Torture Day: George Washington Is Pounding His Fist In The Name Of God From
Heaven

By Brent Budowsky
Created Oct 17 2006 - 4:59pm

The rain pouring down on this cold dark day in Washington is made of the
tears of heroes and patriots through the ages of the American Republic
looking down on us, with outrage, and asking us, with rage:

What in the name of America have you done?

How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad,
that while the walls are crumbling around a failed policy of a war that
should never have been fought, the great symbol of this policy, acts of
torture that have never before been justified in this land of the free and
our home of the brave, are sanctioned by smirking President, a supine
Congress, and a nation that has lost it way.

How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad
that these acts are done in the name of our commanders, when the
indisputable truth in eyes of a just God is that those commanders hate and
despise being ordered to do these things, no matter what lies are told from
the morally undisclosed locations of secret and corrupt power.

How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad
that while our intelligence community speaks with a unamimous voice that
these policies create more terrorists, our leaders sanction the wrongs that
created this nightmare that pours blood on our screens, while we eat our
dinners and watch the television news.

How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad
that these acts done in the name of fighting for freedom and democracy are
an insult to every generation of democratic Americans that has loved this
land before us, and a contempt to the decent opinion of believers in freedom
and democracy around the world, who hunger for an America that is a beacon,
and have such contempt and sadness for an America that resorts to this.

How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad,
that these policies done by those who proclaim "One Nation, Under God" are
despised by believers of every one of the world's great religions, and
supported, only, by the spiritual advisors to the murderers, haters and
killers we are unable to defeat in the battle of ideas.

In our greatest hour of domestic attack, when the fires burned, and the
heroes died, and the mothers and widows cried, our entire nation rallied
with the wrath of a just God, standing together as one, while virtually the
entire world rallied behind us, with good people lifting their eyes to the
sky, with the cry: "today we are all Americans".

In the name of God, in the name simple justice and common decency, what kind
of country do these advocates of torture believe we are, when we are divided
each other, when we are town away from the decent opinion of the world,
where even the anniversary of this solemn hour is defamed by the lies of a
propaganda movie, demeaned by the partisan smears of desperate politicians
abusing the occasion to rise two points in the polls, dishonored by the
sickening slander that the widows of the heroes are harpies.

Let me clear, this is not the latest in the long list of liberals telling
liberals who liberals should hate, or conservatives telling conservatives
who conservatives should hate.

Some things are different. This is different.

Some things are more important. This is more important.

Some things are transcendant and timeless, and go to the heart of who are as
Americans, whether we honor the legacy of those who came before, and what
legacy we leave to those who will follow us.

This is one of those things. This is one of those moments.

This is not about our demon of the hour, to get its 15 minutes of
reprobation, until we move to the next demon of the hour, to get its 15
minutes of fame. This is not about the Democrats or the Republicans. This is
not about the liberals or the conservatives. This is not about the politics
of the hour, the left's favorite grievance, or the right's favorite enemy of
the state.

This is different.

This is different.

This is different.

Lt Commander Charles Swift should be given a major promotion and a
Presidential Medal of Freedom and not the morally sickening and
patriotically revolting violation of the core principles of mlitary justice,
and the traditional prohibition against undue command influence.

The coming Congress should get the name of the man on the piece of the paper
that did this great injustice not merely to a lawyer who stood proudly in
the tradition of Justice Robert Jackson, but did great injustice to the
nation that wants more of its young to emulate Lt. Commander Swift, not the
avatars of torture or the politics of enemies who want our young to be too
fearful, to do their duty to God, country, service and justice for all.

In the name of God, what kind of country do they believe we are, that when
all of our commanders share a time honored notion of military honor we
disregard them so casually, so brazenly, so wrongly, and so dishonorably,
led by those who pin their flags to their lapels, and give speechs at
picnics proclaiming their love for our troops?

In the name of God, what kind of country do they believe we are, that they
say George Washington was wrong and George Bush is right on the matter of
torture, telling us so casually, so brazenly, so wrongly and so dishonorably
that we must act like a fearful and timid people, and do what no previous
president or congress or court in the whole history of our land of the free
and our home of the brave, has ever allowed be done?

In the name of God, in the name of patriotism, in name of decency, in the
name of honor, in the name of dignity and truth and common sense and justice
what kind of a country do they believe we are, what manner of people do they
believe we have become, what kind of beacon do they think we offer this
world, what kind of defamation do they do against the generations that have
come before us, in this great and blessed land we love, that have never done
things like this.

We walk in the footsteps of great generations, who faced far greater dangers
than we do, who handed us an Americanism and patriotism and standards of
freedom and justice and dignity but we are treated by our leaders as the
coward generation, bullied into fear to justify the torture generation when
our commanders, our ministers, our priests, our rabbis, and our allies from
sea to shining sea, from one end of this earth to the other, are pleading
and imploring us, to stop this madness before more damage is done, to ours
soul and our security.

This is different.

This is different.

Never before in the history of our Republic have the military, the moral,
the common sense and patriotic factors all told us to do one thing: stop
this madness that must never be done in the land of the free and the home of
the brave. Stop this madness that creates more enemies that want to kill us.
Stop this madness that violates the cardinal morals of our great nation.
Stop this madness that offends the commanders and clergy, that violates the
most basic principles of common decency, the most basic principles of common
sense, the most true ideals common to lovers of freedom and democracy
everywhere.

This is different.

George Washington was right, and we must wage this fight until we win,
whether it takes hours, or days, or months, or years, or decades because
sooner or later we will win, because we are a better and nobler country. A
better and nobler people. With a better and nobler mission that will outlast
the politics, the polls and the partisans who have done so much damage to
this land we love.

It is a dark, cold, day in our capital with the rain of tears from heaven
pouring onto the Monuments and statues that bear the names of Washington,
Jefferson and Lincoln.

There will never be such monuments in the Mall, within sight of the White
House, that will carry the names of Bush, or Cheney, or Rumsfeld.

There will never be Walls or Monuments, within sight of the Oval Office, as
we have that honor the heroes of the Great Generation and Vietnam, that will
honor our achievements at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

We are not the first generation that faces its challenge.

We will not be the last.

But we will not be treated like the fearful generation by those who believe
our legacy should be the torture generation.

We stand with Washington.

We have not yet begun to fight.

We will not stop until we win.

We will not let George Washington down.

We are the people of America, and we will never surrender the Dream, because
we pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to
the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, Indivisible, with
Liberty and Justice for All.
_______

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson