July 14, 2004 by lonbud

Which Way Is America?

Full disclosure: I live in a bubble.

The San Francisco Bay Area is filled with people who thrive on unparalleled natural resources and a wealth of robust, organic foodstuffs. The Bay Area exhibits unbridled creativity and innovation in the arts and sciences and the people here, despite grappling with the difficulties and challenges of any overpopulated urban center, such as crime, traffic, pollution, homelessness, and a paucity of local services to address them, stew mostly happily in possibly the country’s purest example of the melting pot American culture fancies itself to be.

Here we have people like Mike Klaver, who won’t think twice about writing the owner of a theater chain back in his hometown of Marquette, Wisconsin to excoriate her for cowardice and disingenuousness in her refusal to show “Farenheit 9/11” “as long as the country is at war.”

We have lots of people driving around with “Dennis Kucinich for President” and “No War On Iraq” bumperstickers on their cars. Even more with Peace signs in their windows and American flags in their yards.

It’s a given among all but a very small, very silent minority: George W. Bush is unqualified to be President of the Hunt and Polo Club, much less President of the United States; that his administration represents the gravest threat the world has ever known to America’s security, the global environment, and the fate of humanity.

The high-toned Marina socialite is no less incredulous at Dick Cheney’s refusal to control himself on the floor of the U.S. Senate than is the low-down Tenderloin dealer at John Ashcroft’s preoccupation with Jesus.

It’s 68 degrees here in July and 55 in December.

So I’m not surprised my view of things might not exactly square with that of my fellow Americans living in less prosperous, less hospitable conditions across this great land.

But, people, please.

What more evidence do you need?

WMDs? Even Bush has let that one go. Less than two years ago, THAT’S WHAT IT WAS ALL ABOUT.

Regime change? Iraqi sovereignty? Democracy in the Middle East?

Over 130,000 American troops remain stationed in Iraq, building permanent military bases to service the increasing number of American troops who will be deployed there no matter who wins the election tentatively scheduled for November.

Our troops are not just “stationed” there either. They are not just training the new, new Iraqi military and police to secure their land -American troops are dying there every single day. The reality of the Bush administration’s “adventure” in Iraq is now over a thousand young American lives wasted on “bad intelligence.” And we’re spending billions of dollars constructing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq; our boys and girls won’t be coming home soon, perhaps ever, if this administration has anything to say about it.

See numbers and faces that might bring home the idiocy of the Bush administration’s approach to the so-called “War on Terrorism.”

Turkey, a country very few Americans under the age of 50 could find on a map, today indicted members of its former government, including a former Prime Minister, on charges of corruption in the privatization of a state-owned bank in the 90s.

How many people in America, aside from a majority of San Franciscans, could imagine in ten or even twenty years time Donald Rumsfeld might be indicted on charges of violating the Geneva Convention’s prohibition against keeping “secret” prisoners of war?

And yet, it is clear Mr. Rumsfeld ordered certain people detained by the U.S. Government since 9/11/01 be kept “off the books” in violation of International Law. See this.

Here is a man at the highest levels of government who is not only brazen about his contempt for the rule of law, but who is also ultimately responsible for giving the lie to the assertion that America went into Iraq to free the Iraqi people from the torture they suffered at the hands of their former dictator.

Alas, these are but trees in the forest. The Bush administration is toxic in ways far beyond its hopeless approach to the problem of radical Islam.

This administration is the first since Herbert Hoover’s to preside over a net loss in jobs. The value of the American dollar has fallen nearly 30% during the past three years. A surplus of over 200 billion dollars has been mismanaged into a deficit of over 500 billion. Personal and family income have declined, and the government has only just begun to admit the advancing specter of inflation.

Behind the fanfare of colored alerts and vague announcements of terrorist plots against the American people, the Bush administration has been busily chipping away at our environmental safeguards and failing on its promise to educate our children and care for our elderly.

The sad thing is John Kerry doesn’t promise much change in the status quo. Our troops are likely to be mired in the desert sands of Arabia for the length of his term and beyond. The economic forces already unleashed may be years in bringing to heel; the rapacious claim of corporate preference in the administration of law and favor may never be countered.

It ought to seem clear to the staunchest conservative, to the true Christian, and to every American, George W. Bush speaks for the side of Darkness.

He speaks for Fear, and Insecurity, and Implacable Smallmindedness.

You don’t have to live in San Francisco to know that’s not the American Way.