[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]It has been suggested more than once that the only reason I’m so passionate about having the Bush administration charged with war crimes is because I’m a liberal, and therefore, harbor deep-seated hatred for George Bush.
That is not true. I neither hate George Bush nor any other conservative.
I am a progressive, not an ideologue. I have no ideological motive to see adversity brought into Bush’s life, or anyone else’s. My passion stems from the fact that because I am progressive, I have a progressive’s lust for justice.
As I have mentioned in previous articles, progressives have but one guiding philosophy, which entails the primacy of humanity, justice for all, and the search for truth — wherever it may lead, regardless of whose ox is gored.
It just happens that in this case, the ox that must be gored is in our backyard.
In today’s political environment, I can understand how people might feel the way they do, especially conservatives.
Hit ‘Em Again, Harder
It is not lost on me that many who claim to be progressives actually are quite partisan. They are ideologues. They view politics from the perspective of a sports fan, our team against theirs. The more pain their team sustains, the better we like it.
I want to assure you that is not the case with me. I am looking at this purely from the perspective of what is just.
Justice is for Bush, Cheney and their cohorts be held strictly accountable for their criminal conduct in Iraq. I sincerely hope that once I have laid out my case, the most cynical of you will understand, even if you disagree.
Let us go back to what we were feeling during Nine-Eleven.
Think how much horror and pain we went through, witnessing three thousand of our citizens being brutally murdered. It was such a traumatic experience that now, close to a decade later, we still are traumatized by it. It seems like it only happened yesterday.
But we never once have stopped to consider that if one day could be so traumatizing, what it must be like for the Iraqis, who have been forced to watch hundreds of thousands of their people killed.
Tragedy by the Hour
They have had to face the horror of a Nine-Eleven every day for the past seven years. The horror that has been brought upon the Iraqi people goes far beyond what I can express here. The injustice of their situation is brutally unconscionable. And the Iraqi people did absolutely nothing to us.
Yet, just think of the pure hell they have had to go through to protect their children in a Nine-Eleven-like environment everyday for seven years, never knowing when something might explode, tearing to shreds the little bodies of the children that mean more than anything else in the world to them.
Imagine what it would be like to have a country come here and kill millions of Americans. Then later, have that country say, “Now that we’ve thought about it, we shouldn’t have done this. It was a mistake. But what the hell? What is done is done. We need to look forward.”
Even as they speak of moving forward, you are thinking of the past, of happier times. You think of mother’s smile, your father’s laugh, the dreams of your beautiful young sister, how goofy your silly little brother could be. They are all gone. You are the only one left.
Would you be willing to accept a simple apology? I don’t think so. That is what the United States is trying to give the people of Iraq to replace justice, at least, President Obama. Dick Cheney’s regret seems to be he didn’t torture enough of them.
For the U.S. to think it can walk away from committing that kind of atrocity, then say, “We are sorry for what happened. Now is the time to look forward” — but without accountability, speaks volumes about American arrogance and why people want to kill us.
President Obama spoke of change.
What could he be thinking if this represents change, where politics is more important than the horror we have committed?
Doesn’t he realize that if we don’t bring the people responsible justice, America never will be safe again? The U.S. never will be able to look the world in the eye and claim to be a nation that believes in justice.
The cynical, greedy and corrupt motives behind our actions were almost as bad as the acts themselves. The corruption of the American soul still walks among us.
We have not learned a thing. Dick Cheney claims that terrorists want to kill us because they are jealous of our freedom. That is false. They want to kill us because we won’t mind our own business. And we keep trying to steal their oil.
America has to learn two thing.
If you keep slapping your neighbor and picking his flowers, eventually he will hit you back. We may think that we are exceptional. That does not give of the innate right to abuse others with impunity. Secondly, if you break into your neighbor’s home, wipe out his family and get caught with his valuables, trying to plead self-defense will not fly. Any court will convict you of being a murderer and a thief.
We never have executed one criminal in the history of America whose crimes approached the seriousness of the crimes committed by Bush and Cheney, many against our own troops. The crimes committed by Dick Cheney make Tookie Williams look like a choirboy. Yet we expect the world to believe America stands for justice? I don’t think so.
As long as we think the rest of the world is beneath us, and the lives of others are not as valuable as ours, we never will be just. We never will be safe. We will continue to move away from what it means to be American.
A Message to Bushland
It is scary how easily the American people can be manipulated so that they find the deaths of entire families a hoot.
How we can sit in front of the TV set with chilli dogs and fries and cheer on the death of others like we’re watching the Super Bowl?
It is a tribute to psychosis how America can unleash mass destruction in “an attempt to prevent mass destruction,” in the name of God.
Can’t you see that many of “those towel-heads” are children like your own?
You didn’t think the U.S. could unleash such destruction and not kill children. did you?
It happens, said Rumsfeld.
But you allowed it to happen, I say. You made it happen. You cheered it on. Consider that as the children bleed and you are admiring the beauty of “Shock and Awe.”
Think about your own children as collateral damage. Think about them screaming while you're helplessly watching their limbs being blown off. Think about them desperately reaching out to you for comfort as life slowly drains from their tiny bodies. Think about foreign boots kicking down your front door, then strangers walking through your home, systematically killing every man, woman and child.
Picture the last sight you ever see on this earth is of your sweet little six- year-old daughter, with her brains spilling from her tiny little head. Think about that picture, America. Then ask, who really is the terrorist?
Where has America gone?
Who is left to stand up for justice and humanity?
You say, God Bless America? You would have to be a fool to think God is gonna bless America after what we've done, for choosing Standard Oil over Justice, and Exxon over God himself.
In God we trust?
How dare you blame this atrocity on God.
It is in Bush you trust:
• You trust Bush that God has entrusted you to blow off Iraqi arms and wrap them around you to enable them to embrace your benevolence.
• You trust Bush that you must lovingly pluck out Iraqi eyes to enable them to see the wisdom of viewing the world through your own.
• You trust Bush that in the name of all that is good you must slaughter their children in a desperate attempt to provide them with a better future.
• You trust Bush that you must rape their land and steal their wealth in order to allow them to select the government of their choosing (so long as they choose the government Bush chooses for them to choose).
• You trust Bush that you do all this in the name of American charity.
• You trust Bush that God will bless America, but this ain’t America.
America is the land of the free, home of the brave, the land of just souls who freed their slaves.
No, this is not America. This is Bushland, the land of small pox infected blankets, the land of public lynchings and church-place bombings, the land of imprisoned Japanese Americans and corporate murderers.
Yeah, God Bless Bushland.
The land of the free and home of the slave; the land of My Lai, and Calley’s mass grave.
And you trust that God will bless Bushland?
Trust this, my friend: You are blind.
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree@verizon.net
You may learn more about Mr. Wattree at wattree.blogspot.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everybody who doesn’t look, think and act like me. It’s just that God does.
