If you’re old enough, news that
President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency,
apparently without legal authority, to monitor the private
communications of American citizens must seem awfully familiar.
This sort of monitoring has been pursued
before, when technology was less sophisticated and less intrusive,
becoming especially notorious during the administrations of Lyndon
Johnson and Richard Nixon. Details were divulged in the mid-1970s,
during congressional hearings that revealed exactly how fragile the
Bill of Rights is in the face of a determined, politically
motivated executive branch.
It is true; we live in dangerous times. Our
nation faces real threats from forces we don’t fully
understand. It is also true that certain individuals in our nation
may pose a threat to our national interest. And it is appropriate
for the government to take steps to protect our security and ensure
that another 9/11 never occurs. But we are, first and foremost, a nation oflaws — laws based on our shared tradition
of respecting free speech and assembly and of allowing people to hold
views that are hostile to those in power, no matter how offensive or
alien those views might be. This is our heritage; this is our
birthright. In March 2003, our nation was pushed into a
terrible war — a war that has cost tens of thousands of lives
— by the Bush administration. The president based this war on
bad information and outright falsehoods, and he has tried mightily,
in recent weeks, to justify his actions, repeatedly shifting the
focus of debate. Most Americans no longer believe him, no longer
support this war. What credibility he has is eroded further each
time he opens his mouth. He is, in my view, the worst leader this
nation has elected in modern history — worse even than Nixon,
a paranoid fabricator who at least knew when he was lying; worse
than Bill Clinton, whose transgressions were the stuff of which bad
country-music lyrics are made. The toll of this war hasn’t just been
the loss of lives, including the more than 2,150 American soldiers
who have died in a mission that still has no clear objective. This
war has cost us our credibility. We’ve become a nation that
imprisons people indefinitely, without charges, without the
opportunity to obtain legal counsel. We’ve become a nation
that degrades and tortures captives. Until recently, our president justified
these extraordinary measures that are foreign to the traditions and the
sensibility of our nation. We have become repugnant in the eyes of the
world, and we are ashamed of ourselves — or should be. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, has
been the Svengali to this bungling incompetent — and, in that
regard, is even more noxious. Remember, it was Cheney who urged
members of Congress not to support U.S. Sen. John McCain’s
resolution banning the use of torture. I met recently with Mary Ann McGivern, a nun
with the Sisters of Loretto. She was in Springfield last month to
give a talk at an event sponsored by Pax Christi and other local
peace activists. I became acquainted with McGivern when she headed
a group pushing for economic conversion of the defense industry,
particularly McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics, two old-line
St. Louis military contractors that have since been gobbled up by
other companies. When she came to Springfield, McGivern had just
left her job with the Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom as the group’s New York liaison to the United
Nations. We spoke about how the U.N. functions, how
the world views the United States, and, mostly, how bad things had
gotten here. “The nightmare,” she said, “goes on and
on.” I tried to sound a hopeful note — our nation had
survived many, many dark times, and yet we’ve persevered. Good
people will not be silenced, even in the darkest of times. And I was
sure we’d survive the Bush administration; after all, there
wasn’t much time left. It wasn’t until later that it hit me:
Bush would be in office until January 2009. Three more years of governance by an
administration of liars and incompetents is simply unfathomable
— and downright unacceptable. You know the old adage: If you want peace,
work for justice. We have a moral obligation to seek peace and to
seek justice. Justice means holding people accountable. George W. Bush must be held accountable for
directing agencies of the federal government, without any judicial
oversight, to spy on citizens, including peace activists who have
no ties to terrorism and whose ideology and beliefs are
fundamentally opposed to violence. This revelation has
understandably outraged well-meaning folks of all political
persuasions, from the left to the right. Outrage, however, has not yet translated into
meaningful action. If our elected representatives refuse to act, we
must. If “peace on earth” is more than
a holiday greeting-card slogan to you, it’s time to demand
justice. It’s time to impeach Bush.
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2005.
