imprisonbush.com

Anybody remember last summer, when the Bush administration trotted out the phrase “global struggle against violent extremism” to replace “war on terror?” Well, they’re at it again.

Today, Bush said “The war we fight today is more than a military conflict, it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.” He went on to compare Iran to “fascists, Nazis, communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century.”

Why another name change for the “war on terror?” I am only guessing here, but apparently the market researchers and strategists who come up with the slogans that drive American public policy have been noting a dip in the appeal of “War on Terror.”

“War on terror” never really made much sense. Terror is a tactic, not an enemy. It is a tactic employed by non-governmental agents with limited resources. That’s the first big, big difference between the terrorists and either the Nazis or the Soviets. The Nazis and the Soviets had armies, they had factories. They were nation states. When you’re fighting a nation state, you defeat the armies, destroy the factories, destroy the state and you’ve won. But non-state agents like Al Qaeda are a completely different story. They thrive in the absence of order. Destroy a state, and they get stronger. That’s exactly the mistake we’re making. We’re destroying states, and creating the conditions in which terrorists thrive.

On a more literal level, the expression “war on terror” isn’t about fighting other people. It’s about fighting our own emotions. How can one man disseminating occasional videos from a cave constitute a threat on the scale of the Nazis or the Soviets? There’s only one possible answer: Leverage. Bin Laden is leveraging the U.S.’s military power and emotional panic against itself. Unlike Hitler or Stalin, Bin Laden is no military threat to the United States, so he relies on fear and hysteria. It just so happens that the Bush administration’s best polling numbers have consistently been in the “protecting people from terrorism” column. So what do we get at strategic junctures in domestic American politics? Orange alerts, red alerts, prematurely foiled plots, and fear fear fear. Leverage.

Now, all that fear creates a climate in which the press, the opposition party, and the public in general sits back and gives a pass to a war fought on false pretenses. That war in turn destroys a state, which creates conditions that favor terrorist groups. More Leverage.

It also creates enough resentment against the United States to maintain a critical mass of people who are willing to give their lives in suicide attacks against Americans. More Leverage.

So “war on terror” is getting old, and it’s not going to work because America refuses to take a good hard look at the way it’s leveraging its own defeat. “Global struggle against violent extremism” didn’t go over well with the consumers. But ooh, “ideological struggle” could work.

America is addicted to the narcissistic fantasy of itself as the hero of a Manichaean ideological struggle of good against evil. What the U.S. failed to learn from the Cold War is that there is no such thing as an ideological struggle of good versus evil. An ideological struggle is always a struggle of good versus good. It’s a struggle between opposing ideas of good and evil.

Let’s talk strategy: how do you win an ideological war? By convincing people your idea of what’s good is better than your opponent’s idea of what’s good. And how do you convince people that you have the right idea about what’s good? Dismissing the Geneva Conventions on the humane treatment of prisoners as “quaint?” Scattering 100,000-odd unexploded cluster bomblets throughout people’s communites in southern Lebanon? Is this winning us any ideological struggles?

Since the Cold War, the American conversation has never been quite honest about the place of “freedom” in an ideological struggle. We talked about the concept of “freedom” as though it only existed on one side of a struggle of ideas, but that was propaganda, not reality. Marxism and Capitalism both claimed to be on the side of freedom, they just had different conceptions of freedom–and different political systems variously corrupting the conceptions of freedom they claimed to champion.

If we’re going to be honest about it, there is no reason for an ideological struggle to have any correlation to acts of violence, whether it’s cluster bombings or terrorist attacks. No, a good contestation of ideas takes place in an environment free of fear and intimidation, where education is valued and ideas are taken seriously. We could win the ideological war by creating an environment where ideas are freely discussed, carefully listened to and thoughtfully refuted. That’s how you win a war of ideas.

Unfortunately, we’re not going to be honest about it.

You probably didn’t hear a single word about it, but in Salt Lake City this month four thousand people gathered to protest against George W. Bush. The crowd carried signs calling for the impeachment of President Bush and for the end to the war in Iraq.

What was especially remarkable is that Rocky Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City, joined in the protest, telling the crowd, “Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism. We are here today to insist that those who were elected to be our leaders tell us the truth. If we had the truth, we wouldn’t be in Iraq today.”

Good for the people of Salt Lake City for coming together against the crimes of George W. Bush. Shame on the national news media for not reporting on their remarkable effort.

What did you hear about instead of the striking anti-Bush protest in the heart of an ultra-conservative state? You heard about a man who was arrested for the ten year-old crime of murdering JonBenet Ramsey – and turned out just to be a crazy guy looking for attention.

Donald Rumsfeld said today that “the enemy” is manipulating the American press. According to Rumsfeld, the enemy is “lying with impunity,” deceiving the American people into falsely believing, for instance, that U.S. troops are responsible for the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

Now, he didn’t say exactly who “the enemy” was, though presumably this would be Al Qaeda, if that’s who we’re still fighting in the global war on terror. And he didn’t give any concrete examples of how Al Qaeda is manipulating the media. But hey, who needs evidence when it comes to ol’ Rummy? He’s got ways of knowing all kinds of things, whether they’re true or not.

There’s just one thing here that’s got me scratching my head: I didn’t realize Al Qaeda was behind the scenes manipulating the American media. I though it was “the Jews.”

Let’s get literal. Impeach Bush grassroots? Got that.

Signs of support for impeachment? Got that.

I sighted this sign in front of a house in Trumansburg, New York.

It’s a shame that no members of Congress are going down that street.

Remember Meetup? For the 2004 elections, it was the thing. People could organize around issues and meet people like themselves online. It was a great tool for spontaneous grassroots political organization.

Haven’t heard much about MeetUp lately, have you? There’s a reason. Meetup started charging money for its services. Like a flash, people started leaving Meetup for other services.

I checked up on Meetup this morning to see if maybe they had changed their ways. No such luck.

I was brought in with the promise of a United Impeach Bush Meetup Day coming up – on August 28. People from around the country would be meeting in Meetup gatherings to organize to Impeach Bush. Wow!

Or, not so wow. Across the country, there are only 9 Impeach Bush meetings happening on that day. Why?

12 dollars per month is why.

That’s what Meetup wants to charge you to set up an Impeach Bush Meetup group. The result? There are only 30 Impeach Bush Meetup groups across all America. In New York State, there’s only one group, and that’s in New York City, with not many members.

United Impeach Bush Meetup Day? Probably not near you.

For 12 dollars per month, you can set up your own impeach Bush web site. A much better investment of money. But hey, if you’ve got money to burn…

The ruling of US District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor this week that George W. Bush has broken federal law restricting government spying against American citizens, and may have done so on 30 separate occasions, was a gauntlet thrown down in the face of the American people. Our President is breaking the law in order to invade our private lives in the manner of an arrogant king. Will the American people accept this treatment, or will we rise up and exercise our right to hold the President accountable to the law? Will we impeach him?

Right now, American citizens are organizing to pressure our representatives in government to act. Impeachment vigils are being planned for September 1. Visit the vigil organizing site, and see if there is an impeachment vigil being planned near you. If there isn’t one yet, please consider organizing it yourself.

To take back power from the President will require citizens who are willing to act on their own initiative instead of waiting for others to do the work for them.

United States District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has issued an official ruling that President George W. Bush violated the Constitution of the United States of America and broke the law in doing so. Her written opinion contains the following statements:

“In enacting FISA, Congress made numerous concessions to stated executive needs. They include delaying the applications for warrants until after surveillance has begun for several types of exigencies, reducing the probable cause requirement to a less stringent standard, provision of a single court of judicial experts, and extension of the duration of approved wiretaps from thirty days (under Title III) to a ninety day term.

All of the above Congressional concessions to Executive need and to the exigencies of our present situation as a people, however, have been futile. The wiretapping program here in litigation has undisputedly been continued for at least five years, it has undisputedly been implemented without regard to FISA and of course the more stringent standards of Title III, and obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The President of the United States is himself created by that same Constitution. “

I love that last line. The Constitution that George W. Bush violated in the name of presidential powers is the same Constitution that created the Presidency. Beautiful!

The Judge also wrote that “In this case, the President has acted, undisputedly, as FISA forbids. FISA is the expressed statutory policy of our Congress.” and “For all of the reasons outlined above, this court is constrained to grant to Plaintiffs the Partial Summary Judgment requested, and holds that the TSP violates the APA; the Separation of Powers doctrine; the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution; and the statutory law.”

Catch that? The judge has ruled George W. Bush did not just violate the Constitution. The judge ruled that Bush broke the law.

So come on, America! Are we going to impeach this jerk or what?

It’s summertime, and during this season, America’s mood turns to light hearted things. We want to be entertained, mostly, during these dog days, not educated. I understand.

With this in mind, I thought I’d pass along an entertaining little video of political satire I found at another blog this morning.

Irregular Times now has a little video of a cartoon of George W. Bush, singing Do You Really Want to Impeach Me?, to the tune of Culture Club’s song Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

They call him Boy George Bush.

Yes, President Bush, we really want to impeach you.

Do you really think that we shouldn’t?