CounterPunch
Special Report:
9/11 One Year After
September
7, 2002
Rise Up...Dump
Bush
by Tom Stephens
Since September 11, 2001, our government has placed
us in further danger with policies that inflame the conditions
giving rise to terrorism. This sad anniversary offers us an opportunity
to begin taking back our democracy. Above all, we must work for
peace and social justice in order to create a brighter future
for our children. The U.S. response to the September 11 crimes
against humanity has led us into even greater peril. Under these
crisis conditions, George W. Bush's incompetence and Dick Cheney's
arrogance threaten our survival.
We must start acting like self-governing
adults who reject rule by the oil industry, military contractors,
and other corporate profiteers. George W. Bush and his administration
(many of them fellow Vietnam-era draft dodgers) blundered into
a new quagmire in Afghanistan. Israel's illegal occupation of
Palestinian territories exploded into a raging inferno of deadly
violence. The conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir
threatens to follow suit, perhaps escalating into nuclear war.
Much of Latin America--including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia,
Uruguay, and Venezuela--balances on the brink of economic meltdown,
political coups and chaos, primarily caused by corporate globalization
policies hatched in Washington that exploit their resources.
Our environment shows more signs of severe damage with every
cycle of the seasons and cascading problems of pollution, drought,
fire and flooding.
We see unremitting government attacks
on constitutional freedoms. Since the implosion of Enron Corporation
late last year we learn that our ruling corporate and political
institutions are irredeemably corrupt. The neoliberal economic
faith that dominated the advanced world for the past couple decades
combines with the neoconservative political ideology animating
the Bush/Cheney administration to completely obliterate their
grip on reality. Revelations of corporate and political corruption
coincide with the return of economic hard times. The facts of
life under capitalist cycles of boom and bust were well understood
many decades ago, when our fore-fathers and -mothers organized
strong unions that helped pull our nation out of the Great Depression,
and fought to defeat fascism in Europe and Asia. But those lessons
were more recently obscured by Madison Avenue hype and beltway
spin.
Now we face among other dangers the prospect
of intensified war with Iraq. Without a shred of legal justification
and with the likelihood of a horrible terrorist backlash against
the world's reigning super power, we anticipate using massive
deadly force against the Iraqi People. Like the victims of the
Taliban and al-Quaida in Afghanistan, they are devastated by
many years of poverty intimately linked to the military, political,
and economic system dominated by our government and its corporate
masters. The U.S. government even plans contingencies for preemptive
first use of nuclear weapons against People who are victims of
Saddam Hussein. Our choice lies between collective responsibility
for our children's future, and the collective insanity of the
Bush/Cheney administration. It's decision time for America and
the world.
Not even the world's only super power
and its unchallengeable military machine should aspire to infinite
war as a response to crimes against humanity. Did we learn nothing
from decades of slaughter that deformed the last century? After
World War II the Nuremberg trials established the collective
responsibility of People for failing to resist crimes against
humanity, crimes against peace, war crimes and genocide. We Americans
are now all at risk of guilt under these principles. Failing
to oppose George W. Bush's government by big oil, corporate tyranny,
and racist international aggression condemns us to the shame
of allowing their greed and violence to rule our lives and our
world. One of our best-loved artists now sings words I can't
get out of my head in tribute to the unforgettable heroes of
September 11, who bravely raced into the fire in service of others
and died:
May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love
George W. Bush and his government lack
the moral strength to serve social justice and peace rather than
big business. They lack faith in democracy. They lack hope for
a better world for the masses of the world's People, which is
the only real answer to terrorism. And they lack the love of
humanity. Their strength is killing, making money, and lying
about it. Their faith is non-existent. They hope for apathy of
the American People. They love only money and power.
Thirty years ago, during the Vietnam
war and in the wake of the Watergate scandal, I remember how
my unionist grandfather proudly wore a button on his hat that
said "Dump Nixon," and told everyone who would listen
exactly what he thought about the obnoxious criminal in the White
House. In his memory I can do no less to oppose today's equally
venal U.S. rulers, dedicated as they are to corporate domination
of working People and endless immoral wars in service of the
rich. George W. Bush and his government lack legitimacy. Under
the global crisis conditions caused by September 11, we cannot
afford the luxury of ignoring their moral and legal transgressions.
It is time for them to go.
Tom Stephens
lives in Detroit. He can be reached at: lebensbaum4@earthlink.net
CounterPunch Special Report:
9/11 One Year After
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A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
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Mr. Ashcroft's
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When
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David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers and 9/11
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
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September
6, 2002
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Stolen
Trust
Gale Norton, Indians and the Case of the Missing $10 Billion
September
5, 2002
Ben Tripp
Jesus vs.
George the Second
William Hughes
McKinney's
Defeat:
Undue Meddling
Gavin Keeney
Beaux
Reves, Citoyens!
Wayne Saunders
War
Begins; Nobody Notices
Irit Katriel
Drunk
with Power:
Israeli Chief of Staff Calls Palestinians a "Cancerous Demographic
Threat"
Gary Leupp
Who's Afraid
of Iraq?
September
3, 2002
Nabil Amro
Leadership
& Legitimacy:
An Open Letter to Arafat
Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
Holocaust:
The British in Palestine
Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
Flashback:
US War Crimes During the Gulf War
Lou Cohan
Confessions
of a Downloader
Philip Farruggio
Labor
Day Antidote to Apathy
William Blum
Cuban Political
Prisoners
in the US
September
1, 2002
Dave Marsh
No Surrender:
Springsteen's The Rising
August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
Return to the
Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
Confronting Republicans & Police in Portland
Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid
Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Read
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Whiteout:
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by Alexander
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