first they came for the....

[Guest guest]

Was I a good American in the time of George Bush?

 

Too many of us have done too little to stop the crimes of this White House. We

are waking up but what took us so long?

 

By Rebecca Solnit

 

03/15/07 " The Guardian " -- - 03/14/07 --- -Was I a good American? How good an

American was I? Did I do what I could to resist the takeover of my country and

the brutalisation of my fellow human beings? How much further could I have gone?

Were the crimes of the Bush administration those that demand you give up your

life and everyday commitments to throw yourself into maximum resistance? If not,

then what were we waiting for? The questions have troubled me regularly these

last five years, because I was one of the millions of American citizens who did

not shut down Guantánamo Bay and stop the other atrocities of the

administration.

 

I wrote. I gave money, sometimes in large chunks. I went to anti-war marches. I

demonstrated. I also planted a garden, cooked dinners, played with children,

wandered around aimlessly, and did lots of other things you do when the world is

not crashing down around you. And maybe when it is. Was it? It was for the men

in our gulag. And the boys there. And the rule of law in my native land.

Before the current administration, it had always been easy to condemn the " good

Germans " who did nothing while Jews, Gypsies and others were rounded up for

extermination. One likes to believe that one will be different, will harbour

Anne Frank in one's secret annex, smuggle people across the border, defy the

authorities who do evil. Those we scornfully call good Germans merely did little

while the mouth of hell opened up.

 

I now know the way that everyday life can be so absorbing, survival so

demanding, that it seems impossible to do more on top of it or to drop the

routine altogether and begin a totally different life. There is the garden to be

watered, the aged parent in crisis, the deadline looming; but there are also the

crimes against humanity waiting to be stopped. Ordinary obligations tug one way

even when extraordinary ones tug the other way. The Bush administration is by no

means the Third Reich, but it produced an extraordinary time that made

extraordinary demands on US citizens, demands that some of us rose to - and too

many did not.

 

Periodically, I would speculate on what was the most extreme and radical thing I

could do to stop the illegal prison camp at Guantánamo; picture chaining myself

to the gates of the Senate, becoming one of those activists who takes up

residence outside the White House or takes over a TV station to get a message

out. I wanted to do something so epic that it would turn the tide, stop the

crime. Then I would consider that the best approaches were probably already

being taken, by the heroic lawyers at the Centre for Constitutional Rights and

other human rights organisations, and I would write another cheque and some more

letters and feel a little futile and a little corrupt.

 

These days Americans seem to be waking up one at a time, groggy and embittered,

from the hypnotic nightmare that was the Bush administration's one great success

- spreading a miasma of fear and patriotic submissiveness that made it possible

to mount an illegal and immoral war, piss on the bill of rights, burn the

constitution and violate international charters on human rights and prisoners of

war with widespread torture. None of the sleepers seems to remember that they

were part of the legions who obeyed the orders to fear and hate - but we welcome

the latecomers into our ranks anyway.

 

What took them so long? How could people believe that a fairly defanged country,

one we had been bombing since the first Gulf war, was an apocalyptic menace in a

world where most nations were well-equipped for mass civilian murder? A year

ago, the turning point was marked by the comedian Stephen Colbert's volley of

(accurate) insults delivered to Bush's face, in the guise of giving the keynote

address at the Washington press corps' annual dinner. He was just aggressively

ignored by the mainstream media. Perhaps Katrina turned the tide: the

indifference, incompetence, and obliviousness of the federal government was so

gross that its pedestal melted.

 

And there were others who were in resistance all along. I remember with

admiration the Japanese-Americans who came out in the months after 9/11 to

testify that they had been incarcerated en masse during the second world war,

not for what they did but for who they were, and they were not going to remain

silent as the same treatment was meted out to Arabs and Muslims. I remember the

way that 20,000 of us in San Francisco came out to shut down the business

district the day the war broke out, and the huge marches before and after. I

remember the few congresspeople - mostly African-American - who dared to stand

in opposition early on. I went to Camp Casey outside Bush's vacation home in

Texas and spent a day with Cindy Sheehan, who gave her life over to stopping the

war after it took her soldier son. Others did as she did. Some of them are my

friends.

 

There is resistance. But if it were enough, the crimes would have stopped, the

war would have ended. When it does and they do, some will have been heroes. Some

will have been honourable but moderate, in times that did not call for

moderation. And some will have consented, through inaction, to crimes against

humanity.

 

Rebecca Solnit is the author of Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People

Power, and Wanderlust: A history of walking - comment

 

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

 

 

 

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