January 20, 2005

A Stop Sign at the Crossroads of Democracy
By James Preston Allen, Publisher

     We are about to endure the re-inauguration of George Bush and the phony Iraqi elections, all in the same two-week timeframe, and it should give us all some pause to reflect on just what this thing is we call democracy. The term, “flawed,” comes to mind. You see I got this email the other day from Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute touting the “Virtue of selfishness,” announcing his latest book— The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal For America, even though I doubt I’ll read it, this is the perfect example of what I mean by flawed. The Ayn Rand argument in a nutshell is that if individuals follow their own self interests it ultimately leads to the greater good for society. This is exactly the same misguided foreign policy theory that Bush is pursuing in Iraq and Afghanistan– American self-interest and everyone else be-damned.
     I’ll tell you why this is wrong, because even the most conservative Americans don’t believe in it. In real life, we all have a self-interest in behaving like members of a civilized community. Take for example the most simple rule of law, the common everyday stop sign—like the one on your street corner by the market or school. We don’t have enough traffic cops to sit at every stop sign to enforce this law, but most of the time people obey it. If we all operated out of the “virtue of selfishness” we’d stop when we wanted to or had to and ignore it whenever we could. We all know a few people that drive like that, but the vast majority of people know that it is in their own “enlightened self interest” to obey the stop sign law. Why? Because it might be their son or daughter or mother entering the crosswalk, it might be them who is broad-sided by some selfish idiot who thinks that they are the only one on the road.
     Pursuit of our own self-interest must be curbed at the boarder line of where the other man’s bumper begins and ours ends. It’s that simple. It’s as basic a fundamental of American law as you can get. If we don’t stop at the stop sign, why should we expect anyone else to?
     Yet this is exactly the problem Bush is having in trying to “bring democracy” to Iraq or Afghanistan at the point of a gun, all the while we are breaking the law with torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in complete defiance of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners. This, while Attorney General Ashcroft has condoned the arrest and detention of so many Islamic residents (It’s hard to keep track, last reported at over 1,000) with total disregard for habeas corpus rules of law that mandate that the accused be charged and brought before a judge and represented by legal counsel within a reasonable time of their arrests. This, while our own presidential elections are so corrupted by fraud and vote suppression that Bush’s reelection, even as he is inaugurated at our capital, clouds our example of democracy with doubt and suspicion. This, while the same Bush administration proposes Negroponte’s “El Salvador” solution in Iraq for the use of death squads to root out the opposition. Negroponte, you may remember, is the former ambassador to Honduras where these same tactics were orchestrated during the illegal Contra war against Nicaragua during the Reagan administration.
     Why would anyone trust a democracy that promotes the narrow selfish interests of a few over the rule of law for the many? Why should any nation respect our rule of lawlessness over that of, say, Saddam Hussein? Because we’ve got more guns?
     Clearly the war in Iraq was ill-conceived, poorly planned and flawed in its execution. This has become increasingly clear with the recent confirmation that there are and were no weapons of mass destruction! This, along with Rumsfeld’s answer to one GI’s question about the lack of armor for the troops on the front lines. This, along with Condolezza Rice’s disingenuous confirmation hearing testimony, as well as Alberto “Abu Ghraib” Gonzales’ refusal to accept responsibility for his legal opinion that cleared the way for the authorization to torture prisoners. And on top of all of this, the US military court-martials of the low-ranking soldiers who followed these orders to perform the same sadistic, inhumane and denigrating acts. The immoral depravity of these acts comes from the immoral depravity of the same leadership that justifies, even promotes, the abuse of law while claiming high moral and even Christian values to get reelected!
     There are lies, damn lies and then there is just plain unmitigated bullshit, like the stuff this Bush administration is shoveling. I join with those protestors who turn their backs on the Bush inauguration parade and suggest that when he comes to your town again we simply use the law of the stop sign as a symbol of our disrespect for his abuse of power. And when Bush and his henchmen are finally stopped they must be impeached, prosecuted and jailed for these crimes that are a scar across the face of America today.