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The entire future of this nation and
the planet now seem to rest upon the political belief that there is terrorism
'out there' and that it is hell bent on attacking the USA. There are extremists
in the world, there always have been. But that is not the enemy that any nation
needs to loathe or fear.
Cheney and Bush and Sharon are pushing
the idea that all resistance to their New World Order must be suppressed no
matter the cost. Consequently they have said that this War Upon the World shall
have no end. This is like saying that we can eliminate all violence. No matter
how noble that idea might be, it is a physical impossibility-just as eliminating
all resistance to fascism is equally ridiculous.
The real enemy now, is the policies and
the greed of those who designed the "Pax Americana," that is being
implemented under the Bush Doctrine of 2002. What Americans see as attacks upon
this nation, are in the eyes of most of those directly affected; nothing more
than legitimate resistance to a totalitarian takeover of their nations and their
lives. We see our troops as defenders of our freedoms and our lives ~ while
generally they see us as brutal invaders, or colonial suppressors that have come
to kill them, and to forever change their way of life.
Still the American voting public cannot
seem to grasp the idea that our troops are now wearing the black hats of the bad
guys, in the eyes of millions of people in the world. We are not being attacked
indiscriminately; we are being attacked for what we are doing to other people.
There is no on-going war inside this nation. The attacks of 911 could not have
happened without help from inside this government. If this statement were not
true we would have long ago had a through and open investigation into every
aspect of that day.
The Bushwhackers contend that 911 was
an attack upon the United States carried out by hostile forces from outside this
country. There is absolutely no proof that this was the case. If, as some have
alleged, this attack was not carried out by "outside enemies", but was
in fact an "inside job " - then everything this nation has done so
far, since that day, has been criminal.
For instance: What about the kind of
insider knowledge that allowed Condi Rice to call friends of the Bush
administration, to warn those special people not to fly during the week of 911?
How could she have known enough to warn people about this, and then deny that
knowledge before the commission in open session? When asked she did not fully
explain. www.fpp.co.uk/
Beyond the questions that surround the
failure of the Cheney-Bush government in preventing or interrupting those
attacks, the central question of leadership still stands naked in the wings.
Because 'leadership' carries with it major responsibilities that go far beyond
the duties of Commander-in-Chief. Most of those other responsibilities have not
even been addressed, much less satisfied by those in charge of this
administration.
If being Commander-in-Chief were the
sole purpose for having a leader, then the USA would have a King. We have a
president because those who founded this nation had "had it" with the
tyranny, the corruptions and the secrecy of the Monarchs of the Old World. Our
national life was designed to reflect and protect the rights and needs of
others, beside ourselves alone. And it is here that intense nationalism
sometimes gets confused with real patriotism.
America is about a lot of things and a
lot of different kinds of people and ideas live here. There is no one
over-riding political absolute on which everyone agrees. Everything here was
designed to be discussed and altered from time to time, as people came to know
more, or because their viewpoints changed. Moderation, and not extremism is what
best describes Americans.
America is unique among the nations of
the world, in that we invite others to come here and become Americans. No other
nation does this as part of its reason for being. What we often overlook is that
immigrants can come to love this nation as their own. Moreover, we can also
forget all those small stories, from all kinds of people in every walk of life:
the everyday stories that make all of life worth living. Every family
potentially cares about the health and welfare of its members as much as we do:
Just as the people of other nations can come to feel intensely that love of
community, for a completely other country, and a totally other way of life from
ours.
The point of having different nations
and different languages is that people are different, so their chosen forms of
government will often differ from our own. That is their right, so long as their
beliefs do not threaten us, or our way of life. And despite what Bush and Cheney
and Sharon endlessly parrot - the Muslim world is not the enemy of this nation.
Fear, greed, stupidity, and arrogance, are the enemies of this nation and of all
others as well.
So when we think about the definitions
of terms like Patriotism, Terrorism, or Freedom Fighters-it matters greatly how
much raw reality we actually allow ourselves to see, when we consider our own
conceptions of those ideas. When dwelling on what "leadership"
consists of, remember that what we care about, is also what everyone else cares
about as well. Because if we do not do this-then:
"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness."
Begins to look more like
"Death, slavery and the pursuit of
self-destruction."
Than anything remotely connected to
"The American Dream."
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