Wednesday, November 08, 2006 |
OT: The Wave
I won't lie and say I wasn't ecstatic about last night's Democratic tidal wave. After watching years of Karl Rove-engineered divisiveness, after watching the GOP steamroller atrocities through Congress like the PATRIOT Act and outright unconstitutional abominations like the Military Commissions Act of 2006, it's as if the country finally woke up.
If it took frankly ridiculous scandals like Mark Foley sending suggestive notes to adolescent male pages to unhorse the Republicans, well, so what? The fact that Foley got cover for his creepy behavior from the upper reaches of congressional Republican leadership, thanks to his prolific fundraising, exposed exactly how thoroughly corrupt and Machiavellian the GOP had become. In their final moments, the GOP lost their bearing, and any sense they might have had of purpose or principle became overwhelmed by their itch to stay in office. At risk of invoking a bad precedent, the words of Oliver Cromwell before the Rump Parliament seem meet:
You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!The real danger in Iraq was not Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction that he never had, but George W. Bush's attacks on civil liberties. The GOP engineered the legislative overthrow of the Constitution, turning the U.S. into a mirror of the wretched countries currently infesting the Middle East. That particular violation of the oath of office was enabled by men like alleged moderate Republican John McCain. McCain's kabuki that enabled the Military Commissions Act to pass the Senate ranks as one of the most despicable pieces of political theater ever, doubly so because of McCain's wartime service and direct exposure to the torture he plainly assisted. By buying an out for the slime who shipped men to places where they could be beaten and waterboarded and otherwise tortured, he has earned himself a place in the pantheon of dishonor for all time.
And, for what? Torture doesn't work, and we always knew that, or at least, everyone except the lunatics like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, whose late comments that a "dunk" was okay (i.e., waterboarding) were so incendiary that the President himself had to back away from them. (Recall that the Japanese in World War II were branded as war criminals for this same treatment.) They are unmistakably war criminals, every bit as much as Saddam Hussein, and should — but likely won't — face the same punishments.
Soon enough, we will find out far more about that, and who did what, and when. The subpoena power soon to reside in presumptive Speaker Nancy Pelosi will assure that, despite Dick Cheney's proposed refusal to testify if summoned; even in defeat, their lawlessness knows no bounds.
But there was obviously much more here than torture and violence to the Constitution that deservedly cost the GOP this election. Whether it was connections to the appalling Jack Abramoff or the bridge to nowhere or multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts handed out to companies with which the Vice President has direct ties, the taint of corruption has permeated this Congress. Party-line discipline fueled an inability to question expenditures, helped along by a proclivity for ramming bills through the legislature so fast nobody had time to read them.
Don't think me naive, though. The Democrats, given a majority for sufficient time, would be just as dangerous, especially in a one-party government. The key, then, is to keep the branches separated politically. That the American people did last night, finally, belatedly shaking off the trance put there by extremists who had seized the government and held the country in their grasp for six years. It is time to clean the stables.
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