Blame America? When necessary, yes

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" Zepp " <zepp

 

 

Sun, 20 Feb 2005 18:51:12 -0800

[Zepps_News] Blame America? When necessary, yes

 

 

 

<http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E155%7E2717811,00.html>

 

 

Blame America? When necessary, yes

By Reggie Rivers

 

 

Partisanship has denuded the political landscape of meaningful debate to

the point that anyone who criticizes President Bush's policies is

presumed to be a Democrat who is still angry about the outcome of the

election.

 

However, as a critic of the president, I speak for a lot of people when

I say that it's not simple partisanship that motivates us. Many of us

believe that President Bush is doing great harm to the United States,

and we're concerned about where our nation will stand four years from now.

 

As the Bush administration gears up for an invasion of Iran, Americans

need to ask whether we can fight another pre-emptive war. To understand

how wrong this doctrine really is, you need merely to reverse roles.

Imagine that, in the face of all this saber-rattling, Iran decided to

attack us pre-emptively. Would Americans shrug and say that it was

legitimate for Iran to hit us first?

 

How many hundreds of billions will this war cost? Will the president

give us an estimate beforehand or will he try to hide the costs as he's

doing with the war in Iraq? Will American servicemen again be deployed

for extended periods in a deadly conflict with vague goals and no exit

strategy? How many of them will die fighting the president's pre-emptive

wars?

 

How many more domestic programs will President Bush have to cut in

order to finance the war? How much more debt will our nation take on

in order to pay for it?

 

The freedom to ask these questions is among the characteristics that

separates us from other nations. And when it comes times for actual

combat, most of us believe that there is a wide gulf between war and

terrorism, but the differences are actually quite subtle. By definition,

war is organized fighting conducted by a nation against another nation;

violence or terrorism is everything else.

 

So when the United States sent troops into Iraq, we called it war, but

when Iraqi citizens fought back, we didn't describe their actions as

warfare because they weren't part of a national army. Instead, we called

them " insurgents engaged in violence. " Civilians who die at the hands of

insurgents or terrorists are called " victims " ; civilians who die at the

hands of powerful states are called " collateral damage. "

 

The words are important because they reinforce the right of nations to

use force. But along with this power comes great responsibility to

follow established rules of warfare. And we've always believed that the

United States follows those rules. The U.S. has in the past believed in

the rule of law and engages only in legitimate warfare, taking great

care to follow the international protocols for war.

 

Yet, lately, we invaded Iraq without a threat of imminent attack. We

have held hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without calling them

POWs and without giving them the protection of the Geneva Convention.

We've held people around the world without charges and without access to

lawyers or courts.

 

We have an attorney general who said that torture was a legitimate

tool in the war on terrorism and, consequently, we have soldiers who

have tortured prisoners.

 

But how many rules can the United States break before it's guilty of

engaging in simple violence rather than legitimate warfare? Can you

imagine us giving our blessing to any nation that held American POWs

without giving them protection of the Geneva Convention? We would

immediately condemn that action. But somehow, when we're the nation

committing the same offense, we shrug as if it's no big deal.

 

I know I'll be accused of being a member of the Blame-America-First

crowd, and that's OK. Too many of our citizens are part of the

Blame-America?-Never! mindset, and that has the danger of leading us

down a very tyrannical path.

 

--

Election 2004

The Triumph of the Swill

 

" The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost

duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation.

It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our

nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation

of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national

life. "

Adolph Hitler, My New World Order,

Proclamation to the German Nation

at Berlin, February 1, 1933

 

 

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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