Anyway, one of the articles I read this morning said:

It’s hard for the average American to comprehend either the depth or the scope of anti-Americanism in the global press and just how much our image suffers as a result of the tactics routinely employed by the likes of Der Spiegel. — Tom Bevan, “Der Spiegel’s Shame” (February 24, 2006) The RCP Blog.

So there you have it. If you’re going to criticize America for doing things no civilized country should do, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Or how about the concept that we are better than our enemy?

Or maybe the question of what the world would think if we mistreated these slobs?

I spent five years of my life in the military and I don’t ever recall a military policeman who would not follow rules and regulations to the letter. These guards in Iraq had to have been told to treat this enemy with a new set of regulations.

And the source of those new regulations ultimately is the Bush administration.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the world has been put on notice that they are either “for us or against us”.

Anyone who dared question Rumsfield at a press conference got the long stare, the “protecting America” speech and its implication that you can just leave the country today if you don’t agree.

The Democrats rallied behind this president when the Patriot Act was voted on. Anything else would have been political suicide. How can a politician run for re-election with a reputation as the “anti-patriot”?

Countries fell in behind us in this war on terror and on the surface it appeared that everyone was serious about it.

But as time has gone by, there have been those people and nations who have questioned this administration and paid the price. Has anyone ordered “Freedom Fries” lately? Anyone read about that “crybaby” Richard what’s-his-name that said the administration didn’t take terrorism seriously at the beginning? How about that other guy from Treasury who said that this administration was hungry for Iraq from day one? Funny how their faults were offered as reason for their dissent.

But when push came to shove and we were “deciding” about invading Iraq, somehow the abbreviation “US” no longer meant “United States” but “us,” as in we don’t need you. To the outside world, the “us” stood for we don’t need your military help, we don’t need your political help and we don’t need your public opinion.

Inside the “US,” “us” meant we are the current administration, leave the job to “us,” we’re fighting a war on terror here and don’t bother “us,” in fact, don’t watch too closely because this is a terrible war we’re fighting and you’ll be safer in the end because of “us.”

But when all is said and done, we have to ask the tough questions, we have to see how the war on terror is being fought otherwise it’s not a ‘”j’us’t” war. You see, when a military guard treats prisoners like we’ve seen in the media, its because he was TOLD it was alright. Military guards just don’t do anything on their own, there is too much supervision, too many eyes watching. And those eyes saw what they wanted to see, that prisoners were singing like a boys choir and giving up information because of humiliation and fear.

The Patriot Act was passed on October 25, 2001, less than sixty days after the attacks of September 11th. Considering how many days the Congress was closed due to anthrax attacks and scares in the meantime, how many legislators actually read the document? But on a pragmatic level, how could a politician vote against this and survive?

We gave the powers to “us” to fight a war against an evil, sadistic enemy that deserved no mercy. They have taken that mandate as permission to fight a war that circumvents our core values, especially the Constitution.

“Enemy Combatants” can be locked up forever with no charges brought against them? Unconstitutional but its OK, it’s just “us.” Invade a sovereign nation that had essentially been defanged by a decade of sanctions, no problem, just watch “us.”

The truth here is that we have been circumventing so much that makes us American that we’re changing into something else, just what I’m not sure.

Like a particular comment-writer on this blog, our ethics are situational, fit nicely to any circumstance where following rule of law and logic is messy.

In lieu of what we’ve seen from this administration, how can these horrible images surprise us?

The end result could be an essential re-definition of what America is and stands for, not now but in the next twenty years or so. With our unilateral actions in the history books, what country would not fear the world’s greatest military power? Is that our new modus operandi? Do we go from a nation proud of defending ourselves when attacked to the aggressor nation in this “war on terror”?

This weekend my wife and I attended a book signing in Fresno by an author named Chris Scheer. His book is called “The Five Biggest Lies That Bush Told Us About Iraq.” I have not finished his book but his remarks have started me asking questions about just where we are going and how we’re supposed to see ourselves once we’re there.

So two questions I post for the good readers of this blog:

1. Is this administration fighting a war that you would define as “just”, “right” or “American”? I am especially interested in any points of view from overseas, what does the world think?
2. Where are the Democrats? Their behavior appears “nitpicky” in Chris Scheer’s words. They will make a point to ask why more body armor was not provided to our troops but not question the whole method of the war being raged on “our” behalf. Can someone in the Democratic party see a way to lead us through all of this and still retain the values that makes us “American”?

We will eventually have to hand the flag over to the next generation. What will we hand them? A valid Constitution or dangerous precedents giving them permission to go around the Constitution?

FOOTNOTE: Since writing this article I saw a news item that the Dow Jones has fallen below 10,000 today. This brings to mind another question: what happens if WE lose faith in “us”?.

If the economy falters would voters finally consider replacing this administration? Is THAT what it would take, our pocketbooks … over our ethics?

I did, however, whilst researching this topic — as, of course, I must do whenever someone sends me a tip, er, uh, bit of information — run across this great article, originally written by Maureen Dowd (April 25, 2004), on the Cyn City blog. And since I also liked the picture that went along with Cyn City’s “Top Down” post, I decided to mention Cyn City here. (Find the post yourself, I’m not linking stuff like that to my blog! There may be children here, dontchaknow — at least judging by some of the comments posted to my article “Embarrassment”.) The writing at Cyn City — I just love to say that — is quite good and the Cyn City author appears to share my interest in things political as well as photographic, so I’ll probably start reading it regularly.

But I’m not even going to mention the photo albums.

This article is about a professional athlete who turned his back on the game, and more surprisingly the seven figure contract he was offered.

What, in this time of professional athletic greed, would make an athlete walk away from signing a million dollar contract?

His country.

Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan after walking away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army Rangers, U.S. officials said Friday.

Pat Tillman had made it. He made it to the ‘Big Show’, he was a very elite athlete playing in the National Football League. Then came 9/11 and his conscience started speaking to him of duty and honor. He joined the Army with the full intent of going into harm’s way, not to be a recruiting poster boy.

He paid the ultimate sacrifice for his decision.

The question that BEGS to be asked here, is this: Was this sacrifice, one of so many already made, wasted?

Follow my logic here, if we were not fighting a two front war, wouldn’t we have been able to pour more resources into the hunt for bin Laden and his network?

We have tens of thousands of men in Iraq trying to occupy a country and a people that have shown remarkable will to resist us. Had these resources been deployed to find bin Laden what would the world look like today?

Would the Arab world be as anti American as they are now?

Would Europe be as anti American as they are now?

Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that we could have convinced more of our allies to join us in THIS hunt?

In other words, COULD IT BE OVER NOW?

I am not so naïve to assume that we would have world peace right now or that terrorism would disappear. What I am saying is that wouldn’t the terrorists have a much harder time of it if we had captured their high profile leadership? Wouldn’t the terrorists have a much harder time if WE, America and her allies, were standing shoulder to shoulder instead of divided about a war that has yet to be justified?

Somewhere in harm’s way a remarkable young man, filled with the vision of what America and freedom should be, died because this president was too anxious to stir it up with his father’s old enemy.

America is the Land of Plenty, but in my opinion, we don’t have enough Pat Tillmans to waste for anything less than the most worthy causes. In my opinion, Pat Tillman’s life was wasted.

This post is about the war on the economy — both that of the United States, and that of the World.

Jeremy Rifkin, writing in a guest opinion for the Cottage Grove Sentinel, notes,

OPEC sells oil for dollars, [and] the oil-producing countries are losing precious revenue as the value of the dollar continues to erode. And because oil-producing countries then turn around and purchase much of their goods and services from the EU and must pay in euros, their purchasing power continues to deteriorate.

This story came to my attention when one of my co-workers, who is preparing for a trip to his home in the UK, was talking to me about the difficulty the sliding dollar has created for his planned trip. He noted that he has to pay more for Euros (European Currency) than ever before. He told me that this trend has accelerated and become a problem over the last four years.

“Really?,” I asked. I had no clue about this. I follow social issues relating to rights much more closely than I follow economics.

“Yes,” he said. “One of the problems is that interest rates are so low in the United States right now and the deficit is so high that the dollar is weak.” He then went on to tell me that interest rates will have to be raised to reinforce the sliding value of the dollar before it causes further harm worldwide.

I said, “Well, that’s not a problem! I’ve been watching the news lately, and Greenspan has given every indication that interest rates are going to go up! So we’ll be okay!”

And then he told me that the problem with that is that raising the interest rates can be harmful to the economic recovery internally; that is, for the United States itself. He added, “If they raise the interest rates, that will complete the pat–ern” — I really like that British glot–al stop! — “that lead up to The Great Depression.”

“Whoa!,” I said.

“Yeah, ‘whoa.’”

Rifkin’s article continues,

[T]he dollar’s value is declining because of America’s growing debt. The IMF is so concerned about US debt — the result of rising budget deficits and trade imbalance — that it issued a report warning that if steps weren’t taken to reverse the trend, it could threaten the financial stability of the world economy.

The reason?

An ever-weaker dollar makes foreign investors less interested in financing the mushrooming U.S. debt. The U.S. could raise interest rates, making it more attractive for foreign investors, but that would mean higher interest rates for U.S. companies and consumers, which could dampen the already weak recovery and send us back into a recession here and around the world.

This brings to mind another post I wrote earlier this month. In “Oily? Or Slimy?,” I noted that a Republican Cyborg, riding the public opinion that brought his more human (if significantly less intelligent) political idol, George Bush, to power was following a similar path: Convince the voters that all our budgetary problems will go away if we just apply for a larger credit card.

My complaint then was that digging a deeper hole is seldom the solution to one’s budget/debt issues, controlling spending is. But somehow the Republican government — which has already given large numbers of tax dollars to Halliburton, Bechtel and Worldcom; which has provided a huge tax break for…well, it wasn’t me or you!; which has already noted that the war they fought to obtain the second-largest oil reserves in the world isn’t going to lower gas prices in America; and which has recently indicated that that war in Iraq is going to cost more than was planned for — has convinced the American public that Republicans are for smaller government and less government spending, while Democrats are big spenders.

As Governor Donald L. Kohn said at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Public Policy Dinner on January 7, 2004, we cannot continue to borrow money from the rest of the world to sustain our deficit. (Incidentally, this blog article of mine doesn’t even discuss, as Kohn’s remarks do, the fact that by lending us money, these foreign governments become owners of our capital — in other words, they own us just as certainly as your credit card companies own you.)

We, the American people, need to ask ourselves: If Republicans are for less spending and Democrats want to “spend, spend, spend,” why did we have huge budget deficits under the administrations of Reagan and Bush I? How did we have budget surpluses after two terms under the Clinton Administration? How did it go so quickly back to massive deficits under the self-described War President, Bush II? Why did we have a stronger dollar under the Clinton Administration than we do under the Bush II regime? And why are we waging expensive wars that do nothing to benefit the United States and only anger the very people we claimed to be “liberating”? Why are we continuing to talk about giving tax cuts to the rich in the mistaken belief that this inspires them to invest it in America when, in fact, those rich folk are busy running companies like Wal-Mart that are exporting American jobs to other countries? Speaking just about jobs, why is it that the current presidency is “shaping up to be…the first presidency since Hoover’s in which the American economy lost jobs”?

President George “Dubya” Bush has done gone and “dubbed ya” all idiots. He has rightly declared himself to be “The War President.”

It’s high time we realized that the war he and his corporate supporters are fighting is against us.

President Bush, who promised that he was going to be a “uniter, not a divider,” is succeeding at this beyond my wildest dreams. So far, he has nearly united the Muslims of the world in their desire to see the United States destroyed. In fact, as near as I can tell, we now rank above Israel in our ability to inspire terrorists to give up their lives to destroy us.

But that wasn’t enough. The Bush Administration has shown that it will not rest until the entire world is united. Spain, once an ally, is increasingly showing not the apathy for which conservatives (wrongly) love to vilify them, but energetic anger against the United States.

Conservatives, of course, don’t just claim that the Spaniards are wimps for refusing to foment hatred and war in the Middle East and for putting citizens at risk for war we shouldn’t even have begun. Let’s remember, we were and are the Aggressors; Iraq did not attack the U.S., al Queda did. I have no doubts that Al Queda is very active in Iraq right now, but there was no evidence that they were before — or whatever evidence there was was buried under all the evidence for the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

But, as I said, it’s not just the Spaniards that conservatives, driven by the Great Uniter, go after. In the United States, anyone who disagrees with the U.S. government’s approach is labeled “unpatriotic.”

These labels and the name-calling do not solve the very real problems that exist. They only deflect us from taking a long hard look in the mirror and resolving to fix what the rest of the world already sees. When I was young, my father used to say,

If someone tells you you’re a duck, feel free to disregard them. If someone else calls you a duck, you might chalk it up to coincidence. About the fifth or sixth time someone calls you a duck, you’d darn well better check yourself for feathers.

It’s high time Americans pulled their heads out of the conservative kiss-fest. The Shi’is and the Sunnis are uniting. The rest of the world is uniting. Heck, even large numbers of Americans (liberals!) are uniting! The President’s plan to unite is working too well. The problem is, it’s uniting everyone against us.

I think it’s time we started checking ourselves for feathers.

George Bush once said the world would be a better place if the United States were a dictatorship, so long as he was the dictator. Now, in response to growing complaints from the Justice Department that current interpretations of the Constitution of the United States and the Federal Judiciary are getting in the way, Bush wants to expand on the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. He wants to make it possible for police officers to subpoena private data without judicial review.

I suppose this only makes sense. Bush, via Ashcroft, have already determined that the constitutional right “to a speedy and public trial,” where the accused has the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have assistance of counsel for his defense” is just too much trouble. (All quotes in this paragraph come from Amendment VI of the Bill of Rights, a part of the nearly-forgotten Constitution of the United States of America—I wish more people would actually sit down and read it.)

They successfully lobbied for bills that—please read some for yourself!—erase portions of the Bill of Rights. And they rammed these bills through Congress without giving senators time to even read them before a vote. One senator, reacting to what was happening, said, “Why should we care? It’s only the Constitution.”

Meanwhile, Vice-President Cheney—who admits we’ve still not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but insists we will—also indicates that the United States will soon be asking its citizens to pony up more than the $48 billion we’ve already spent and more than the additional $87 billion President Bush recently said he needs. And how long will they keep asking for money? “I can’t say….It’s all we think we’ll need for the foreseeable future, for this year,” says Cheney. No word yet on when we’ll be able to plant weapons of mass destruction to be found so we can convince the rest of the world we were right and we can start taking money from their citizens.

I wondered how the Bush Administration planned to pay for all this on an ongoing basis. Then it hit me: These two issues are connected!

At the end of 2003, the average Circuit Judge was earning $164,000 per year; the average District Court Judge, $154,700. I wasn’t able to find out exactly how many judges there are in the United States, but if this list of federal courts is any indication, there must be quite a large number. If you throw in all the support staff—clerks, circuit executives, court reporters, court librarians, etc.—the monthly payment of salaries must be quite large.

If Bush and Ashcroft are able to successfully eliminate the judiciary, not only will we no longer need to pay these salaries, but even if we sell all the buildings to Halliburton and Bechtel at huge discounts, we should still be able to afford the $4 billion dollars a month (and rising) that we’re currently spending on Iraq.

Who said they didn’t have a plan?