Standing in History's Dock

The fat’s in the fire. Those of us opposed to the Iraq War, the newly passed bill on the treatment of enemy combatants or who took the side of Bill Clinton in his interview with FOX last week are naïve fools. Imagine if you will the horror that the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run.

While it is true that FDR and HST stayed their courses, might it be prudent to remember that the Empire of Japan attacked the United States and that Germany declared war on us before we fired a shot at them? Would it also help to recall that North Korea invaded the South?

Dare we mention that the party of George W. Bush was doing its damnedest to stop FDR from preparing to assist England as Hitler moved to overrun the continent? Would not history support the notion that the Republicans in Congress did their very best to undermine Harry as he tried to stop the communist onslaught in Korea? You’re damned right!

Now the president has bullied his party and a few sheepish Democrats into supporting legislation that protects American agents who treated detainees worse than permitted by the Geneva Convention, permits the holding of enemy combatants without charge indefinitely and which would allow detainees to be subject to treatment unprecedented in American history, what's left to say?

The president called for the legislation on enemy combatants to show that we’re all in this together. Well we’re not. The vast majority of Democrats and a few Republicans would not sign on. While I’m far from a liberal, my civil libertarian instincts demand that I cite Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch who was quoted in today’s Washington Post with saying of President Bush, “He’s been accused of authorizing criminal torture in a way that has hurt America and could come back to haunt our troops. One of his purposes is to have Congress stand with him in the dock.” That has to be the most damning statement ever made about an American leader and those in Congress who supported the measure.

Back to Japan and Germany for a moment, Mr. Bush’s tortured logic on Iraq v. the charges he makes against those of the party of FDR and HST implies that Iraq is the equivalent of W.W. II for staying the course. What? We stayed the course against enemies the forties because they started it. While the facts now show that Iraq clearly never posed a threat to us or our allies and certainly didn’t start anything more than a series of tauntings – which is a foul in the National Football League but not in international relations.

Perhaps if I put it this way, when attacked by Japan and with Germany having declared war on us, we should have minimally held them off and put the brunt of our forces into attacking Spain and Portugal that did nothing to us but did in fact share ideology with Germany and were governed by fascist dictators. After toppling Salazar and Franco, we might have turned our attention to those who really had it in for us.

As I said in a recent blog, nobody’s afraid of the big bad wolf. He’s huffed and puffed and blown no one’s house down. But he’s covering his butt and dragging others in to share the blame. Those in Congress who stand with him on Iraq and on the treatment of detainees will have the rest of their lives to consider these stands.

Meanwhile those of us who aspire to be small time Tom Paine’s will just have to buck up and face the music - that is getting louder but not better.

Blog on!

Wild Bill