The Day Freedom Died
Tuesday, October 17, 2006, will go down in history as the day that Freedom died. We’ve been on this road for over five years. The majority of Americans sat idly by while the man they twice elected to the presidency ruined the standing in the world of our once great nation, sent thousands of soldiers off to die for a lie, sent out a clarion call to aid terrorist recruiters, violated the basic human rights, commited unconstitutional and illegal acts, commited war crimes, ignored the most unstable regime in the world while they raced to test a nuclear weapon, told one public lie after another, and made the world much more dangerous for every person on the planet. Now, Americans begin to reap what we and our president have sown.
Freedom died when George W. Bush signed the Military Commisions Act into law. The basic rights that our nation has defended for over 200 years, the rights for which countless Americans in the past gave their lives to protect, have been destroyed not by the Communists, not by the terrorists, but by the very man who swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It wasn’t a bomb, an invasion, or a natural disaster that killed Freedom — it was the stroke of a pen.
Dictators hold people in prison indefinitely, without giving them the right of habeas corpus. Tyrants torture and abuse prisoners before sentencing them to death in a kangaroo court. The Constitution and the laws of the United States are supposed to protect everyone in the country’s borders from tyrants and dictators. By signing this new bill into law, George W. Bush has taken a major legal step toward turning the presidency into a dictatorship. Every member of Congress that voted in support of the bill is an accomplice. Each and every one of them should be viewed as traitors. They have betrayed America, they have betrayed our ancestors who bled in the name of Freedom, and they have betrayed Freedom itself.
When next you step out of your house to the ballot box, ask yourself how much you value your freedom. Ask yourself if you want your children and grandchildren to live in a world where the President of the United States is an all-powerful dictator. This new bill is a major step in that direction. If George Bush can sign away that much of our freedom, of our rights, what’s to stop the next president from taking away more? If you value Freedom at all, you must take the road of responsibility and break the stranglehold that Bush and his allies have on our nation. Every Congressman who voted against Freedom and who is up for reelection should be made to pay for their betrayal, regardless of their party. For sure, the Republicans cannot be allowed to maintain control of Congress. Two more years of Bush loyalists running Congress for their own personal gain and pleasure will send America further into distress.
This quote from the ACLU Executive Director, found in the CNN article linked above, sums up the meaning of this new law:
The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is “one of the
worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history.”“The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold
people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse,
put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that
can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of
witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions,”
said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.“Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act,” he said.
Wake up America. Stop pretending that it’s okay to treat suspected terrorists as inhuman. We are better than that. The more you continue to believe the lies and excuses Bush feeds you, the more you turn a blind eye to the blatant crimes commited by his administration, the longer you allow Congressional Republicans to treat the Congress as their own personal playground — the more likely you are to face a future without Freedom. And the more you deserve it.
Technorati Tags: Bush, Constitution, Liberty, Freedom, terrorism, ACLU, Military Commissions Act
Thank you for this article. Looking at your nation from the outside, I’m starting to lose hope. The USA has stood for liberty in the world, at least symbolically, for some two hundred years.
What your president and his cohorts are doing is precisely what Bin Laden wanted to accomplish when he said that ‘I will make America a shadow of itself’.
This is all very sad, and I wonder what I will tell my children when they are adults about the America that used to be.