For five years now we have watched our nation slip away from us. In 2000, a selected leader was placed into the Office of the Presidency. With him, he brought a posse of thugs--from Rumsfeld, to Wolfowitz, to Rice--who have collectively dragged our nation into two wars.
For five years now, we have watched as clause by clause, our Constituion has been eroded by this man's actions. Equal protection, due process, freedom of speech, and freedom of association have been abridged. Our fellow citizens have been arrested for voicing dissent. Others are held in cages indefinitely, incommunicado.
In five years, we have seen the fall of the Wold Trade Center and the rise of fascism in our country.
For five years, we have stood by as our nation has been hijacked by religious extremists who have the President's ear and who threaten the very fabric of American life.
The Downing Street memo has led some to deliberate whether impeachment is called for. I myself initially thought it just substantiated what I already knew, that it would receive little attention, and that we would have to trust those historians decades from now to write the President's history as it deserves to be written.
But then, I re-read the Declaration of Independence. And it was this excerpt that stuck me:
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ...When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Our forefathers believed that when the Government became self-serving and when that Government ceased to fulfill the intent of its creation, that we have not only the right, but the duty to throw off such a Government. They fulfilled their duty through armed revolution. They gave us a tool that was unavailable to them: impeachment.
That duty to change the Government comes from natural law; it comes from the duty we have not only to each other, as citizens of the same soil, but also the duty we have to the rest of the souls on this earth. That duty exists for us, as well as for our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Iran, in North Korea, and those in every corner of the earth that are threatened by this corrupt regime.
Is what President Bush has wrought on this country any less severe than that of King George, that which made our forefathers realize that enough was enough?
The history of the present
King of Great Britain [George III] President of the United States, George Walker Bush, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. [...]
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. [...]
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, [...]
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, [...]
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, [...]
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
[...]
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
[...]
For protecting (troops), by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders [or torture] which they should commit ...:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting (others) beyond Seas to be (tortured):
[...]
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has (polluted) our seas, ravaged our Coasts, (plundered our collective wealth), and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies [...] to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
[...]
And he has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to serve the rich and the corporate, rather than the citizens of this nation.)
There he is--our King George--who has along with the radical Republicans, curtailed our liberties, our freedoms, and the very essence of Americn identity.
This memo is a small piece, but a critical one. While President Bush admitted prior to 2002 that his intent was regime change, this memo unequivocally proves that the President lied to the American public when he said, up until the last days before Shock & Awe, that he was holding out for a peaceful resolution:
America tried to work with the United Nations to address this threat
because we wanted to resolve the issue peacefully.
Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it. link
We now know, from the Downing Street memo, that it was not only Saddam, but the President of the United States who "chose confrontation." We now know, from the memo, that the President lied that day, on March 17, 2003, when he addressed our Nation and told us that "every measure has taken been taken to avoid war."
Every measure, my friends, was taken to engage in war.
It is because of that lie that over 1,500 of our brothers and sisters have given their lives. It is because of that lie that over 12,000 more of them have returned to us maimed and scarred. And it is because of that lie that over 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed in our name.
Some say that with a Republican-controlled Congress, pursuing impeachment is futile. Did our founding fathers cower under the foreboding force of King George? Did the fact that King George had fleets of armies and oceans of power give them pause? Did they fear failure, knowing that failure would brand them traitors and take them to their death?
We have a choice. We can either let courage fill our hearts and pursue what we know is our duty, or we can let this evidence be filed away in the mountain of evidence that proves that this man, this liar, should not lead our nation any longer.
I thought I could live with accept the media's failure to report this; I thought I could live with telling myself that all would be vindicated in 2006 and 2008--but I cannot live like that. I can't live knowing that I am a coward in the face of far less danger than our forefathers faced.
I, for one, support the impeachment of President Bush. Who among you will join me?
crossposted at akou.