In their sweeping indictment of the military-industrial complex, consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Texas journalist Molly Ivins both want Americans to wake up to the nightmare of the presidency of George W. Bush. History buffs, please note: it was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, who first warned the nation of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, nearly 50 years ago. The United States is infinitely more unsafe now than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, precisely because of the misguided, shortsighted, mean-spirited polices of President George W. Bush and his corporate associates.
And no, the progressive voices of the United States will not be silenced by threats of retaliation, whether implicit or explicit. Remember Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist witch-hunts of 1953? The current backlash against antiwar protesters smacks of a Republican neo-McCarthyism. Fear of reprisal has no place in civic discourse.
And no, the religious zealots of al-Qaida are not connected to the secular tyranny of Saddam Hussein: they are each the other's sworn enemies. Neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein has been arrested for trial in international courts.
And no, I will not say one word against the brave men and women of the United States and Great Britain who fought valiantly in Iraq. They did not choose this war -- Mr. Bush did. They, as well as the Iraqis who were slaughtered by the thousands in the American bombers' nefarious "kill boxes," were pawns of Mr. Bush.
And no, this was not a war to overthrow a tyrant, either. Our government has a long history of supporting dictators until they no longer serve our purpose -- witness Gen. Francisco Franco of Spain, the ruling House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, Gen. Augusto Pinochet of Chile and on and on. George Orwell ("1984") and Aldous Huxley ("Brave New World") warned us that the great powers will alternate between alliances and warfare in order to distract their populations from legitimate economic, environmental, medical and social issues at home.
And yes, President Bush wishes to distract us from the nightmare of our domestic economy via foreign adventures that create more Arab and Muslim victims whose hatred of the United States will one day rain down upon us again.
And yes, this was a war about oil, and access to it.
And yes, this was a war about money, because the secret-bidding dollars are now doing Mr. Bush's secret bidding in the coffers of Halliburton Co., whose former chief executive is now President of Vice Dick Cheney, for the so-called reconstruction of Iraq. No one can reconstruct the dead from their coffins. No one can reconstruct the missing limbs torn off Iraqis by American cluster bombs. No one can reconstruct the timeless treasure that has been looted, not from Iraqi museums, but from Iraqi, American and British homes: the human treasure that was alive on March 15, 2003, but no longer alive on May 15, 2003. Beware the ides of March, indeed!
And so I shall ask you, every "Patriot" blinded by the Patriot Act and the Patriot missiles, I shall ask you the very same question that one of the courageous defense lawyers uttered to bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican, in 1953: "At long last, Sir, have you no sense of decency?"
If Republicans worthy of a Republic, and Democrats worthy of a Democracy, would recover their long-dormant sense of decency, and couple it with a sense of outrage, they would realize that President George W. Bush, like the proverbial Emperor in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes," has no clothes on.
That's right: we Americans are victims of the Big Lie, the Great Myth that we are safer now because of our government's vicious creed of greed, because of its cruel, thoughtless and ill-considered use of American military might in a cause unworthy of a single drop of human blood -- no matter what its nationality. Quite enough of it has been shed already, thank you.
"Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword." That is the catastrophe that awaits us, my fellow Americans, if we fail to heed the call of Mr. Nader and Ms. Ivins for sanity, honesty and civic responsibility in American government.
