Writer blasts war policy
Americans presided at the Nuremberg trials, and hanged or imprisoned people for torturing and murdering prisoners. Americans do not torture prisoners. Secondly, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and no one is above it. The Constitution states, in plain language, that only Congress may declare war.
President Bush must be impeached, removed from office, and tried as a criminal for allowing the torture of prisoners of war, starting an aggressive unconstitutional war, and giving himself dictatorial power under National Security Presidential Directive 51.
ROTC cadets used to be taught that torture was unacceptable and that any soldier or officer can be brought to trial for such an offense. US military personnel are duty bound to disobey orders to the contrary. Calling such practices as water boarding “enhanced interrogation techniques” changes nothing. Torture is torture and it is morally wrong as well as illegal. Now a sitting president has knowingly allowed torture on his watch.
Furthermore, this war is based on a lie.
President Bush campaigned on an ideal that called for no nation building and a humble foreign policy. Yet at his first National Security Council meeting after his election, he made getting rid of Saddam Hussein a priority, according to former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill. This was well before the attacks on September 11. President Bush, along with the complacency of Congress, has launched our country on its first war of naked aggression for the conquest of territory. While Congress and both political parties are culpable, Mr. Bush bears the responsibility. What has been sold to the people as the war on the tactic of terror is a front for a war on the liberties of the American people.
The Patriot Act, the REAL ID Act, and the Military Commissions Act are all evidence of Mr. Bush’s real intension. For these unconstitutional, therefore illegal, acts, he at least went to Congress, thereby mingling their guilt with his own. Now with National Security Presidential Directive 51, he has appointed himself supreme ruler. Now after any disaster, natural or manmade, the president can take complete control of all three branches of government. The president may strip away all civil rights from the people whenever it pleases him.
Americans do not torture. We will go so far as to hunt down and bring to justice those who do. By doing so, President Bush has set the stage for turning our country into the one thing Americans despise most, a dictatorship. To make matters worse, he has done so while waging an illegal war of aggression for the control of Iraqi oil. Attacking Iraq had nothing to do with a war on the tactic of terrorism.
The war on terrorism is just a cover for war on the liberty of the American people. For these reasons, it is paramount that all Americans rise up and demand that President Bush be impeached, removed from office, and tried as a criminal. Nothing would do more to protect our blessed liberties and once again, make America a shining city for all the world to see.
Will Siegler
Geology instructor
