Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one
who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can
ignore the present war and can ignore the colossal failure, the
staggering mistake that is the Bush administration. I am paraphrasing
(and, obviously, adding to) the words of Martin Luther King Jr., but I
can be paraphrasing anyone ever who has found himself in a unique epoch
in which his government has led the people into historical doldrums, in
which a tyrant has established an era of profound error and has
threatened the core of freedom, or liberty, or democracy, or whatever
term, once hallowed and holy, has been stripped and perverted.
The Bush administration did not merely mishandle
the disaster of Hurricane Katrina -- it is more accurate to view this as
two simultaneous disasters, as an earthquake upon a tornado. Earlier
this morning, over 100 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in
Baghdad, the most “secure” and guarded city in Iraq. Then there is the
attack on civil liberties, the energy crisis, John Bolton, the Rove
leak; then there is an election that was never legitimate in the first
place; then there is deceit upon deceit, manipulation upon manipulation,
all of which have threatened the lives of all Americans at home and
fighting overseas, all of which have withered away any remaining
American integrity and international stability.
This is not an exhaustive argument, but rather a
preliminary declaration that it is now incandescently clear that Bush
and Cheney should be impeached and Rumsfeld revealed as an inept
criminal. Perhaps Colin Powell can just go down in history as a traitor
to reason. Let’s be clear: except for the moments preceding the
invasion of Iraq, it is more urgent now than ever before that this
administration be removed from power. The voice of opposition needs to
become thunderous; the outrage needs to be stirred into action. Let us
not take our place among the complacent bystanders of history, among
those who future generations gaze upon with shock, unable to understand
how, in the face of such wrongdoing, of such injustice, there is
silence. Never before has fierce opposition to the President been more
patriotic.