The World Can't Wait

The Bush-Cheney Administration, with its arbitrary actions, abuse of power, irresponsible spending, baseless aggression against other nations and suspension of Constitutional guarantees, is everything the Founding Fathers labored so hard to prevent. The United States can’t survive three more years as a free, prosperous nation under the gross negligence, irresponsibility and incompetence of this unscrupulous administration. As George Bush delivers his State-of-the-Union address on Jan. 31, thousands of fed up people in cities across the U.S. will create a state of clamor to wake up Americans to the disaster facing further Bush leadership. Chicago area residents will gather at the Daley Center at 5pm or at other sites listed on the worldcantwait.org Web site. Like the brave people of Argentina who rallied and marched beating their kitchen utinsels until their inept government resigned, bring your utinsels, whistles, drums or other noise-makers, add to the din and wake up the freedom that has been anesthesized by the Bush Administration.

After living under the brutal reign of King George III, the Founding Fathers were determined to establish a government in which the power of the chief executive was greatly curtailed. They were well aware that excessive power in the hands of an individual or small group corrupts them and ultimately destroys the nation.

The Founding Fathers put the decision-making and spending powers in the hands of a congress. Emphasizing the priority placed on the legislative branch, the Founding Fathers made it the first and longest article in the Constitution. Those safeguards should have prevented the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the suspension of habeas corpus and due process, the senseless, unnecessary loss of U.S. military lives, subversive government spying on Americans and the squandering of our tax dollars. However, a series of timid Congresses allowed the president to usurp much of their power to the point that the executive branch is now the dominant branch of government.

After 225 years, has the U.S. political system advanced only from King George III to aspiring king George IV?

The U.S. possesses immense power, but its leaders lack the morality, mentality and maturity to wield it wisely and lawfully. Twenty-first century weapons are in the hands of first century men.

The world can’t wait for Bush & Cheney to learn to tell the truth.

The world can’t wait for a responsible Congress that will exercise its constitutional duties to enforce checks on the Executive Branch.

The Bush-Chaney administration has brought embarrassment and shame to civilized Americans. This Administration has revealed America’s savage side with its torture, use of WMDs and other banned barbaric weapons, criminal aggression, incarceration of innocent people, imprisonment without charges, racist mass murder, destruction of ancient artifacts and wanton carnage.

The Bush-Cheney administration has made one costly blunder after another. Their blunders sent over 2,200 military personnel to a needless, senseless death. Compare that with 2,106, the number of U.S. citizens killed at the WTC on Sept. 11th. Their blunders have squandered over $2 trillion tax dollars of the American people and their descendents.

George Bush and Dick Cheney, on a hasty hunch, sent thousands of American’s youth off to death and dismemberment. They recklessly sent them to fight where there was no enemy. So they created enemies and gave them the home field advantage. George and Dick’s response was just the opposite when they had a chance to sacrifice their lives and limbs for their country. George went AWOL so fast the dust still has not settled in his path. Dick took the frantic but equally speedy path of draft evasion. Deftly keeping just one step ahead of the draft board, he got married and fathered two children which coincided with the Selective Serivce's family exemption increases.

If George Bush and Dick Cheney cared about this nation and its soldiers, they would do what is best for it. They would step down and allow a competent commander-in-chief, who wouldn't go to war on a hunch, and qualified executive leaders to take their places. The people must step up and do what Congress has failed to do, force them out of office before they do any more harm. To escape its second millennium savage nature, America needs a new revolution like the Orange revolution in the Ukraine’s or an oust-the-despot revolution that toppled Milosovic in Yugoslavia.

The people deserve a civilized, principled government that is not the instrument of injustice, oppression, fiscal extravagance and death. Turn up the pressure on Congress. Join concerned Americans and the World Can’t Wait movement and demand the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Hugh Thompson, true hero

Hugh Thompson’s recent death went practically unnoticed by the mainstream media. The media are preoccupied with the political and corporate scandals and corruption that erupt like volcanoes all too frequently and spew their lethal lava over the landscape poisoning everything for miles around. The corruption, deceit and decay on which this nation functions can be hidden only so long even with the complicity of the media.

Hugh Thompson, one of those extremely rare people who lived by the principles this nation claims to represent, passed in silence. Those who preach but do not practice high standards would rather this decent man not be brought up for comparison to embarrass them and remind them of their hypocrisy, their crimes, their barbarism.

Thompson was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam who spotted a platoon of American soldiers under the command of Lt. William Calley gunning down unarmed, defenseless civilian men, women, children and babies they had herded into a ditch. Thompson landed his helicopter with guns aimed at the soldiers and threatened to open up on them if they did not stop shooting. Thompson exposed the incident over military efforts to silence him. Our government is not opposed to atrocities. It just doesn’t want them exposed, at least when it commits them.

Only one soldier in the platoon, a black man, refused to join in the slaughter. Does that mean only one American in every hundred is a decent, righteous person? My Lai was not an isolated incident. Worse atrocities occurred without any defiant soldiers emerging.

When the Vietnam War carnage was over, the U.S. had slaughtered nearly 3,000,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians. Human beings could not do that. Only animals could do that. To this day, hundreds, mostly children, die every year from contact with the unexploded ordinance spread like leaves all over the former Indochina.

Americans like to contrast their actions with those of Cambodian Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who killed over 1,000,000 Cambodians, as an example of a murderous madman who is not as civilized as Americans are. They don’t mention that Americans killed as if they were driven by demons and justified the savage atrocities with an outlandish, baseless rationalization called the “domino theory.” Pol Pot witnessed in Vietnam what bourgeois sociopaths were capable of doing. His actions were intended to cleanse Cambodia of that depraved, sick and twisted type.

The Vietnam War was equivalent to 1,000 Sept. 11 attacks. Only heartless racists could claim Sept. 11 was a significant event in post-WW II atrocity history. During that period, the U.S. military has committed the equivalent of one Sept. 11 per week. Most of those were against small, poorly armed or unarmed nations.

In a nation that is woefully lacking in role models, the media should have jumped at the opportunity to hold up Hugh Thompson as proof that the U.S. can produce a person of high integrity. But that would have emphasized what savages the rest of us are.

The brutal, criminal invasion of Iraq proved that Vietnam was not just a passing moment of madness. Iraq proves that we are a nation of uncivilized thugs and beasts by nature. The U.S. always will be brutes as long as we have the power to do it.