture us back. In essence Gregory was asking: If America allows its government to rewrite the Geneva Convention just to save the president's proverbial ass, how long, then, until another country does the same and redefines what they're allowed to do to us? I say, if military recruitment has been flailing of late, ditching Article III ought to finish it off.
http://www.aclu.org/natsec/gen/26714leg20060911.html
Gregory never got his straight answer. Instead, short of writhing on the ground, Bush snarlingly threatened the press, the Congress, and the American people by stating that if Article III was not amended to his liking, the whole program would stop. What program? What do we Americans call this program we're paying for? This administration has not been forthcoming about anything they do in the name of decent taxpaying Americans. Ever. So I say, go ahead. Stop the damned program. Maybe that will give us some breathing room to find out just what, roughly, this "program" has consisted of. Shouldn't we at least know since we will share the blame when our peerless leader gets caught at that teller drawer?
Awhile ago, when Americans failed to leave the mall and take to the streets to challenge the extended Patriot Act, we had already given our government the power to label any American an enemy combatant if it doesn't like what it hears or what it sees out of us. So this is maybe another good reason we should know more details of this damnable program--before one day they decide to use it on American citizens. Oh! Forgive my fuzzy memory. They already have.
Just where, exactly, is the line in the sand that Americans will not cross to be kept safe? Or is there one? I certainly hope, beyond all hope, that the line is here and the line is now. Torture by Americans is unacceptable. Torture of Americans is unacceptable. Rewriting the Geneva Convention to assuage the despot-in-chief's fears of legal repercussions against him and his minions is unacceptable. Congressional failure to stop this president from overturning the oaken table upon which rests the humanitarian foundations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is utterly unacceptable and opens the door even wider for the ultimate demise of a democratic America.
Just in case you've forgotten: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So when the torturers come for you or me, or for your loved one or mine, as they eventually will, we won't find ourselves sitting in a rose garden on a sunny day. And there will be no press to hear our tantrum of protest and no Bill of Rights, Constitution, or Geneva Convention on which to base it.
Today. Right now. It's time for Americans to decide what they believe is humane and moral. It's time for both red and blue Americans to decide if the laws of humanity have meaning in their lives. And if they do, then it's time for Americans to let the lawmakers, whose salaries come from their pockets, to know it, too.
As with the Patriot Act, you can skip all the worry about Geneva Article III. But you fail to act at your own future peril.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
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