Writing Life

Over the last few days, the Bush Administration has been doing all it can to pull this presidency out of its death spiral. Domestic agenda? Shot. Foreign policy? In tatters. So, what should they do? Cry “terror” of course! Homeland Insecurity Chief Michael Chertoff, the guy who still hasn’t protected our country from attacks nor has he cleaned up the two year old mess in New Orleans (post-Katrina), says he’s got a gut feeling that there will be a terror attack in the U.S. this summer. [By the way, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has been cheering on a terrorist attack on the U.S. that will convince voters to vote Republican next year. Now, that's an American patriot!] And, the U.S. Intelligence community, so quiet on most things, now says that Al Qaida has rebuilt itself up to pre-9/11 operational capability.

I wonder why that could be? Is it maybe because instead of fighting those who attacked and killed almost 3,000 U.S. people on 9/11/01, this president decided to start a war with Iraq? Is it because he ignored going after al Qaida and its partners, deciding to focus instead on getting Saddam, who posed no concrete threat to America or its neighbors? And, double-whammy is that in attacking Iraq, he helped mobilize the recruitment efforts of extremists across the globe! Including, yes, wait for it, al Qaida. So, remember the WWII recruitment pictures of Uncle Sam saying he wants you to fight for your country? Now we have George W. Bush on a poster saying that the terrorists want you to go work for them. Heckuva job Georgie.

I thought about this topic all weekend and had the same thoughts that Nora Ephron writes about in today’s Huffington Post. I’m just sickened by the fact that every time Bush and the Republicans poll low, a new daft terrorist plot is unmasked. A plot that bordered on the apocalypse. Damage assessments and artist conceptions of the devastation are splattered across the nation’s front pages and TV screens. Then, almost in 3-point font at the bottom of the article is the note that it was only in its planning stages. And, in 2 point font below that, the people were inept and only likely to have any success due to the informants trained, funded and planted by the FBI, DHS, state or local agency.

To learn how to keep America cowering so that it doesn’t notice the real terrorists at 1600 Penn, head on over there for a great read. Her article is titled “How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps.”

You should make the time to read Zbigniew Brzezinski’s op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post. He was Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. This piece explores the willful creation of a culture of fear by the Administration and the terrorism-industry, constantly hyping vague notions in order to incite fear and fog clear decision making by the general population.

It reminds me of a quote from H.L. Mencken, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Fascism (noun): “an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization; (in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice. The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43), and the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also fascist. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.”

I’m getting sick to death of Bush and his cohorts telling me and the rest of America that to question, contradict, ask a question, or try to start a discussion on a topic that the Administration believes they’ve already solved, is not patriotic, lends aid and comfort to the enemy, and/or undermines our troops and citizens deployed across the world. That, to me, solidly fits within the definition of fascism. For the latest example, see newly-enthroned Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s comments today. And some thought he’d be a nice refresher after six years of Donald Rumsfeld.

This is just freaking scary. On a day when the US House of Representatives stood up to Emperor Bush regarding portions of the Patriot act, a Justice Department official said that our war on terrorism has no end in sight. And, the detainees at Guantanomo Bay are prisoners in this war, so they would be held until the end of this so-called war. Senator Biden (D-DE) asked if this meant that “If there is no definition as to when the conflict ends, that means forever, forever, forever these folks get held at Guantanamo Bay.” In response, Deputy Associate Attorney General J. Michael Wiggins said “It’s our position that, legally, they can be held in perpetuity.”

So much for leading the world in human rights and calling for the iron-clad support of the rule of law.

I got this from my father-in-law. This is fabulous. Please read it!

I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

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