George W. Bush must be apprehended and tried. Where do we begin? A Democrat congress is only a start. He must be apprehended before he can flee the country and avoid extradition. How do we get the soccer moms and dads, the NASCAR ass-hats, out of their mini-vans and SUVs and into the streets?
President Bush: Yet with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?
Olbermann: Does he understand the irony of those words when taken out of the context of this particular passage or of what he perceives as the war against terror, and that, in fact, the threat we may be facing is the threat of President George W. Bush?
Turley: Well, this is going to go down in history as one of our greatest self-inflicted wounds. And I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won’t be kind to President Bush.
But frankly, I don’t think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, Where were you? What did you do when this thing was signed into law? There were people that protested the Japanese concentration camps, there were people that protested these other acts. But we are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate.
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I disagree, Frank.
He needs to be designated an enemy combatant for all the assistance he has lent to al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts and sent to a 5 x 5 x 5 pen at Guantanamo for an indefinite period of time. There he should be waterboarded on a regular basis, not to get any information out of him, but just because; after all, it’s not torture. A signing statement should ensure that it’s all legal.
Ah, a man can dream….
On may of the less-than-admittedly brainwashed blogs I read (and the comments thereon), many people seem to believe that Bush et al must be tried ( or that some process of deep and comprehensive, and public, atonement must be entered into) before the USA can even pretend to become a member in good standing of world citizenry again.
Lordy, that dude and his gang members have fucked up an awful lot in 5 years. Murderers. They couldn’t have done this all alone .. it has required corporate and media collusion, clearly. The rest of the world must be able to see the USA by now as cancerous, worm-and-parasite-ridden and absent of any moral compunctions.
Lots to answer for. I remember a blog post by John perry barlow several days after the ‘04 election in which he noted that he had recently visited friends in Germany who had said to him “we were willing to forgive you, the american people, for installing Bush in 2024 … and we have become afraid of him. Now, we have the right to be afraid of the American people as well, because the vote has returned he and his acolytes to power a second time. Now the values and beliefs of the USA vis-a-vis their fellow residents on planet earth are there for all to see …”
Something like that.
Jon, if I were John Perry Barlow I would have said, “don’t feel guilty about being German, or feel that you need to take it out on Americans. People are the same all over the world. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go somewhere where I don’t have to endure self-righteous BS.”
I think I understand what you are saying, Bruce .. and i’d like to think I can ferret out some of the BS. I agree with your point that people are the same the world over at a fundamental level, but clearly (imo) culture and values do play an important role in different worldviews, orientations and behaviours.
I think my poor paraphrasing of what JPB wrote probably doesn’t do the anecodte / his observations justice (but maybe I am just defending him ‘cuz I tend to like his perspectives).
the American empire is warped, no doubt, as is the modern world in general. But the people didn’t wake up one day and say, “let’s create a really repellent culture.” Cheney and Rumsfeld did, however.
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