UPDATED:  JUL 22, 2007 

IF AMERICA REALLY CARED

Have you heard the latest?  George Bush decided to commute Scooter Libby’s 30-month jail sentence, can you believe it?  That means Libby, duly convicted of four felony counts by a federal Grand jury of obstruction of justice is a privileged man, who has friends in high places, e.g. the Oval Office.  So what are Americans to do now?  Should we suck it up and resign ourselves to the old adage that money buys justice and it’s not what you know, but who you know?  It slam-dunks our souls when a president who calls himself the Decider, short-circuits justice, to reward and free a felon who was Cheney’s right hand thug who had to be involved in outing Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent.  Why?  Oh, to get even with her husband, Joe Wilson, who said the Cheney/Bush scare tactics that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger, was a crock.  This White House axis of egos actually dared to expose the identity of Valerie Plame, thinking they would never get called on the carpet by the American people.  If America really cared, such treason would never go untried, unpunished, or pardoned. 

In his State of the Union address Bush said that America needed to attack Saddam Hussein.  Bush did not want to see a “smoking gun come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”  So Ambassador Joe Wilson flew to Niger and proved the documents Bush used, to be forged and bogus.  He called Bush and Cheney on it, and they got even by exposing the secret CIA identity of his wife.  Does any American believe that Scooter Libby acted on his own with no prompting from his boss, Cheney or Bush?  Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald won a conviction that Scooter Libby had obstructed justice, Scooter was sentenced to 30 months in prison, and Bush and Cheney made a clean getaway.  If America really cared, we would have demonstrated in public places to demand Bush and Cheney be called to the witness stand to answer questions under oath about their parts in the treasonous, disgraceful, Plamegate case.  If America really cared when Bush wire tapped us without lawful court orders, we would be demonstrating in the streets and writing our congressmen, too.  The FISA Court was special and designed to receive requests from the White House to legally allow Bush to wiretap potential terrorists.  But then Bush shot us the bird, so as to say our own rights under the Constitution were no more important than the rag they were written on.  He just wire tapped everybody, that’s all.  We expressed no outrage.  We forgot to care, too, the time that Bush told some congressmen that the “US Constitution was just a goddamned piece of paper.”   

Lying to the American people was bad enough about why Bush told us he needed to attack Iraq.  There never were any Weapons of Mass Destruction; no missiles pointed at us, no suitcase bombs exploding in our cities, and Saddam never had any collaborative chats with Osama bin Laden about killing Americans.  But many Americans believed Bush, so he took us to war. That was over four years ago, and when no WMDs were found, Bush resorted to telling us how Saddam had abused his own people by torturing them.  But he forgot to tell us that our incursion and occupation of Iraq has caused far more deaths of innocent Iraqis than Saddam Hussein could manage in his long reign as Dictator.  Hopelessly, we watch our men and women, some mere boys and girls; go to needless combat to be blown up on the roadside by the thousands, 3,576 Americans killed as of July, 2007.  We watch them come home in caskets draped with flags.  We watch them come home to inadequate care at Walter Reed VA Hospital because, thanks to tax cuts for Bush’s rich war corporation cronies and Bush’s base, the Have Mores, funding cuts have diminished quality care at the VA.  They still come home battered, sometimes legless.  We sit silently helpless, yet we could eliminate this apathy that has come to define us.  If America really cared.   

We forgot to care in January, 2003, when on a Friday night, the House convened to vote (215 to 213) to cut Veterans funding to where no new applicants could get a VA card as per the HR Act in the 1990s that granted care to Veterans with 2 years or more active service in the US Armed Forces.  Don’t even apply.  Bush and his disgraceful, immoral Congress slammed the door in the face of over 450,000 Veterans.  Bush and his lapdog Congress decided the money would be better spent by awarding Trillion dollar tax cuts to America’s millionaires and billionaires.  Also, Bush needed the VA money to finance the Iraq War OFF THE BUDGET.  Bush hides the Billions time after time to bring Congress to crisis at the eleventh hour where, instead of being honest about his ongoing Iraq War costs, he accuses Congress of not supporting the troops if they don’t vote to give him a few 100 billion dollars each new time he asks. 

Bush borrows and spends like no other president, and his lapdog Congress wags its tail and supports the most irresponsible spending the world has ever known.  Recently, Bush sent a “Surge” of 30,000 more troops to Iraq.  Americans had voted the Republicans out of the House and Senate to show Bush that the American people wanted the War to end and for our troops to be brought home.  So Bush defies the will of the people and sends a surge of 30,000 more troops to fight for the same old worn out lies.   

Crooked Attorneys General, special privilege pardons, and the wanton destruction of our Constitution is where George W Bush is coming from.  Using family connections, Bush avoided the draft in the 1970s by getting a special privilege appointment and direct commissioning to the Texas Air Guard when the Viet Nam War raged overseas.  But even then, Bush did not attend all required drills.  He went AWOL.  While many of us draftees then had to serve our full terms on active duty, Bush got out early to go to Harvard.  So why anybody would be surprised when Bush commutes Scooter Libby’s 30 month sentence to prison?  Isn’t special privilege and special justice for the privileged what Bush is all about?  Especially when Scooter Libby knows too much, maybe? 

If America really cared, we would take stock of ourselves.  We would look long and hard in the mirror to see what we have become.  We would see the face of an American who lives in a nation where if wars are fought for no reason, we make no objections to keep them from raging on.  There is no outrage in our eyes when Bush mercilessly abuses our Reserve forces and sends them to fight many more tours of duty in Iraq than decency dictates.  If America really cared, we would not have to see our own sons and daughters go into the hell of Iraq, to be moved emotionally.  We would object as though all soldiers are our sons and daughters.  We would be moved by the belief that it is wrong to keep fighting such a bloody, needless war because Bush continues to send more troops to Iraq for reasons no one really understands anymore.  If America really cared, we would fill the streets of Washington, D.C. to show our outrage at Bush’s ongoing inhumanity.  The hopeless, indifferent face in the mirror that now stares at us with strange sunken eyes is not us.  We are better than that.  We need to stop flipping channels and begin to care. 

Maybe we can find our lost selves, our finest parts, and become acquainted again.  Maybe we can remember who we are and how precious freedom is in our America where it is imperative that justice be blind.  And justice dispensed equally for all men, not just those like Scooter Libby who with special privilege is pardoned by a corrupt president like Bush.  Perhaps we could remember what courage feels like in our gut and muster it up to help America survive as the great nation we always were before Bush and the Neocons tried to morph it into a corrupt world power to be feared, not loved. Instead of clamoring about how English, not Spanish, should be spoken in America, perhaps we should challenge our posterity to learn at least two new languages besides English.  Why not help them grow and better compete in this new world society instead of stifling them to be less educated?  And while we are at it, if we do nothing else, maybe we could insist that our great American Democracy under the Constitution be proudly taught and available to the young minds who will need to learn how to embrace and defend it.  Don’t they need to know beyond question, how it works with all its glorious checks and balances against takeovers by would-be dictators like Bush?  They must know beyond all doubts that our Founding Fathers wrote it for them and all Americans, not just the rich, the no-bid war corporations, and the president who caters to them.  

We could do all this.  If America really cared……  Don’t we? 

NEXT- MICHAEL FAULKNER

Last Update: 07/27/2007