We Need a Movement to Bring All This to A Halt!
The World
Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime June 2008
When a
government practices torture as policy, invades other countries that do not
threaten it, thus committing, according to the UN Charter, the highest war
crime of all, carries out raids and mass detentions of people, muzzles science
and scientists, fires and bans the books of professors and teachers that
dissent from its policies, outlaws abortion rights, repeals the right to
challenge your indefinite detention, openly spies upon all of its citizens,
declares itself above the law, and moves aggressively to install a narrow,
extremist brand of theocracy upon the people
” when that government is your
government ” then what is your responsibility?
Seven years ago, the Bush regime set out to radically remake society, in a
fascist way for generations to come. People looked at all of this and
thought of Hitler, and they were right to do so. Since then, with the
active participation of both major political parties, the regime has radically
altered the shape of U.S.
society and locked in a global trajectory of wars for empire with no regard for
human cost or conscience.
This new normalcy, greased by official LIES, the terror of U.S. sponsored torture,
and a passive populace, sets the stage and framework for the “08 Presidential
contest.
Will the defining elements of this direction be legitimized and codified by the
“08 election? Putting hopes and energies into a savior from the
Democratic Party — when this direction is not being challenged — only serves
to de-mobilize people.
While Barack Obama and John McCain, each in their own way, distance themselves
from the debacle of the Bush years, neither of them, and no significant force
within the halls of power, is challenging this fundamental direction. Both have endorsed a military attack on Iran as an
acceptable option.
No significant voice in your government is demanding the global network of U.S.
detention centers, the rendering of U.S. captives to even less-restrained
torture states, or the U.S.’s own policy of torture – codified in the Military
Commissions Act which passed with bi-partisan support – be repealed.
No serious presidential contender is staking his campaign on reversing the
PATRIOT Act, the widespread domestic wire-tapping, the prosecution of
journalists who blow the whistle, or the firing of professors setting a chill
in academia.
Neither major candidate is insisting on an immediate end to the Gestapo-style
raids of immigrants or to the criminalization of a whole generation of black
youth and others that has resulted in the largest prison population in the
world.
No major politician is denouncing the very narrow and hateful brand of
Christian fundamentalism which is massively restricting abortion and birth
control and exporting “abstinence-only” programs to AIDS ravaged countries
around the world with potential genocidal impact. Rather than repudiating
its intolerance, bigotry and ignorance both presidential nominees are
maneuvering to seize the mantle of traditional morality. And as the
planet is imperiled by environmental disaster, neither is fighting without
compromise against the undermining of science itself, including the
foundational scientific fact of evolution.
The “pendulum” is not “swinging back.” Never before has a
sole-super power held so much of the world in such peril. Never before
have the crimes of one empire threatened the future of so much of humanity.
This is what sets the terms of debate among those vying to be the new
Commander-In-Chief.
Only you – not your government! – can bring this whole fascist direction to a
HALT!
As men and
boys are hooded and shackled under U.S. occupation, as hundreds of thousands of
new detention facilities are constructed within U.S. borders, as walls go up
between the US and Mexico and in Baghdad and Gaza, as concentration of weapons
of mass destruction are trained on yet another country, Iran – which has not
attacked the U.S. — silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable.
The words from the original Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime ring even truer
today: “That which you will not resist, and mobilize to stop, you will
learn — or be forced — to accept.”
A country at peace with being at war is a country of Good Germans.
There is nothing – no legacy, no individual pursuit – that will shine brighter
in the eyes of future generations than the dark shadow this program is casting
over the world. We must bring it to a halt!
A spirit and ethos of resistance to war crimes and crimes against humanity must
spread – breaking out of the terms and stepping out of the confines of official
politics. Calling out to the millions who today are passive, to those
succumbing to the deadly illusion and often self-delusion that the Bush
nightmare is somehow going to “just go away,” but who are agonized and outraged
by what is being done in their names, we must set an example of political
resistance, massive protest, official defiance, and fearless truth-telling that
clarifies and rallies others into this fight for the direction of humanity.
What will things look like the day after the election? Will people,
through their passivity and through having restricted themselves to mobilizing
themselves and others behind one or the other major candidate, make legitimate
the results of an election that is taking place on terms inhospitable to people
and basic principles of justice the world over? Will millions around the
world look on in horror at what the American people have allowed? Will
the millions in this country who want so badly a different future be
demobilized, desensitized and caught up in a new sense of dangerous patriotism
and national unity?
Or will the clarifying examples of resistance; churches defying racist
vigilantes and the pogroms of Homeland Security by sheltering immigrants
targeted for deportation; psychologists refusing to participate in U.S.
torture; lawyers fighting to disbar John Yoo for authoring Bush’s “Torture
Memos;” and high school students who defied the assault of rightwing thugs and
police to shut down the Marine recruiter center in Berkeley, be upheld and
spread?
Will increasing numbers of people be challenged by those of you reading this
statement and wearing the color orange – on a ribbon, bandana or button every
day – learn that we must not be restricted to the choices being put before us
by a political apparatus that continues to push ahead crimes that shock the
conscience of the world? Will those people be jolted awake with an
example set that there IS ANOTHER WAY and that we ourselves must take
responsibility for forging it?
On the day after the election – no matter who is the next president – will we
have strengthened the pole in opposition to all this? Will there be an
increasingly visible independent political force of RESISTANCE that people can
join and persevere with until this whole direction is brought to a halt?
Join with World Can’t Wait NOW to shut down the military recruiters; to shine a
light on and stop the terrorizing raids on immigrants; to get the torture
architect John Yoo fired from UC Berkeley, disbarred and tried as a war
criminal; to challenge and reverse the suffocating genuflection to the
“morality” of religious fanatics, and bring forward a completely different
dynamic that does not stop until this whole direction is brought to a
halt.
“The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on
their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also
full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get
swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is
unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.”
From the Call to
Drive Out the Bush Regime June 2005