- Peace Garden: The Hidden State Steps Forward

The Hidden State Steps Forward

Monday, January 02, 2006

The Hidden State Steps Forward is by Jonathan Schell.

Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.
There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.
The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form.
Reminds me of W's comments how everything would be easy if this were a dictatorship and he was the dictator (paraphrased). So what should we do? What should Congress do? What about W?
Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.
And if he doesn't leave, Impeach to save the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.



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