- How pathetic can it get?
-
- 140,000 American troops are stuck in the mess that a
lying and endlessly deceitful president has made in Iraq, over half a million
innocent Iraqis have been killed since the politically-motivated 2003 US
invasion, a group of very Establishment, middle-of-the-road politicians
of both parties has declared the war an unmitigated disaster and called
for a pullout of troops, the president has nixed their call for withdrawal
and regional negotiations, and what is Congress doing about it?
-
- The House just voted by an overwhelming 368-31 (that's
only 36 abstentions), not to impeach the president, not to cut off funding
for the war, not even to endorse the findings of the Iraq Study Group,
but...to condemn the naming of a street in France after Pennsylvania death-row
inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal!
-
- This craven rush to line up and be counted in the condemnation
of a man who has never had a fair trial to establish his guilt in the 1981
shooting death of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was joined
in even by most liberal Democrats in the House. It was primarily only black
members of Congress who had the courage to vote no on the resolution that
was submitted by Michael Fitzpatrick, a lame-duck Republican congressman
from the Philadelphia area (Fitzpatrick was defeated by Democrat Patrick
Murphy).
-
- Ironically, as this group of political hucksters and
moral cowards were casting their votes of allegedly righteous condemnation
at the naming of a minor street in France, Abu-Jamal's case was heading
for a dramatic hearing in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia,
where judges with a better understanding of law and constitution had recently
agreed to hear three separate arguments by Abu-Jamal on claims that his
1982 trial had been unconstitutionally compromised--among them that the
prosecutor told jurors they didn't need to worry about proof of guilt being
"beyond a reasonable doubt" because there would be "appeal
after appeal," that the same prosecutor deliberately removed 11 qualified
black jurors from the jury pool because of their race despite their having
confirmed they could vote for a death penalty, and that the trial judge
had been overheard, on the first day of the trial, telling his clerk that
he would "help them fry the nigger."
-
- So where is the indignation of these leaders when it
comes to a president who lied to them repeatedly about alleged grave and
looming threats posed by non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
about non-existent "links" between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
and terror leader Osama Bin Laden? About a fraudulent allegation that Saddam
was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger?
-
- Where is the righteous indignation over the deliberate
exposing by Bush and Cheney of the identity of a key undercover CIA agent
whose outing destroyed a U.S. intelligence network monitoring weapons activities
in Iran, and almost certainly led to the suffering and deaths of some of
her sources in Iran and elsewhere?
-
- Where is the outrage over Bush's flagrant violation of
the law in having the National Security Agency spy on Americans without
first obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
Court?
-
- Where is the outrage about the president's assertion
of the right to ignore acts (850 and counting) passed by the Congress?
Where is the righteous indignation over this president's authorization
of torture of U.S. captives in Iraq, Afghanistan, kidnapped from around
the globe, and even picked up here in the U.S.--American citizens included?
-
- Where is the disgust at word that Commander in Chief
Bush oversaw the detention in Guantanamo of children from Afghanistan as
young as seven and eight years old--some of whom remain in detention there
to this day (and one of whom committed suicide last June after spending
his teenage years in detention).
-
- Where is the outrage that this president allowed some
2000 Americans to die in stagnant, toxic water in New Orleans while he
played around on vacation in Texas?
-
- Maybe more relevant to the current resolution, where
is the outrage over military policies under Commander in Chief Bush that
have made the killing of Iraqi boys as young as 12 part of the "rules
of engagement," that permit the collective punishment of entire towns
and cities--most famously the flattened city of Fallujah--and that permit
the use of banned weapons like napalm and white phosphorus, and the use
of horrific, indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction, such as cluster
bombs?
-
- Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the incoming speaker of a new Democratic-run
House, has called for a new civility and bi-partisanship in Congress, but
it seems her idea of civility and bi-partisanship is signing on to rabid,
lame-duck, right-wing Republican resolutions, while ducking the heavy responsibility
of calling a criminal president to account for his six-year assault on
the Constitution, and for dragging the nation into a pointless, bloody
and costly war.
-
- Luckily for Abu-Jamal, his long battle for a fair trial
will be fought not in the wretched and soiled halls of Congress, where
any concern for justice and defense of constitutional rights and freedoms
long ago vanished, but in an appellate courtroom, where some vestige of
such lofty concerns may yet exist.
-
- Unluckily for the rest of us, who thought we were taking
a stand for freedom, the Constitution, and a restoration of national sanity
when we voted last month, the struggle to revive the Bill of Rights and
the concept of tripartite government, and to impeach a president run amok
with mad dreams of imperial power, will have to be fought in those wretched,
soiled halls--and in the streets.
-
- Our task is to convince a bunch of political whores that
they must act like the founding fathers intended, and as their oaths of
office require, or the 110th Congress will be their last.
-
-
- Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation
into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch
columns, titled This Can't be Happening!, is published by Common Courage
Press. Lindorff's latest book is The Case for Impeachment, co-authored
by Barbara Olshansky. Visit his www.thiscantbehappening.net website for
more information. Lindorff may be reached at dlindorff@yahoo.com. This
story is published in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
-
- Ms. Jean Isachenko, jeani@can.rogers.com
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