Sunday, July 16, 2006

White House is the only winner in the WOT

That sound you hear, like the faint howling of banshees in the distance, is the collective voice of the bloggerati of the right wing screechosphere responding to NYT's editorial this morning. No doubt they're calling for heads to roll in Manhattan. Meaning, of course, that the Times incinerated the administration with its scathing review of the White House's agenda in the "war on terror."

For many of us, this has been apparent from the beginning. As soon as the shock of 9/11 subsided, clues to the administration's true agenda began to emerge for those who weren't too blinded by fear to read. The White House was going for the whole pie -- nothing less than totalitarian control by the executive branch would do and paramont to their plans was to keep control of the White House in their own hands. The same hands who held the government reins through Watergate and Iran-Contra.

They learned their lesson well from those embarrassing debacles. Government oversight, checks and balances, accountability, all conflict with the agenda. So they invented this war on terror, an endless sortie that must be conducted in secret so as not to "tip our hand" to a stateless and faceless enemy with a myriad of names that all conveniently translate to terrorist. The Bush White House has used this imaginary war to justify its every egregious act, from ignoring internationally accepted rules of conduct such as the Geneva Conventions to systematic dismantling our own Bill of Rights. And their manufactured fear of imminent attacks, allowed them to keep control of our government with a false promise to protect us from these boogeymen.

The Screechosphere may wail and rail, but the Times got it right. The White House is not fighting a war a terror. The C.I.A. unit charged with finding Osama bin Laden has been disbanded. The terrorists, heartened by our inability to quell a few thousand insurgents in Iraq, are more emboldened and inspired than ever. Terrorism worldwide has never been more rampant. The greater threats to our national security like North Korea and Iran now feel more secure in seeing our military already stretched to their limits, putting a nuclear holocaust on the world's table that didn't exist before we embarked on this pre-emptive war.

Our troops lose their lives daily to bring freedom in a foreign war theater where the curtain will never close, while the White House makes a mockery of their sacrifice by circumventing or ignoring the common rule of law that has defined our nation and protected our freedoms at home for over two centuries. Worse, it does so with the aid, if not the blessing, of the legislators that are charged with checking executive abuse of power.

The White House now speaks of compromise to the press but behind the scenes seeks a silent coup against the American people, with the assistance of its lackeys in Congress, by negating the Supreme Court and avoiding judicial review of their illegal programs by Congressional fiat. Those who profess to love their country would do well to let their Congresspeople know that it's time to just say no and give the people what we want. Some oversight, damnit.
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