Let The Earth Shake and the Heavens Tremble...

Nineteen months have passed since I last performed that arcane act, blogging.

Now let the fires be lit, the mead poured, the earth shake and the heavens tremble, along with various other ominous events! For the Doctor...has RETURNED!

Okay, now we're done with that. Why am I blogging again? Because I like writing. I enjoy channeling my fury into eloquence. Even if I don't manage eloquence, I do avoid a stroke. And there is so much to be furious about...

When people say "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention," they irritate me. Outrage as a constant state of being loses its panache. Such people quickly become people who focus their lives on their rage-sad, pathetic people. And yet, occasionally, in that same way that unpleasant family members sometimes have a point, these rage-centric people have it right.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, for example. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." It reads pretty clearly, right? It's so rare to find good, common-sensical legal language.

In the face of this, however, our illustrious President has decreed that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to communications. Oh, he hasn't said that directly, mind you, but consider this: in a hearing this past Tuesday, September 18th, the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, declared that the administration has no need to obtain a warrant to surveil electronic communications wherein the content of which may be about the target of a terrorism investigation.

Think about that.

The Bush administration has already said that if any part of an electronic communication is outside the United States, they believe that no warrant is needed for government surveillance to take place, and act accordinly. Given the structure of global communication networks, this means that all email, most long-distance telephone calls, and pretty much any time you use a computer connected to the internet, the government can look at what you are doing, record it, copy it, transmit it, and use it against you in court, with no oversight, no checks, no balances, no restraint. Given that mobile phones, since they transmit through the air, have always been deemed unworthy of Fourth Amendment protection by the courts, that leaves very few areas of your communicating life that the government cannot pry into.

Now, the government argues that if they have a belief about what your are talking about, that strips your remaining Fourth Amendment rights from you. If I live in New York and call my brother in Arkansas on a land-line telephone, and he picks it up on a land-line telephone, there is nothing stopping the FBI from recording every second of that phone call. My call might be useful to a terrorism investigation; why not listen in? This is the same logic as is used in the Bush Doctrine: we reserve the right to preemptively attack any country that may become a threat in the future. Spain may be a threat someday; why not attack?

Because that way lies madness. This is logic twisted to consume itself, not an action taken to defend our security while preserving our rights. The administration argues that the rights of the American citizen are being protected, but there can be no confirmation of that fact, not even by the elected representatives of the people charged by our highest law with the power and responsibility to provide oversight. We must simply trust those in charge.

I am not one to cite the words of the founders as holy writ; they were flawed, human people, just as we are. The were a brilliant group, but occasionally we encounter situations they did not, could not, have anticipated, and our government must adjust to improve and better serve human freedom. Nonetheless, their words have depth, and meaning, and power, and sometimes they describe situations we deal with today that they would have understood perfectly.

Two hundred and thirty-one years ago, the founders of this nation put forth a list of grievances, a series of abuses they had suffered under the yoke of the King of England and his servants. Among the reasons for rebellion was this: "For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever."

President Bush has abolished many of our most valuable laws in dismissing portions of our Bill of Rights. He has altered fundamentally the form of our government, claiming unimagined unitary power, explicitly ignoring the demands of coequal branches of government. And why should this end? We do not stand up. Our rights are stripped away and we are notified by the news and we shrug our shoulders. What is it, I wonder, that most people now believe makes us Americans? It cannot be our freedoms and our rights, for they are clearly not valuable to us.

Is it only the power our government wields in our name? Is that glorious reign of Presidents who stride the earth, knowing that they control the fate of all humanity all that we celebrate now?

I hope not. I hope that we can earn the respect of our inheritors by, at last, taking the opportunity life puts before us to set things right. President Bush should be impeached, whether it is the last year or the last month or the last hour of his Presidency, and we should write our judgment in the immortal books of history: no President is a king, and our Constitutional rights are not for any President to take from us. And if there is a measure of justice left in our country, we will see a new appreciation for what truly does make us special as Americans, a new birth of freedom, as the current occupant of the White House begins a lengthy prison sentence.

Somehow, I doubt that we will see so just an end to this nightmarish chapter in our history. All that can realistically be hoped for is a group of legislators who will seize their own power and make clear to the next President that Bush's changes are not lasting. Perhaps a return to the constant conflict that the founders arranged in lieu of perfect leaders will be enough.

The second item I wanted to write about is also rather dramatic, but I somehow doubt that I will be as eloquent in my vehemence, because frankly, I've spent a lot of it on the crap you've just read. Nonetheless, there is a hideous abuse afoot, and you should know of it, because your name is attached to it, Mr. and Ms. Joe/Jody American.

In Iraq, if you are a contractor for the private military corporation Blackwater, you are that rarest of people: someone who is literally above the law. The United States government, you see, employs tens of thousands of military contractors, mercenaries, to work in Iraq. The exact numbers are unknown, as the U.S. military freely admits that it has no idea how many armed mercenaries we are paying to roam the country. It could be 20,000. It could be 50,000.

50,000 privately employed mercenaries policing a country we are trying to rebuild might not actually be a bad thing, but for one point: there is no law or structure governing or directing these mercenaries. The Coalition Provision Authority explicitly exempted military contractors from Iraqi law with CPA Order 17 on June 17, 2004. Police on the street in New Orleans exercise power over citizens in the name of society's protection, but just the same, they are subject to arrest when they commit crimes. A Marine on the streets of Baghdad operates under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a code of law comprehensive enough that adultery is a crime punishable by jail time.

A Blackwater mercenary on those same streets, however, can do whatever he pleases, whenever he pleases, with no fear of reprisal. There is no arrest for him to face, no justice system. This is the freedom we have brought to Iraq.

Is it any wonder, then, that Blackwater personnel are said by the Iraqi government to have indiscriminately murdered civilians on no less than seven occasions? After allegedly murdering an Iraqi driver just outside the Interior Ministry this past May, Blackwater soldiers had Iraqi government soldiers surrounding them with automatic rifles in their faces. The Blackwater soldiers could not be intimidated enough by this circumstance to be persuaded to give their names. They know exactly where they stand in the society that we have created.

It is almost certainly too late for us to repair the damage we have done to Iraq. They may have a stable country again one day, but it will probably take a generation or more. What we can take from this is a series of lessons on how to do better next time, because there will be a next time. There will be another war, and there will be another time where we must build a peace. We should start now to develop the laws and structure that will govern that effort, or the only things we will teach will be what our Blackwater ambassadors have already taught the Iraqis: that America has no respect for the dignity of others and that only through strength and violence can dignity be maintained.

Peace out, homeys.