By Dennis Loo, from Counterpunch
On January 20, 2009 a new president will take over the White House. It will either be John (the “Maverick”) McCain, who will no longer be in the US Senate, that famous non-“Washington insider” institution, one heart beat away from a Christian fascist US president (Sarah “Bridge to Nowhere” Palin), or it will be Barack Obama, another self-described defector from the US Senate, side-by-side with yet another non-“Washington insider” of thirty-five years, Joe Biden.
The changes they promise us! Isn’t it wonderful that people who”ve been insiders for decades can suddenly after all of that time become agents of change against what they themselves have been a part of for so long? Isn’t it wonderful that moneyed interests such as Goldman Sachs, who”ve always bankrolled the insiders, are underwriting the people in both parties who say that they will change the culture of Washington? Aren’t those investment bankers something?!
I do so love the fact that I have the right to buy the Uncola from the same company that makes Cola! It makes me feel so different and such a non-conformist! Lord, what freedom of choice we enjoy in this land of liberty!
Despite all of this good news – I am giddy with excitement! – let me be serious here for a moment: who takes office really isn’t the most important question.
For Americans, for the world, and for the planet’s future, the most important question is: will the Bush Regime’s precedents-setting and open flouting of national and international law be permitted to stand?
Up
to this point the answer is, of course, yes, their behavior in explicit
contravention of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the UN Charter,
the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the
Kyoto Protocol – all this and more that they have repeatedly,
flagrantly, egregiously, and intentionally violated – is the new norm
for the American presidency and the US government as a whole.
Even
if the new occupant of the White House does not choose to utilize all
of the dictatorial powers that the Bush Regime has employed, even if
the new occupant doesn’t seize office in a fraudulent election
as the Bush Regime did in 2000 and again in 2004, even if the new
president acts like the most compassionate, enlightened person to ever
walk the earth, the fact that Bush and Cheney and their henchmen and
henchwomen have not been held to account – this gang’s crimes earned
the World War II Nazis and Japanese war criminals, after all, the death
penalty – means that any president after this has been given the green
light to not only do what the Bush Regime has done, but to go even
further.
What’s Farfetched Now?
How much further can they go than they have already?
They
could go from pre-emptively rounding up protesters and brutalizing
them, employing cruel and unusual punishment on suspects and framing
them on terrorism charges as they did at the RNC
to ” what is the one next step after that? Shoot protestors. Aim at
them and pull the trigger and say it was just an accident – “they were
throwing things at us and the gun went off.” That will shut those damn malcontents up. That will teach them what freedom and liberty are all about!
Beyond
instituting fascist laws like the Patriot Act and the Protect America
Act they could – what’s the next step after that? – round up and
imprison a Congressperson who opposes them in Congress. Yes. That’s it.
Claim it was for something else – corruption or a sex scandal – but the
subtext will be clear that this was someone who was a thorn in our
side. We”ve already done this to a governor of New York. A member of
Congress would be the logical next step.
Beyond tapping
American journalists” phones, shooting and bombing journalists
overseas, threatening them with abetting terrorism charges, and
torturing some of the non-American born journalists, what’s the next
step after that? Charging selected American-born journalists with
sedition. Take one of them and torture them. That should work like a
charm. Or a prominent journalist who’s been overly critical could have
an “accident.”
Beyond declaring that the Congress has no right
to subpoena the testimony of White House staffers, and refusing to
testify before Congress, what’s the next step after that? Plant a bomb
and set it off in the Capitol in a false flag operation and blame it
all on terrorists, use it as a pretext to implement emergency power
measures. After all, procedures for emergency powers are in the Warner Act and in the secret provisions handed down by Bush in NSPD-51
. It worked for the Nazis when they burned down the Reichstag and
blamed it on the Communists. We can’t let the Nazis hog all the good
ideas!
* * *
If you think any of the preceding is
farfetched, think about what has already been done and whether you”d
have scoffed if someone a few years ago had predicted that the
President would one day openly admit
waterboarding suspects (i.e., torturing people) and the rest of the
nation’s political leadership and opinion leadership would collectively
yawn?
David “the Octopus” Addington, Dick Cheney’s Chief-of-Staff, has declared: “We”re one bomb away
from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court.” Addington got his
wish courtesy of the US Congress under the Democrats” leadership even
without another 9/11. He got it thanks to Mr. Clean Change Himself (his
running mate said he was clean ) who voted for the bill, reneging on his promise to filibuster the Telecom Amnesty Bill.
Obama has said that he will continue
to use signing statements as president, following the lead of Bush who
has used them more than 750 times to claim and implement the right to
ignore the law just passed by Congress.
People wonder why the
Democrats have refused to prosecute the Bush Regime for not only high
crimes and misdemeanors (i.e., abuse of office), but for actual crimes
and crimes against humanity. How is this possible?
Unclean Hands
Lawyers have a phrase they sometimes use to refer to people or companies who file actions that they shouldn’t: “unclean hands.”
In “The Democrats’ Sleight of Hand
,” I pointed out that the major candidates for president have sullied
themselves by their failure to act against monstrosities such as
torture – even though they have had the power to do so – when it
counted and when they should have. They have had the power for more
than the last seven years to prevent these terrible crimes against
humanity and against the people from being carried out.
Time and
again they have failed to the point where quite some time ago – I would
personally date this from the September 2006 Congressional vote on the
Military Commissions Act – they crossed the Rubicon and threw in their
lot with the Bush regime. After a certain point you become complicit in
the crimes you allow to be carried out and you cannot go back
subsequently and repudiate these actions without also implicating
yourself in those crimes. You knew and you didn’t stop it. You knew and
you facilitated it. You knew .
Even
if Obama and McCain were to want to redress the terrible wrongs that
they have committed, they would have to unveil not only themselves as
moral cowards but expose their parties’ leadership and the mass media.
They would have to go up against everything that they have benefited
from and been an integral part of.
They have not only unclean hands. They are dripping with blood from head to toe.
Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!-One; two: why, then
’tis time to do’t.-Hell is murky.-Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow’r to accompt?-Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?
— Macbeth Act 5, scene 1, 36-40
Anyone
who hopes that voting for and supporting one of these criminals will
somehow magically restore decency, humanity and the rule of law needs
to look more closely at what these people are saying and what they have
done over the last several years and draw the appropriate conclusions .
You also need to look in the mirror and ask yourself what kind of person you are if you don’t publicly speak out and show your moral outrage at the horrid crimes being committed by our government.
Elections
are not a form of expressing public sentiment and making that popular
sentiment the dicta. Elections are a form of preparing the people to accept policies
that the ruling parties intend to implement and to get the people’s
ratification for those policies. They are the equivalent of pressing
blood money into the people’s hands and getting them to accept it,
thereby ensnaring the people in those bloody deeds. The Bush Regime did
it to Congress and Congress cooperated. Now, like vampires passing on
their bad blood, they are doing it to the American people as a whole.
Imagine
the upheaval in this country if the Democrats or Republicans were to
open the Pandora’s box of crimes and monsters and reveal to the world
what Congress was part and parcel of permitting? There is no way to
undo these crimes and right these wrongs without self-incrimination of
major players and leaders in Congress.
Nancy Pelosi was briefed in 2002
along with three other Democrats on the waterboarding of prisoners –
they were shown the videos, the videos that the CIA subsequently destroyed . Pelosi and the other Democrats were also briefed on the fact that the White House was feloniously wiretapping all Americans
. So as far back as 2002 she and they knew. Pelosi and they said
nothing back then. What has Pelosi said over and over again since?
“Impeachment is off the table.”
Even beyond
self-incrimination, the Democrats and Republicans, and specifically
McCain and Obama, would be implicating the entire system if they
proceeded to impeach, indict and imprison the Bush White House
criminals. Does anyone of us think that they have that kind of courage?
Does anyone think that if any of them were to have a sudden awakening
that they wouldn’t instantly be marginalized by the rest of the
establishment and silenced in one way or another? All it would take
would be for McCain to have a sudden “”heart attack” or Obama to be
gunned down by some “lone gunman ” and presto, they”re out of the way and we”ve got a new president.
The
only force capable of righting these terrible wrongs is the mass
actions of the American people. Nothing else is strong enough and big
enough. The blood demanding justice runs wide and deep and it’s flowing
as we speak.
A real change begins with a few people with the
courage and determination to stand up and say, “Here I stand in
witness. I can do no other. Join me , all you who have a conscience.”