Since Blogger seems to have Bloggered itself again this afternoon, and since I'd like some feedback from my fellow Kossacks, I'm cross-posting this from
my own blog,
Musing's musings:
Ladies and gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs, meine Damen und Herren, I present to you a true prophet, in the form of the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin:
I got to have (just a little bit)
A little respect (just a little bit)
Those seven letters, R-E-S-P-E-C-T (sing it, girlfriend!), sum up every single one of the failures of the BushCoTM régime. The Sock Puppet and his handler-minions do not respect the American people--they lie to us constantly. They do not respect our political traditions: hence, they felt no compunction about stealing the 2000 election through what amounts to a combination of mob violence and an invalid and improper violation of the separation of powers doctrine on the part of the Supreme Court.
The Bushoviks do not respect world opinion, which is why we are having ever increasing difficulties in finding (and keeping) partners in our "coalition of the willing bribed." Nor do they respect international law, the United Nations, or the United States' treaty obligations such as the Geneva Conventions and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Bushoviks do not respect the Constitution they swore, individually and collectively, to "preserve, protect, and defend from all enemies, foreign and domestic." That is why they seized the opportunity presented by the heinous attacks of 11 September 2001 to ram through the ill-advised and ill-conceived and ill-named "Patriot" Act. That is also why they instructed their lawyers to find ways around it, so as to make the president a king in all but name, through the convenient fiction of a never-ending "war on terror" that can never be won.
Nor do they respect the human and civil rights inherent in all people, whether they are citizens of this formerly great nation or not. Hence we see them attempt to brush away inconveniences such as the right of habeas corpus, the right to an attorney, the right of persons to be secure in their persons from illegal or unwarranted searches and seizures. Hence the hideous abuses of prisoners under our "care" at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. And hence, ultimately, the utter and abject failure of our supposedly invincible campaigns to win the hearts and minds of the people we allegedly liberated in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This latter point is poignantly and tellingly made in an Associated Press story that came to my attention through the incomparable andante of Collective Sigh:
At another meeting, [Lt. Col. Tim] Ryan [commander of the U.S. forces in the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad, just down the road from the infamous prison of the same name] was offering cash for a construction project when "one guy said to me, 'We don't want your money, we want your respect.' That stuck with me."
On May 1, Ryan called a meeting of all the tribal and religious sheiks at a milk-bottling plant, which had an auditorium that could seat several hundred. There was no electricity and the heat was stifling.
The first two hours saw a relentless tongue-lashing from the sheiks, a litany of perceived injustices by American troops. Ryan said it was hard to take at times.
"They are frustrated and if the idea is to diffuse their frustrations, that means letting them put those frustrations on the table," he said. "As the leader of the tribe - the tribal sheik of the men in desert camouflage - my job is to listen to them."
Then for six hours, Ryan did some things U.S. officers say is "outside the box."
First, he told the sheiks both sides had made mistakes.
"Just saying we've made mistakes - we've been afraid to say it because people will blow it out of proportion - makes a huge difference," Ryan said. "... Their faces light up and they are ready to talk."
Then he offered a clean slate, or as they say in Arabic, a white page. If the sheiks took responsibility for security, Ryan told them, he promised that his soldiers would not raid their homes. Further, he said, if the sheiks promised that members of their tribes sought by U.S. forces would stop carrying out attacks, the troops would stop hunting them.
All the sheiks agreed, and the deal has become known as "The White Page Truce."
"This is the best move the Americans have made yet," said Sheik Sadi al-Khinani, a senior tribal leader. "The people will see that the Americans have come here to help them, not what others have said, which is that the Americans have come here to abuse them."
Ryan said that in the six weeks from March 1 to April 12, 28 U.S. soldiers were wounded and two killed. In the six weeks since the truce, there hasn't been a single U.S. casualty.
"Part of the challenge here is that we've targeted the other side as criminals instead of combatants," Ryan said, explaining that he wanted a cease-fire, not trials. "In two months, we threw 107 people in jail and it didn't change the number of attacks. I haven't thrown anyone in jail for six weeks and attacks are down 50 percent."
In a word, "Duh." Or in the old adage, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
In a just world, Lt. Col. Ryan would not be on the ground in Iraq. In any administration other than the present Bush régime, Lt. Col. Ryan would have been booted up a couple of ranks and be wearing at least one general's star. But for that the Bushoviks are little more than a batch of chickenshit chickenhawks who have never served a day in uniform and neither understand nor--surprise!--respect the armed forces or the men and women that serve in them, except to see them as a vehicle for advancing American power and their own evil ends, Lt. Col. Ryan has a thankless job to do and is not getting the support he needs to do it properly. Instead, he is criticized for going "outside the box," even though he got the very results he was supposed to achieve by doing so--a pacified district with the basics of a civil society in place and beginning, please God, to flourish and to spread beyond the confines of his area of responsibility.
And any other occupant of the White House except its current squatter would have understood the vital importance of respecting the needs, wants, hopes, and dreams of other people at least as much as his own. To say nothing of the laws and institutions of this land that I hope and pray can once again stand tall and proud as a beacon of that "liberty and justice for all" we claim to believe in so deeply.
I am angered beyond belief and even beyond words at the depths of depravity plumbed by the apparatchiks of the Bush régime, God rot the miserable bastards in the lowest pits of hell! They represent an ignoble blotch upon the escutcheon of a nation that I love and revere to the very core of my being, and the ideals for which it has historically stood. A very human part of me wants nothing so much as to rip their faces off with a dull spoon and stomp on their dead skulls until their eyeballs pop out and their brains spatter all over the floor. The more rational and spiritual parts of me would settle for being able to pop the cork on a bottle of very fine French champagne as I watch the whole miserable lot of them hauled off in manacles to stand trial for their crimes before the International Criminal Court at the Hague. And the political part of me is committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure that they never, ever get another chance to give the world the false impression that they speak for or represent me or any other citizen of these United States.