I sobbed silently yet violently when reading this article. A simple impeachment does not do justice for many lives murdered and faith destroyed. Bush and Cheney should be tried in the international criminal court.
"We Won't Take it Anymore"
-- an open letter from Ross Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah to the President of the United States.
Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise
our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President
Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present),
to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional
delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us
miserably and we won’t take it anymore.”
While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been
pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great
nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.” “You have
breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You
have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have
undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most
fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.
You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of
the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter
of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be
killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications,
without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this
monumental blunder.
We are here to tell you: We won’t take it anymore! You have acted in direct
contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country,
hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways.
You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional
system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal
branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of
fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty
obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of
law.
Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’
our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and
the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before. It has been
absolutely astounding how you have committed the most
horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people,
yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side
nonsense when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or
humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling - and
disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand?
What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be
honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand?
What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?
Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed,
many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries,
and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our
nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers
and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as
loudly as
we can, “We won’t take it anymore!” As United States agents kidnap,
disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you
deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and
children, and to the good name and
reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and
so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow
other men and women who are competent, true to our nation’s values, and
with high moral principles to stand in your places for the good of our
nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world.
In the case of the President and Vice President, this means
impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a
complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares
more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of
our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. It
means the election of people as President and Vice President who,
unlike most of the
presidential candidates from both major parties,
have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic,
devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it
means the election of people as President and Vice President who will
commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of
refraining from torturing human beings. In the case of the majority of
Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the
facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates,
before voting to go to war. It means electing to Congress men and women
who will jealously guard Congress’s sole prerogative to declare war. It
means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid
lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in
so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrant-less
wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous,
irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl-
Lieberman amendment.
We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President
Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who
have wronged our country - and the world. They were enabled by members
of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic
mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the
American people–40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq
was behind the 9/11 attacks a people who know and care more about
baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are not wearing
underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed
every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take
responsibility.
As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship as
veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women,
as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants,
as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual
orientations, and faiths we are here to say to the Bush administration,
to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: “You have
violated your solemn
responsibilities. You have undermined our
democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous,
despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of
immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions.”
But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as
brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the
imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors
who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say ‘We
won’t take it anymore.’ If we want principled, courageous elected
officials, we need to be principled, courageous, and tenacious
ourselves. History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not
the leaders the leadership has to come from us. If we don’t insist, if
we don’t persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as
citizens in a democracy and our responsibilities as moral human beings.
If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration
and to candidates running for office and to the world that we support
the status quo.
Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what’s right and
never letting down can we say we are doing our part. Our government, on
the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked
and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to
the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused
immense, unjustified death and destruction. It all started five years
ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we
are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and
complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic
news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely
go away until another demonstration a few months later.
How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time
learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as
they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during
the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid
entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses. Why is this
country so sound-asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our
nation, to our
Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order?
Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness? We
should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising hell
on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible
that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don’t cut
it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize
George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to
attack and occupy
Iraq.
Let’s awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to
do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across
the country, as we ask others to join us: “We won’t take it anymore!” I
implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where
your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say “No more” and mean it?
I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I
cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the
atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who
will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible,
from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has
supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran.
I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to
stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in
our name.
If we expect our nation’s elected officials to take us seriously,
let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know
we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn
a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted
that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political
considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide,
and have not provided, principled leadership.
The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five
years, but let us pledge that we won’t let it go on one more day that
we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral
degradation, and the disintegration of our nation’s reputation in the
world.
Let us be unified in drawing the line in declaring that we do have a
moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops
and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much
that we bring our troops home from Iraq, that we return our government
to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the
fundamental principles of human rights.
In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in
defense of our shared values as Americans and as moral human beings we
declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the
insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the
moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture
of people a
people around the world.
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