Honor, Dignity, Rule of Law and other bullshit
So there we were, watching the 2000 Presidential campaign, and over and over we listened to George W. Bush talk about how he was going to bring “honor and dignity” back to the White House. I can’t think of a more significant pack of lies told in my lifetime. And I’m old enough to have heard Richard Nixon say “I am not a crook” on the evening news.
Like Nixon, Bush seems to have surrounded himself with criminals. Now that Louis “Scooter” Libby is a convicted felon, and Rove and Cheney are clearly identified as unindicted co-conspirators, it’s a good time to remember how many conservatives have held up George Bush as not just a moral leader, but a moral example. Indeed.
And what a blessing it is to have a moral leader at the helm as we continue to make war against Afghanistan, the war that Bush says God told him to start. On March 4th an American patrol was attacked near Jalalabad, and reacted by shooting indiscriminately into a crowd of civilians. Twenty civilians not involved in the original attack were killed and thirty more were wounded. Adding insult to injury, American troops threatened reporters covering the story and confiscated film and video of the dead civilians. This is not the way people behave when a moral leader is Commander in Chief. Rather, this is the way people behave when the know they have committed a crime and they are desperate to destroy the evidence. This is not the first atrocity committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Lest you think these were isolated incidents, don’t forget the murder of Nicola Calipari, an Italian, by U.S. solders in Iraq. Journalist Giuliana Sgrena was wounded in the attack, and has been adamant that the soldiers were not acting in self-defense, nor even manning a checkpoint as they have claimed. The Italian government has indicted a U.S. serviceman, Mario Lozano, in the shooting. Italian authorities have complained that the U.S. has refused to cooperate in the investigation and have refused to deliver Lozano to stand trial.
So basically we have a government of people who constantly proclaim the rule of law even as they are breaking the law, constantly tell us they are protecting us from thugs and murderers, while conducting themselves like thugs and murderers. And on the evidence, they are going to get away with it.