Editor,
It does not take the clairvoyance of a prophet to predict that by the end of President Bush's illegitimate presidency, many more Americans will have died as a direct consequence of his reckless policies of warfare than from the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
That this number - some 3,000 people - will be surpassed is only a question of time, probably only a matter of months, which should be reason enough to explain why just less than a third of the American public still supports his reign of error.
In its representative function, Congress ought to protect the people - especially the fighting soldier - from the erroneous rule of an impostor. Instead, it has allowed and assisted the so-called president to assume the allure of a dictatorial monarch who not only posits himself above and beyond the rule of law, but bluntly asserts himself as the law.
Bush may spy on the people, detain and deport Arabs and Muslims, incarcerate, torture and kill those with the labels of enemy combatant or terrorist, build and proliferate nuclear weapons, and threaten to use them. He can lie to the people and the world, rape nature and the planet with corporate greed, violate not only the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, but Article 51 of the United Nations Charter by invading a defenseless and crippled country, killing tens of thousands on the way. And yet he is still not held accountable, which is why Congress, too, has lost the support of the people.
This divide between the rulers and the people, who have both disowned one another, should dispel the illusion of American democracy.
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The rest of the world is not so mute to this predicament, as could be seen when democracy's birthplace, Athens, shouted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice out of the country in a scene reminiscent of an incident more than a year ago when her predecessor was scared off from setting foot on Athens' soil.
Bush is, of course, aware of his criminal mind-set, and he can't help but inadvertently testify to it. When asked how many lives his war has cost the Iraqi people, his answer spoke to his racist and fascist mentality: "Thirty thousand, more or less." Had he given a similar response with respect to American casualties, he would no longer be president.
The tyranny of his homicidal indifference could not have been more obvious.
A jury has pronounced Moroccan citizen Zacarias Moussaoui guilty of complicity in the thousands of deaths of Sept. 11, while he was sitting in an American prison cell and not participating in the actual attack. While the same jury is contemplating the question whether this kind of noninvolvement should earn him the death penalty, it seems to me that if divine justice had her consistent, universal and impartial say, the same kind of consideration ought to be applied to Bush himself and those who determine his actions.
As a strict opponent of the atrocious, medieval practice of the death penalty, I would rather see Bush take over the late Slobodan Milosevic's empty prison cell in The Hague, to be shared with his puppeteers, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and others.
Those who still piously support him should be free to pilgrimage to their former leaders. As for the rest - the vast majority in this country and the rest of the world - this vision is a living dream and equivalent to their longing for a peace through justice for all.
Joachim Oberst
UNM staff
