Courage and Resistance

As our Great Nation begins a war of conquest, I would like to take this moment to point out that it's hardly America's first adventure in regime change. The United States has supported tyranny in the past, and has replaced "bad" tyrants with "good" tyrants repeatedly. America has even trained and equipped thugs in the subtle art of oppressing populations.

This time, however, is quite different. For the first time, a sitting President is openly, brazenly waging total war on an essentially defenseless country for the sole purpose of taking it over. This is being done in defiance of the United Nations that the White House purports to uphold and the Security Council it claims to make relevant. It is being done without any official international body, and most of the members of the "coalition of the willing" are neither providing combat troops nor enjoying the support of their people at home.

Tragically, Congress has shown all the backbone of a day-old earthworm in dealing with this issue. Even the Republican hawks are doing little more than denouncing dissent and implying that Democrats don't have the guts to wage war. The charge might have a bit less of a edge if more Democrats had the guts to stand up to the White House. The few Senators and Representatives who are actually making cases against or in favor of war are simply being ignored by the mainstream media, which seems to suckle at the breast of Ari Fleischer, the White House pantheon's God of Spin and Rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the justification of terrorism is just that. Most of the people in the Administration who are pushing for this war, as the majority of this blog's readers probably know, have been calling for an invasion and conquest of Iraq for several years now. This is only the first step of a long-term plan to develop a Pax Americana in a "New American Century." In this vision of the future, America (meaning right-wing neoconservative rulers and their ultra-rich megacorp backers) will stand astride the world like a colossus, ruling all it surveys, keeping the peace with a loud mouth and the biggest stick in history.

Worse, as the world turns increasingly against the United States, our Great Leaders don't seem to care. Their terrifying declaration of a willingness to use nuclear weapons is a threat not only to global stability but to the entire human race. A website that unfortunately hadn't been updated in quite some time suggested that a catchy name for the neoconservatives be developed; perhaps they should just be called NuCons (pronounced nuke-ons).

The problem for Americans is that they represent the only credible threat to this plan. It is this "threat" that represents the bulk of the NuCon initiative's domestic policy, which boils down to "make the left shut up." The overwhelming volume of the right-wing pundits on radio and television, and the meekness of, well, everyone else in both media and outside the back-page editorials in most newspapers, has been working for almost a decade now. Until recently, the left was divided, marginalized and demoralized.

And yet, now there is hope. The NuCons have alienated classic conservatives and awakened the somnambulant left at the same time. I left the Greens to join the Democratic Party when Nader arrogantly continued to claim that there was no difference between Gore and Bush. Just try claiming that now -- the great British MP Robin Cook stated outright in his resignation from 10 Downing that we probably wouldn't be going to war if Gore's victory had been confirmed -- but now I have to wonder if he was right. Bush's claims to be a "uniter, not a divider" are in ashes, as he tears asunder what was briefly a truly united world, but the left has solidified as never before. The largest global protest in history was a mere month before. A nearly-unified left is only lacking a leader, and a few Democratic movers and shakers have taken notice. Howard Dean has already positioned himself as the representative of the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" and is starting to look like an excellent candidate from progressive and liberal perspectives -- but more importantly, he has given us a voice that is heard.

Whatever individual voices may bring, however, I am awed and humbled by the massive response coming from us. By you. To their everlasting dismay, the NuCons have just discovered bipolarity in a unilateral world. The second great superpower has arisen, and it is the global voice of united courage and resistance, of peace and justice. It is being fought with vitriol and rhetoric, with batons and lawsuits, with unconstitutional acts and unconstitutional actions.

But we can win. We can win for one simple reason -- there are too many of us to silence, as long as we dare to speak up. More and more, people are answering the need to be heard over the incoherent screaming of the NuCon attack pundits. More and more Americans are listening. Less and less of the vicious spin about how questioning the government is the same as betraying our armed forces is being believed. Less and less of the rhetoric comparing sympathy for innocent Iraqi children to supporting Saddam Hussein is accepted.

We The People still have a voice. We must use it while we can.

(/) Roland
"...it is false to argue that only those who support war support our troops. It is entirely legitimate to support our troops while seeking an alternative to the conflict that will put those troops at risk." --Robin Cook, MP, House of Commons, UK