BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE The Republican Party–a Threat to America One of the Republican Party's most enduring talking points is that the Bush administration has kept America safe since 9-11, but what evidence do we have of that? Even as the Bush administration bragged about their security efforts, they left both our front and back doors wide open. The two primary entry points into the United States are all but short of a welcome sign. In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on September 27, 2007, Greg Kutz of the Government Accountability Office testified that GAO investigators were able to cross into the United States from Canada with a duffle bag filled with contents resembling radioactive material on three different occasions during the fall of 2006. He went on to testify that they did so without encountering even one law enforcement official. And as everyone knows, our Southern border is an absolute sieve. If Jose Garcia can simply walk across the Mexican border into the United States, what's to prevent Osama Abdul from doing exactly the same? So the Republican claim that they've kept America safe is clearly a myth. It's much more likely that America has not been attacked since 9-11 because Osama Bin Laden rationalized, why waste perfectly good terrorists to destroy America when Bush, Cheney, and the Republican Party were doing the job for him. America is much more than a piece of real estate. The heart of America is the American ideal. Even George Bush somehow recognized that, but even as he claimed that terrorists hated America because they hated our freedom, he was actively assaulting those very same freedoms. So if Bush's claim was indeed true, both he, and Dick Cheney, were Osama's most valuable allies. The problem is, the Republican leadership suffers from a sense of entitlement. They feel they have a moral right to control the power and resources of America, for the enhancement their own personal benefit and greed. Thus, the American people are nothing more than pawns to them. We represent inconvenient but necessary nuisances to help them further their imperialistic goals. After all, without us, who's going to fight their wars? Their strain of thinking was clear even as this nation was being established. Alexander Hamilton, one of the fathers of the conservative movement stated the following: "All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive an advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government." So Mr. Hamilton took the condescending attitude that unless you were rich, or as he put it, "wellborn," you didn't have any sense, so your right to even participate in government should be limited at best. The "wellborn," on the other hand, should be given a "distinct and permanent" share in government. We see that very same kind of condescension toward the American people in the Republican leadership today. That accounts for why the neo-cons--in spite of the fact that almost to a man, they all avoided military service--saw no contradiction in sending the children of the poor and middle class Americans to fight and die in the desert for lack of proper equipment. That's why they also had no problem with making these same Americans pay for their own meals as they laid in the hospital fighting for their lives from wounds sustained "in defense" of this country, while at the same time, these neo-cons were indulging in a greedfest, and throwing billions of dollars away so recklessly that it can't even be accounted for. It also explains why Dick Cheney's Halliburton saw nothing wrong with grossly overcharging the American taxpayer to provide our troops with contaminated water. And this isn't the first time that Republicans showed a reckless disregard for the American people. After the stock market crashed during Herbert Hoover's administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property. Hoover's Republican administration tossed these brave veterans to the side like they were dealing with soiled toilet paper. That brings us to our current situation. As I pointed out in a previous article, there should be no doubt in our minds that the Republican leadership has a vested interest in doing everything they can to work against America. As they see it, the only way that they can regain control of this government is for Americans to suffer like they've never suffered before–and they're doing everything in their power to see to it that is exactly what happens. So America needs to keep its eyes open, because the harder President Obama fights to cure America's ills, the harder the Republican Party is going to fight against him. Clear evidence of that is their elevation of Michael Steele to Chairman of the Republican National Committee–the very first Black man to that position in its 153-year history. Coincident? Republican enlightenment? I don't think so. They simply figured that they needed another Black man to get down-and-dirty with President Obama--because it certainly couldn't be because of Steele's brilliance. His very first pronouncement was to try to convince a hungry America that the jobs program that President Obama created to meet their needs is an illusion"it's not a real job, it's just work." But somebody needs to inform Mr. Steele that whatever he chooses to call it, rather it be "job" or "work," it serves to feed children and save homes. Further evidence is that Rush Limbaugh was dumb enough to admit that he hopes Obama fails. Put plainly, what he was actually saying was he hopes that America suffers, because that's exactly what's going to happen if the president doesn't succeed. And finally, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that the GOP should look to the Taliban for guidance on how the Republicans should go about disrupting President Obama's rescue program. And that's exactly how the American people should look upon the Republican Party, just like we do the Taliban–as a fierce threat to the American people. Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.com A moderate is one who embraces truth over ideology, and reason over conflict. | ||