"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
You may be in the midst of the joyful lockdown in D.C. or in the comfort of your securitized homeland's private free speech zone at home, watching the president elect in his militarized Caddilac dubbed "The Beast;" snatching up Obamemorabalia and swooning with Oprah, the limp strains of Will.i.am and Faith Hill crooning schmaltz: "We are America......."
You may think you're getting the concept, the spirit, the commitment to service and (local/global) community and hope for the potential future that Obama signifies.
You may be an old hippie that went yuppie or the pale mall spawn of that earthy generation; the boomers that went from Woodstock to picket fence; their children raised on corporate branding and "radical soda pop" (thanks Tom Frank) and constant surveillance society; you may be any of the millions of people hornswoggled into going along to get along and selling out your birthright as American citizens.
You may think America is a brand name and your freedoms and rights are always there when you need them, even though you never do a damn thing about it.
If you get on board Obama's Love Train and devote your time to service, do us all a favor and read a bit about the American system of government and how it's supposed to work.
THE GREATEST SERVICE YOU CAN OFFER IS THE ONE THAT THE FOUNDERS INTENDED. HOLD YOUR LEADERS ACCOUNTABLE.
" To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. "
" Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. "
" Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. "
" Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. "
" War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. "
-- George Orwell
COUNTDOWN: Special Comment: Why Obama Must Prosecute Bush's Torture
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x261971<snip>
Since he talked to my friend Bunch in April, Mr. Obama's only lengthy comments about this, were made to George Stephanopoulos on January 11th of this year. See if a disturbing theme becomes evident.
"Obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."
Later:
"My instinct is for us to focus on -- how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing."
Later still:
"My orientation's going to be, to move forward."
Finally:
"What we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past."
Sadly, as commendable as the intention here might seem, this country has never succeeded in "moving forward" without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past.
In point of fact, every effort to merely 'draw a line in the sand' and declare the past, dead, has served only to keep the past alive-- and often to strengthen it.
We compromised with slavery in the Declaration of Independence -- and four score and nine years later we had buried 600,000 of our sons and brothers in a Civil War.
After that war's ending, we compromised with the social restructuring and protection of the rights of minorities in the South.
And a century later, we had not only not resolved anything, but black leaders were still being assassinated in the cities of the South.
We compromised with Germany and the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War -- nobody even arrested the German Kaiser, let alone conducted War Crimes trials and 19 years later there was an indescribably more evil Germany and a more heart-rending Second World War.
We compromised with the Trusts of the early 1900's, and today we have corporations too big to let fail.
We compromised with The Palmer Raids and got McCarthyism, and we compromised with McCarthyism and got Watergate, and
We compromised with Watergate and the junior members of the Ford Administration realized how little was ultimately at risk, and they grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
But Mr. President-Elect, you are entirely correct.
As you say, "what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past."
And that means prosecuting all those involved in the Bush Administration's torture of prisoners -- and starting at the top.
You're also right that you should not "want your first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch-hunt."
But your only other option might be to let this sit and fester, indefinitely.
Because, Mr. President-Elect, some day there will be another Republican president -- or even a Democrat just as blind as Mr. Bush to ethics and this country's moral force -- and he will look back to what you did about Mr. Bush -- or what you did not do -- and he will see precedent.
Or, as Cheney saw, he will see how not to get caught next time.
Prosecute, Mr. President-Elect, and even if you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good, for generations unborn.
<snip>
At the end of his first year in office, Mr. Lincoln tried to contextualize the Civil War for those who still wanted to compromise with the evils of secession and slavery.
"The struggle of today," Lincoln wrote, "is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also."
Mr. President-Elect, you have been handed the beginning of that future.
Use it -- to protect our children, and our distant descendants, from anything, like this, ever happening again.
Good night, and good luck.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/uspoliticsobamainaugurationsecurityWashington goes into security clampdown for inauguration
by Michael Mathes
23 mins ago
WASHINGTON, (AFP) – US Secret Service and police tightened a security clamp on Washington Monday, closing major traffic arteries and throwing up a rigid downtown cordon on the eve of Barack Obama's historic inauguration.
As president-elect Obama criss-crossed the city in his new armored car to engage in community service events, authorities began choreographing a well-rehearsed plan to turn a one-square-mile (three-square-kilometer) area of the capital into a hyper-secure zone.
"The closures have begun, and everything is going along as planned," a spokeswoman for the Secret Service's Joint Information Center told AFP less than 24 hours before Obama is sworn in.
Police blocked off streets to all but official vehicles, and National Guard reservists fanned out to take up positions across downtown, where as many as two million people could arrive to witness history Tuesday.
Military and police helicopters were seen making routine flights over the city, and Secret Service sharpshooters were expected to take up key positions atop government buildings, museums, hotels and offices.
Downtown streets were to fall eerily silent overnight, with access to the district severely restricted from 2:00 am when the state of Virginia shuts bridges into Washington and reroutes public traffic around the city until at least Tuesday night.
"The bridge closures are new to this inauguration," Washington department of transportation official Karyn Le Blanc said, noting that Tuesday will see the first US presidential transition since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
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