[A] Way Out: Part I of II

A certain reality touches home as I think of the events of the past days in relation to the past months and years. There seems to be a worsening sickness among the major actors in the social, political, and economic world. It is not getting any better. There must, in my mind, be a way to break this fever, but I can only think of one. The terrorists must win.

In the past few weeks the corruption of the neo-Conservative Bush Administration knows no absolute depth. The misuse of authority -- if not in fact, in the spirit of a democratic institution -- has ascended to the height of the OVP; wherein Dick Cheney asserts that he and the affairs of his office are beyond public scrutiny. Essentially, that the OVP is not a part of the executive branch of the government and, therefore, that the national archives have no right or authority to require his office to produce documentation for the actions taken in the past five years. Just what types of action have been taken by the OVP? More on this later.

Further still, the flagrant misuse of presidential power in the commuted sentence, a tacit pardon, of I. Lewis Libby only thickens the plot. Libby, a longtime associate of neo-Con interests and former chief of staff for the aforementioned VP, escaped a single minute of incarceration by divine ... er.. Presidential intervention. A decree from the President short-cut the due process of appeals and court-dates; a process to which so many disenfranchised Americans owe their time, effort, and life-savings. Why is this Libby so special? Glad you asked.

Libby, now a convicted criminal and one-time lawyer, offended the public trust by obstructing justice and committing perjury. He lied under oath to a Congressional panel that was investigating leaked information. The sentence that warranted, in the opinion of a federal judge, was thirty months incarceration. The crime of perjury is a long-standing and necessary component of the justice system as it prevents unscrupulous individuals from committing fraud on other individuals, groups, or, in this case, the people of the United States and the rest of the world. Here, the President has utilised his prerogative and excepted I. Lewis Libby from punishment.Obstruction of justice is a crime that speaks for itself -- a crime, I would say, the President committed in commuting his sentence. It is apparent that the President is not interested in justice.

Libby, being a close-confidant to the White House, became privy to many secrets. The notable secret here is the one he leaked: the identity of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame. The leak of her identity was, allegedly, the political price paid for contesting the desires of the President and the administration in the march to war from Afghanistan to Iraq. Libby, a good soldier to the Commander-in-Chief, was, ostensibly, only following orders. It has all come back around again, and again, and again. The Iraq War was only the beginning.

Having a world view, whether your vantage point is the OVP or simply a concerned citizen, in a war-torn, cloak-and-dagger world, one would suspect that leaking the name of a spy, active or not, is a bad idea. It is especially interesting that Valerie Plame is married to Joseph Wilson, a former US-ambassador. Joseph Wilson was engaged to report from Niger whether Iraq and, then president, Saddam Hussein sought nuclear materials from Niger. During the 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush clearly and concisely uttered the "sixteen words" that would make the Iraq War happen. Colin Powell's stop at the UN thereafter, making a case for war in front of the world, was a mere formality.

The war started on 17 March 2003, Baghdad was 'captured' in a mere fifty days, leading the President to dramatically -- really dramatically -- declare Mission:Accomplished on 6 May. The story is still only beginning. By the first week of July, the lies were becoming clearer. There were no weapons of mass destruction found. No labs with chemical or biological weapons. No 500 tons of nuclear material. Nothing. Perhaps, it was at this point that I. Lewis Libby blinked. Then the insurgency started. The Iraqis wanted the Americans out. But they just wouldn't, they couldn't, leave.

The lies would come to light in the months and years thereafter. There were indictments of Congressmen, scandals, revelations. Worse, there were questions. What had the PATRIOT ACT actually said? Were Americans being spied on? What of Gunatanamo Bay? Or Abu Ghraib? Or the secret CIA prisons overseas? What is extraordinary rendition? American foreign policies began filtering toward the daylight and out of the dark recesses of the Administration. The actions of the CIA are reported directly to the OVP. The lies began to unravel in the daylight.

America has done, and is doing, some very un-American things to non-Americans in the name of American freedom. There are warrantless wire-taps to be explained. There is faulty intelligence to be explained. There is a video on the Internet that says that 9/11 could not have happened the way the official story read. It says that there are too many inconsistencies. The film aligns -- or maligns -- the 'official story on 9/11' with another official story of note; the 'Magic bullet theory.' The 9/11 Commission report, completed five years after the event, cannot contest the authority of two kids with editing software in the public eye.

Oil and other energy prices are on the rise. The American dollar is falling. All the while the war in Iraq just won't die. American soldiers are dying, though. So are Iraqi militants, Iraqi civilians, andIraqi children. There are whispers of massacre, of war crimes, of civilian deaths at the hands of American troops; whispers of America destroying the nation they are acting to save. The clear message is, "we have to fight terror abroad so we don't fight it at home." Everything is justifiable as long as America is and remains untouched.

A report released by a reputable medical journals, the Lancet, claims that the death toll in Iraq, attributable to the invasion, war, and endless insurgency, is nearing genocide. 655 000 dead. "Impossible," they thought, "we are saving them from terror." Aren't we? The report is spun and discredited in America.

The war rages on. It is false but it is happening. Other things are happening too. More indictments of government officials; I. Lewis Libby among them. The Democrats regain authority in the halls of Congress. A woman ascends the seat of Speaker of the House for the first time. She openly challenges the neo-Cons and the Bush camp. More questions emerge about conduct in the Administration and the Iraq war. What was Jack Abramoff doing? What is happening in the OVP? Why were those US attorneys fired? Is Iraq the Vietnam war of this generation?

The spiral dives downward. Guarding against the possibility of damaging testimony, Libby is silenced with quickie commutation of sentence. The stiffest upper lip in politics belongs to Dick Cheney and he isn't going to change his tack despite what the constitution says. The Vice-President, the President and all those who surround him are above the law, above the checks and balances of the vaunted democracy, and beyond the reach of Congress; though Congress inches closer to restraint of the Administration with each passing day.

One day in September, not too long ago, a singular event set the United States -- and much of the rest of the world in various reactions -- on this course. Within America 9/11 defines an age and it's ramifications continue to be felt in daily conduct. To some of the rest of the world, the attack on America is no different than the Madrid bombings of 2003 or the 7 July bombings of 2005, tantrums of an established terrorist organization. To others it is another in a daisy-chain of events that stretches across time from the second World War to the present; an attack of the weak against the mighty.

What, then, causes me to believe that the fever pitch of conflict can only be undone by permitting the terrorists a victory? It is the unthinkable, but, what remains is this: the American government is proving itself, almost daily now, to be a loathsome enemy. Further, the American government leads the world in military operations world wide, leads the world in economic enterprise throughout the world, thus is the single leading oppressor in the world.

It is for these reasons that the singular event of a September six years past occurred.

The strike against America would not have led to massive bloodshed abroad if, and only if, America had stood and taken responsibility for the root causes of the attack; a severe imbalance in the authority and practice of political, social, and economic institutions. America may have freed their slaves in 1865, but America has, since 1945, economically enslaved the rest of the world. Only in a successful, symbolic, and galvanizing defeat of America, one that does not result on the rain of hellfire over foreign cities, will the prospect of peace present itself again.

This, the path not taken, may yet be the path of salvation. Lies, deceptions, an approach of Orwellian horror, has not produced any increase in security. Perhaps, if the stick lies broken on the ground, instead of reaching for another, the proverbial carrot may be employed instead.