Disenfranchising U.S. Reps, Twisting American Ideals
Is ‘Business As Usual’ In The GOP Dominated Congress

By William Finucane & Michael Bradley

Right now, in both the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate there are bills designed to fix what seems to be wrong with United States intelligence. This legislation might well be the single most important piece of lawmaking in American history, but it also reflects the change in the Republican Party, the GOP.

Yes, the intelligence agencies are supposedly being taken to task now. The intelligence agencies are being called to account because their functions were so horribly ill managed that they led the nation into believing Saddam Hussein and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, weapons that could be unleashed in 45 minutes.

Yes, the key element, the so-called American intelligence system, which was used to put the United States in the midst of a pre-emptive war with a nation that was already contained and restrained, is now being evaluated by Congress, and the stated goal is to improve intelligence/information systems for the future of the nation.

But like so many vital issues in today’s national politics, it isn’t what it seems.

The impetus for such ‘intelligence reform’ is derived from the now famous 9/11 Committee, which of course took longer to empanel than it should have for the simple reason that Pres. George W. Bush staunchly opposed its creation. That opposition continued until families who had lost loved ones in the Twin Towers began to question him publicly, then in typical fashion Mr. Bush reversed himself and now takes credit for the committee.

At its inception, the 9/11 Committee sought to determine how all this dead wrong information was treated as gospel by the Bush Administration. And it took a non-partisan look at all that is needed to minimize any possibility of a recurrence, all of which is spelled out in the 9/11Report.

It was a true, non-partisan effort, involving an extremely hard working group of people from both ends of the political spectrum, people who cast aside individual Republican and Democratic politics and delivered a unanimous report. Refreshing.

The effort was clearly aimed at providing Congress with a document that might well be adopted wholesale. That idea died quickly.

George Bush immediately started making moves to keep the personnel and the money relating to the intelligence bureaucracy in his own hands. Meanwhile, House and Senate bills floated to the floor.

One such bill offered an addition to the verbiage of the 9/11 Report that would let Americans move their prisoners of war from soil under U.S. jurisdiction to other countries, where interrogation techniques were not so hampered by overall humanitarian concerns; in other words, prisoners could be tortured.

That legislative effort clearly flies in the face of American ideals and goals.

But it’s also a vivid illustration of the cynicism that permeates a large part of the nation, and which seems entrenched in the intelligence agencies and the belief systems of their right-wing political supporters. In short, this reveals perhaps the most dangerous division in the nation; that is, it shows the contempt that so-called conservatives hold for traditional American values and for those other Americans – thankfully still the majority  – who uphold those democratic tenets.

The current conservative ethos is a perverted type of ‘worldliness,’ which also has the allure of false strength that can at first seem like a form of ‘go it alone’ courage. This ethos leaves behind  the high-minded and the intellectual elite, together with all the average Americans who believe in the nations democratic creed, while a new breed of cynical reactionaries ruthlessly seeks to wield national power to remove anyone or anything perceived as obstacles in the pathway to complete security; this is an age old euphemism for domination and exploitation, based on the myth that absolute security is attainable.. 

But such action is in direct contradiction to everything America has historically represented in the world, and most importantly, such actions are an affront to the Constitution. It is worse than misguided to believe America can appear to be a principled nation, where captured enemies are tried fairly and never tortured, while quietly making arrangements to transport prisoners to client-states or rogue nations where a fair trial is unheard of and torture is allowed or is routine.

The arrogance, and cowardice, of those who would support such actions, either to gain and retain power, or to hope for security through belligerence, also indicates how utterly blind they are to the actual realities of the world; obviously people everywhere will understand that America only voices principles, it does not live up to them. And therefore instead of seeing the United States as a nation to look toward and revere, people around the globe will come to understand America as a viciously hypocritical nation with imperialistic goals, a country that is worthy of their hatred.

But perhaps the GOP leadership is not truly blind to the world, perhaps the right-wing, which is now in such ascendancy in America, believes it is only necessary to keep a large section of America blind. The tools to accomplish this are of course based upon fear; if enough Americans can be blinded and cowed by personal fears, they will not question what is being done by the nation’s leadership. An appeal to cowardice in 'the home of the brave' seems an unlikely tactic, but so far it has shown considerable success.

And so, the provision to shift prisoners to different nations was added to the House version of the 9/11 bill. And not at all surprisingly, the White House of George W. Bush champions the provision, calling it an ‘enhanced tool’ in waging war against terror.

In reality, it is a violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

"The torture provisions in the House bill make a mockery of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation," said Massachusetts Rep. Edward J. Markey, a member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Another part of the U.S. House bill would let the Department of Homeland Security detain foreign nationals – so-called 'aliens' – indefinitely, subject only to the department’s ‘unreviewable discretion.’ Essentially, what this says is that American forces can capture foreigners and turn them over to Homeland Security, and the non-judicial department can swallow them whole and forever. So much for the Constitution.

There is no other way to describe this: It is a Fascist concept. It is the ability of a government agency to lock up any non-American without any recourse to a judge, and all at the behest of the security wing of the government. In other words, security trumps everything. Sorry if you disagree, we simply must keep the United States free and safe.

But this will not keep America free or safe; it will kill freedom and provoke enemies. 

Anyone who thinks otherwise is both naïve and blind. These policies might take 10 to 20 years to wring all the freedom out of the whole country, but it will end that way; America will become a totalitarian state if it follows such policies. What is now being proposed for 'aliens' will ultimately boomerang back to Americans; history is clear in how this works.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety," declared Benjamin Franklin during the period of the American revolution, and history shows that such timid souls usually lose both.  Much more recently, one of America's greatest trial and defense lawyers, Clarence Darrow, put it this way: "You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free."

That totalitarian precepts employed against "others" will come back to claim everyone has been shown over and over again, most recently by the process that Hitler's regime used during the 1930's. Hitler and his Fascist cronies didn't leap full-blown into power; they first began moving against people that most other people didn't care very much about or were suspicious of for one reason or another. 

Today, those 'aliens' are people who are painted with the brush of terrorism, and they are usually so different in appearance, attitudes and customs that it is hard to empathize with them. So if they are held indefinitely at our huge military prison in Cuba, or moved to prisons in other countries, the action is only passingly mentioned in the media and hardly noted by the American public. But history has shown that after the first wave is isolated and subjected to police state tactics, the list is always broadened.

If the current Republican Party philosophy has its way with the public and the nation’s political structure, it is reasonable to expect an end to American democracy.

If there is any doubt regarding the goals of the radical Republicans who have controlled Congress for the past decade, and their collusion with the even more radical Republican Administration of Pres. George W. Bush, there is clear proof in how they have disenfranchised elected United States Representatives in the U.S. House.

The main weapon Republicans are using is secret House meetings to determine what legislation will be brought to the floor for a vote, and how it should be shaped and constructed. Currently, in this process, Republicans meet without any Democrats present; the GOP is in the majority, why should they involve the minority in discussions and have to listen to their concerns, even though they represent large segments of American  voters and citizens? The current GOP Congressional majority doesn’t seem to care at all about minority viewpoints, or even majority public viewpoints if they conflict with their own. They have an agenda and are pressing it forward at all costs.

But what is at the core of such tactics? It seems obvious that the reason the GOP is so arrogant in its majority role in the House, so unwilling to follow the historic give and take and compromises of Congress, is principally because they do not foresee ever again being in the minority, or concomitantly they actually believe the world is in the apocalyptic 'end times' and therefore traditional principles no longer matter. 

The former reasoning would seem to be the only reasonable conclusion, and it explains why the usually staid and traditionally conservative Grand Old Party has cast aside all of its ancient value systems and adopted a slash and burn approach to political discourse and legislative action, yet given the fundamentalist and often stated and illustrated reactionary Christian attitudes of G. W. Bush, the latter possibility must also be viewed and considered. 

It is important to remember that at recent rallies, many 'Christian's' have declared their satisfaction that "God is now in the White House," and Mr. Bush has simply thanked them for the comments, he has not disavowed the concept. He has also gone to great pains to provide code words relating to how much he prays and what his 'born again' religion means to him, and of course he has appointed other top officials with similar views. Attorney General John Ashcroft holds regular prayer sessions in his office.

All of this also serves to explain why the Republicans no longer care whether the nation’s deficit is kept in check, or whether a fair and measured approach to law-making and political action is vital to upholding the Constitution.

The Republicans are going all out in an effort to gain and retain absolute control over the American political system, and that alone should raise concerns.

In the U.S. House, the GOP is using a simple tactic to assert control: Democrats are simply not told of legislative meetings – these lawmaking sessions are for Republicans only, thank you.

So Democrats don’t see the structure of the bills, or any amendments, until the bill is reported out of committee and ready for a floor vote.

In the case of the intelligence bill, it had to come out of committee so that the House bill and the Senate bill could be reconciled for a vote by the whole Congress. But on the House side it is still the work of only one political party. 

As a result of these new twists in the lawmaking process, legislation is not carefully debated in the members meetings, where Democrats and Republicans in times past hammered out a compromise before any legislation emerged for a final decision. The GOP House majority simply refuses admittance to the elected Democratic Congressmen and proceeds to draft laws that suit GOP purposes and goals, period.

The same process took place during the creation of The Patriot Act, which when read in all its complexity illustrates a frontal attack on American liberties cleverly buried within dense verbiage relating to overall security.

The GOP has an old political name but a new philosophy. Republicans today are clearly contemptuous of the two-party system, and by extension, the Constitution. Today's Republicans are not conservatives in any fashion; they have simply co-opted that terminology as a smokescreen. The GOP today is a radical political party.

Compromise is no longer the objective. Wielding power is now the goal. The Republicans can dictate now, and they are pushing to assure permanency in power.

This is treacherous.

When Democrats controlled the House, they of course shared the legislative process with the Republicans. This was more than common courtesy; it was the Constitutional process. Republicans might have lost their argument, but at least they got to make it, and more often than not they generated a compromise. And when the Republicans were dominant, they accorded the same respect to the Democrats.

Not so now.

Democrats are relegated to trying to make amendments to a final bill on the floor; that is, the only time they see the actual legislation is just before a vote, which means that they are faced with reading, understanding and critiquing a massive piece of complicated legislation as it is being brought to a decision. Since they are clearly excluded from reasonable participation, so of course are their constituents, the Americans who elected them from Congressional Districts throughout the nation.

The intelligence bill and the world-wide impact it can have is one of the best examples of why everyone should be heard, just like the 9/11 Committee members put their common sense first and their politics second. That such an important piece of legislation can be created in such a lopsided manner reveals what is happening to the nation under the dominance of the GOP.

Congress was hoping to get a so-called compromise intelligence bill rushed into enactment before the presidential election Nov. 2, which would have been something the Bush Administration could tout as a success. But to achieve that meant that the Senate would have to play ball with the one-sided House, and that particular compromise hasn't worked out.

Thankfully it appears that an intelligence bill that governs how America develops and uses it eyes and ears to scrutinize the world cannot simply breeze into law to fit an election calendar, no matter how much GOP Pres. George W. Bush may have desired it. 

It can only be assumed that if Democratic Sen. John Kerry wins the Nov. 2 election, the atmosphere will differ, enormously, and perhaps the Republican revolution will be checked, at least for the moment.

10/29/04

* Abraham Lincoln once stated: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time."