Sheridan: Con-Law

AMERICA, WHERE WE TREAT PEOPLE LIKE PEOPLE, NOT ANIMALS

"We are Americans, and in our America

we do not torture,

we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy,

we do not tap people's phones and e-mails without court order,

and above all,

we do not give any president unchecked power.


I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from

attack by any president."

*

You'd agree with this, right? 

Good.

George Bush doesn't.

Groups on the left and right are promoting this pledge among presidential nomination candidates and some have signed on.

The article, by the S.F. Chronicle's Bob Egelko, with links to organizers, is below:

DIVINE RIGHT OF PRESIDENTS

Pres. Bush, speaking at a military installation in Martinsburg, W. VA over the Fourth of July told the reservists' families that the war in Iraq was important in the fight against terrorists.  Among the enemy in Iraq were some of the same Al Qaeda people behind the 9-11 Trade Center attack.  We're there to spread democracy, as God intended.

The U.S. and God have a problem.

Whether God intended democracy or not is open to question and I don't think George W. has any greater pipeline to the Almighty than you do, or I.

Does God live in the White House?

Or over at the Internal Revenue Service?  You know, the God-given duty to pay taxes which created the accounting profession?

See, here's the problem.  Every time some tinhorn demagogue wants to do something, like remain in office or promote some war, he claims God as the one who is making him do it, and since no one wants to go against God, well, then, by God, let's do it.  God is on our side, just as Hitler had inscribed on Wehrmacht soldiers' belt buckles:  "Gott Mit Uns."  God is with us.

Let's see, first we had the Divine Right of Kings, over which Charles I lost his head, literally, as well as figuratively.

That was England, our Mother Country, so many of whose diseases we acquired by descent through the vehicle of religious preaching in sermon form.  And, oh, yes, it was the Congregational Church (the Puritans) who founded first Harvard and later, in opposition, Yale universities.  So many others followed suit.  We are the product of our Puritan forebears, like it or not.

Our second problem, after Divine Right of Kings, occurred after we agreed to rely on a document and ourselves to run our government, protect our security at home and abroad, and to preserve our individual rights against our own government and the nosy-neighbors.

We thought we had the right to take everyone else's land...the Indians.  This was easier than taking our white neighbors' land because we  had to recognize that our neighbors, the white ones that is, were people like us.  The Indians, like the blacks (slaves), however, were not quite fully people entitled to rights a white man had any duty to respect. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney said this of blacks in Dred Scott, the decision that greased the ways to the Civil War.  Indians, savages, could be wiped out.  We relocated them many times and wiped out others who refused to cooperate.  Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, and so many more.

But this was okay because God told us so.  We consulted our own captive God and he did our bidding, as we might have expected, since, after all, we invented Him.  In a neat bit of sleight of hand, however, we say he invented us.  So now, when we do something truly evil, we say we're only doing God's bidding, just as Muslim suicide bombers claim to be doing the heavenly work of Allah when they blow us up.

This is called "Manifest Destiny," a term coined in the 19th century right here in America to describe how obvious it was that God wanted the white man to proceed West and take the land so his tribe would prosper, and we did.

It is our Manifest Destiny to rule the world, if you believe the religious folk.

I have it on good report that a certain relative believes in "American Exceptionalism."  This is another term describing the same delusionary notion that God is somehow involved in running our international affairs, not the cookie-pushing State Department.

American Exceptionalism is traced to 1632 when John Winthrop, aboard the Mayflower, wrote that it was his intention, and that of his fellow immigrants (no visas or green cards here, just flat out border-jumpers, the original wetbacks) who signed what we now call the Mayflower Compact, to govern themselves in such a fashion that they would be seen as a New Jerusalem, a "City on a Hill," for all to admire in shining glory.

That sure is us, ain't it?  We're the best.  We're tops.  Anything and everything we do is right, proper and correct, unlike those Germans, French, and British.  We've never lost a war and never will, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, to the contrary notwithstanding.  Since our intentions are good, God smiles on us, and the rest of the world be damned.

This is American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and the Divine Right of Nations all rolled into one, the U.S.A.

The problem with such crazy notions is that there are no built in limits, on purpose.  Why limit ourselves as long as we've got the might to keep going?  Manifest Destiny doesn't stop at the West Coast.  How do you think we got the Philippines? In San Francisco's Union Square we have a tall monument to Admiral Dewey who sank the aged Spanish Fleet in Manila Bay in 1898 and grabbed the country for us, instead of giving it to Aguinaldo, the Filipino guerrilla leader who'd been fighting the Spanish conquerors since before we arrived.  And we kept the Philippines through WWII.  Why?  Manifest Destiny.  God wanted us to because, after all we were white. 

Rudyard Kipling, the poet of empire, mainly British, but in a pinch, us, wrote a poem about this, called "The White Man's Burden."  The poem's thrust is that the world is full of blacks, browns, reds, and yellows, but when it comes to projecting power abroad, the world is ruled by whites.  Pres. McKinley, Dewey's boss, had a vision he described one, night, in a dream, in which he found out it was right and proper for us to claim the Philippines as ours because then we could Christianize the Filipinos. 

Since Catholic Spain had occupied the Philippines for over 300 years, all the Filipinos who wanted had already become Christian.  They didn't need us.  But this made McKinley, a professed Christian, feel better over the outright theft of an entire nation from its rightful owners.  The U.S. Navy felt better about the takeover, too, as it got the naval base at Subic Bay.

God is on the Navy's side as well.  We should write "Gott Mitt Uns" on our ships in large, easy-to-read at sea letters, too.

On our missiles, too.

As long as Gott is Mit Uns, we can do whatever we like, just as Hitler could break his pact with the USSR and invade Russia, as well, having learned nothing from Napoleon.

Next time you see the president proclaiming that it is our God-given right to spread democracy to people who don't seem to want it, remember that you are watching American Exceptionalism at work, with its handmaidens, the Divine Right of Kings and Manifest Destiny, prancing gaily alongside, as at a joyous wedding. 

There's a difference, however. 

If Iraq were a wedding it would have been annulled on grounds of false pretenses a long time ago.

Below is a brief report of part of what Sri George W said.

Note what he says:

"We believe in the freedom for people to worship [God]."

Goddit.  That's why we're losing men and women in Iraq.  So they don't stop us from worshiping God in Kansas City, or wherever else they worship God in the U.S. 

How 'bout the freedom not to worship God.  We do have that, as a matter of Constitutional law.  Barnette v. W. VA (interesting coincidence) proclaims that in this country there is no official orthodoxy and that no government official, high or low, may prescribe how a citizen like me must believe in matters relating to religion, politics, or anything else, for that matter.

George W seems to be flogging religion for political ends, to rally the citizenry to support his failing war in Iraq.  Remember, we have three wars currently and a fourth on the horizon:

1. Afghanistan, to wipe out Al Qaeda, capture Osama bin Laden, and destroy the Taliban, a belief system as much as a defined group of people.  These really are the people who attacked on 9-11.  This may be the only legitimate war we're currently fighting abroad with troops.
2. Iraq.  When a war is entered on false premises and then goes South, how do you extricate yourself?  Maybe you don't.  Maybe you find other reasons for continuing to fight and hang on until you can declare victory and sell that idea.  Bush has nothing yet to sell that the American people are likely to buy, although bringing home the troops and stopping the slaughter may be reason enough to applaud the move, were it to happen.
3. GWOT; the Global War on Terror.  This is a wonderful way to keep the military-industrial-political complex humming along in high gear for as long as people around the world don't like us.  The way we're going we should be able to insure a steady supply of people who don't like us.  We'll have Talibans coming out the ears.
4. Iran.  We haven't liked Iran for a long time and now they're building a nuclear capability.  When Iraq did that Israel flew in and took out the Osirak reactor in an air strike.  I guess one of us is going to have to do that with Iran, as well.  Iran is supplying the insurgency in Iraq, so we have our reasons for going after them.
    

 

FOURTH OF JULY: WHAT AMERICA MEANS TO ME

Today is the Fourth and NPR is broadcasting callers addressing this question.

My response is that America represents freedom of mind, body, and freedom from oppression.

We have different terms to describe these, and their development fills volumes, but that's a fair statement of what they boil down to.

To make us secure on our patch of ground from the rest of the world, we establish government.  To protect individuals from our own government, we insisted on a Bill of Rights.  To protect members of smaller groups from the tyranny of the majority, we've adopted an amendment guaranteeing equal protection of law.  It protects against improper classifications in a world where all legislation acts on classes of people who fall within the designated classification.  All people who make a will, or drive a car, or attend school, or who work, or who own property, or who save, or who spend, are subject to legal rules regarding the conduct.  All people who make friends, live with each other, marry, have children, or decide not to, are subject to laws regulating the class of people in the particular category regulated. 

We also have liberties.  Liberty in the constitutional law sense means having the power to make a choice.  You either have the power (meaning legally enforceable right) to marry the person of your choice or you don't.  You want to marry someone of your own race, ethnicity, or religion?  You have that choice.  At least now, you do.  Previously you didn't.  You want to marry someone of a different race, ethnicity, or religion?  Now you have that right.  Previously, you didn't.  What about gender or sexual preference?  You don't have that right.  Maybe someday you will.

Freedom from oppression?  This is what the Old Testament is about.  Persecution of Jews, the people who wrote the Bible, from Egyptians, Babylonians, other neighbors, themselves, and even from God.  Remember?  He planned to slaughter ALL of the people of Sodom for practicing, well, sodomy.  Abraham challenged:  "You mean, Lord, that you plan to kill the innocent, including women and children, because you want to reach the bad people?"  The Lord had to re-think his plan.  Abraham was the first civil rights lawyer.  A Jewish guy.  Tradition!

The Lord had failed to narrowly tailor his kill-'em-all plan, let the Lord sort them out, an expression that appears on placards in souvenir shops outside the Marine base near Camp Pendleton, California, but goes back to the Crusades.  This was their motto.  Kill all suspected infidels and let God sort out the innocent from the guilty, after they've been slaughtered in the name of religion.

Religion comes from the root "to bind together," as in ligature, as I was recently reminded at a wedding by the (Episcopal) preacher who approached and said, "Your brother-in-law says he's a born-again Episcopalian.  Your other brother-in-law, he said, is a born-again Catholic.  And he says that you're a born again atheist." 

So we had a nice chat, good-natured and filled with laughs, actually. 

At the wedding, my Catholic brother-in-law reminded me that about a decade ago I referred to his belief system as "fairy tales," for which I apologized for my rudeness on the ground that much truth is told in fairy-tale form. 

Later he told me of how his faith helped him.  He described a situation involving the sale of his boat, which  was troubling him as all sorts of problems arose about whether it was functioning properly and how to deliver it if it weren't.  So, bro-in-law described how he prayed to be extricated from this nettlesome situation that caused loss of sleep. 

The next morning he was much relieved to have completed the sale of the boat to the satisfaction of the buyer who was able to take delivery at a discount for the trouble and necessary mechanical attention that would be required. 

Voila!  Proof of the existence of God. 

St. Thomas, are you listening? 

I am incredibly impressed and may have to reconsider my attitude towards some religion, the tie that binds, and slaughters.

What a country! 

We are such a big tent. 

All sorts of people, having all sorts of belief systems live under it. 

I noticed at the reception dinner that when it came time for grace, my super-Catholic bro-in-law, next to whom I was seated, joined with his immediate family in holding hands.  How very nice that he didn't offer to hold hands with me.  He simply held his vacant hand up as though giving a blessing.  Years ago one of his daughters would hold my hand.  I said nothing. 

I did say something, in private, when they roped my aged mother into this. 

She's Jewish. 

Holding hands around the table to thank Jesus for the food she went out and bought and prepared is not one of her things.

So I spoke to my sister, the one who married the born-again Catholic (the other sister married the born-again Episcopalian). 

Now, anyone who wants to pray, prays. 

Anyone who wants to eat, waits until the brief ceremony ends, then eats. 

Who winds up in hell will be determined later, but let's not ruin the meal, okay? 

America. 

Freedom of mind. 

Constitutional law is all around you, even at the dinner table.

One of the Catholic fellow's daughters, when young, had been taught by them that she could save souls by tracing the sign of the cross on the forehead of people she encountered, such as other family members, many of whom do not share this belief and object to being subjected to it. 

We would say, no thank you, and try to wave her off, but she'd been taught by her parents that this was a good thing to do.  She won approval from them for doing this, but disapproval, in silence, from others, as she was a child and no one wished to make her feel that she'd done something improper. 

She finally grew out of the behavior, thank goodness.

Freedom from religion is a wonderful thing.

SUPPORT AMERICA

"Support the Troops" is a slogan meaning "Support the War in Iraq."

Which war in Iraq?

There was the war to topple Saddam. Check. Won that.

There was the war to eliminate the threat from WMD. Check. Won that. Four years ago. Mission Accomplished. Well done, troops.

There is the war on Osama bin Laden. He's in Afghanistan. Or was. Or is hiding in a cave in the nebulous border between tribal Afghanistan and tribal Pakistan. Not in Iraq. Never was. Got it.

Or on Al Qaeda. Wasn't in Iraq. Elements may now be flying in after we tore up the hornets' nest, but this is after we started the war on Iraq, not before. If we're going to attack every country containing people who hate us, we're going to be attacking a lot of countries. Iran and Syria come to mind. Attacking them will enrage people in a lot more countries. We'll have to attack them, if I understand the Bush-Cheney Doctrine correctly, so we don't have to fight the people who don't like us right here in San Francisco.

Well, why not send the troops here now before we attack countries all over the Middle East, as we now have, thanks to Bush-Cheney, a lot red-blooded, patriotic Americans who think the George W Administration has sold us down the Global River, ruining our image, ruining our respect, meaning the respect in which the world has held us even though they had disagreements with us.

After 9-11, the world expressed its outrage against the terrorists and its sympathy and support for us.

Even the French. I am an American, too, said the French. We are all Americans.

The way JFK said, against the Berlin Wall, I am a Berliner. "Ich bin ein Berliner!"

Not too many people abroad want to say "I am an American." Especially American tourists. "I am a Canadian," is more likely to keep them out of harm's way.

What happened?

Bush v. Gore (2000) is what happened.

Our government was hijacked by a bunch of right-wing crazies who were going to out TR Teddy Roosevelt, and out-empire the British Empire, which was a non-stop series of colonial wars for a century-and-a-half in the name of a trade arrangement founded on importing raw materials to the home island and exporting finished goods on British bottoms protected by the British Navy.

Ours is oil.

Same game, different commodities.

Okay, I don't have trouble going to war over commodities to keep the game going, that is our economic system. We've got to live. But so does the other guy, the skinny, desperate, jobless fellow who stands no chance of feeding a family, much less of having one while we join exercise clubs to try to get rid of the lard.

Perhaps we should support America, and spare the troops, by saying exactly what it is that America stands for, rather than what we're against. Yes, we're against terrorists. That's like being against the Devil in a dualistic world in which he plays the cartoon role of bad guy against the role of good guy played by an another cartoon figure we call God. If something bad happens, we blame it on the devil, although sometimes we say it's an act of God. I never did figure that one out. Chalk it up to one of those paradoxes that pop up in large cultures like ours where every opinion center, meaning every individual who cares to comment, has the right to define for himself, and if lucky, for the rest of us, his picture as to how the world is or should be.

Good. If that's the case, I'm speaking up. As long as we have the freedom of expression, constitutionally guaranteed, and supported by troops, I'm going to support them by insisting that this country know what we stand for so that we don't waste the lives of our boys, and girls, by sending them in harm's way to get blown up in a war that isn't terribly well thought out, like post-Mission Accomplished Iraq.

Every day I read about more American troops getting killed in ambushes, or by suicide bombers, or IEDs, or in firefights. I see their pictures in the paper. They remind me of my sons and nephews and friends sons and their couisins and friends, some of whom have been fighting in Iraq, or en route. It tears me up to imagine one of them getting killed in a war that should have ended a long time ago, if even it should have been started by us. So when I see a kid killed that I didn't know, what difference does it make whose kid is killed. He's dead. His family is torn apart. That family could've been mine, or yours. Why send the neighbor's kid if you wouldn't want to see your own son, or nephew, go to war and die? Yes, you want to support the troops, but that doesn't mean you have to be stupid, or obstinate, and believe that because we entered a war, and have troops fighting because their military and civilian leaders tell them that it is their duty, their country demands it, their honor requires them to fight and die, that we keep feeding them like sausages into the machinery of death.

This, of course, is what the British did in the first World War in the trenches of France at the battles of the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele, among many others. We entered that war, which had become a war of attrition in which the British fed the cream of their youth and the Germans starved because Germany was blockaded, its fleet in port, blockaded after the naval battle of Jutland, unable to protect shipping delivering food and supplies. Britain may not have won that battle, exactly, but it won the war, with a little help from us, after German U-boats attacked our shipping and killed innocent Americans aboard the Cunard liner, Lusitania.

It's one thing to see young men fight and die to protect their country from attack, as in World War II when the Empire of Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, sunk the battleship fleet (the carriers were at sea and available to carry the war back to Japan, thankfully, otherwise we wouldn't be writing). Nazi Germany declared war on us a week later. Suddenly we had a two-front war in which the whole country was engaged in a fight to the death.

This is not the description for our unprovoked attack on Iraq, I'm afraid. This is an optional war of choice and it's now four years down the road with little to show for it.

"Support the troops," the war supporters say, as those who say "Bring them home, soon," are not supporting the troops, which seems exactly backwards.

The nation uses its troops to fight for its preservation, mainly, or should, and it's other interests, which if they don't amount to self-preservation per se, require a lot of explaining, and the explanation had better not be based on lies, falsehoods, negligence, or mistakes, which describes our decision to attack Iraq, I'm afraid.

So I say that if you want to support the troops, you do so not by flag-waving in support of any war that comes along, good, bad, or indifferent for as long as troops are dying, while we replace them indefinitely, but by asking what kind of a country are we? What kind of a war is this? And the last people you listen to for answers are those who are too fully invested, or committed, or emotionally involved for one reason or another to the point they can't think straight.

As one near and dear war-fighter's mother said to me today, "I think we've turned the corner in Iraq."

"Yeah, right, I'll believe it when I see it."

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports today that the Administration is considering large troop withdrawals come autumn whether Iraq is read or not to fill the breach with its own troops, because the nation has turned against the Bush Administration and its war to a very large degree. Bush, of course, a lame-duck, promises "a sprint to the finish line" of his administration. I know he's a true believer, but he sprinting to the finish using the lives of American boys, and young women.

Caveat true-believers.

Support America, and the troops will thank you for it.

Where's my Support America bumper-sticker?

Memorial Day is coming up, a good day to visit a nationial cemetery to observe the ceremony. At the Presidio of San Francisco, last year, some of the participants wore period costume, from Civil War uniform to the Spanish-American War of 1898, to WWI and a few WACs and WAVEs of World War II.

Visiting the national cemetery reminds you that we are the beneficiaries of what the people underground fought and died for. The least we can do to honor their memory is to speak up when we see the nation veering off the track onto an arrogant, self-destructive path, if that is what we think, and I certainly do.

You don't give up your right to think for yourself just because you visit a patriotic ceremony. The right to think for yourself is the hallmark of what it means to be an American. This is what the fellows underground fought so hard for, so that you and I can have this discussion.

If we thought it, and didn't say it, because other folks thought differently, and wore their own bumper-stickers and yellow "Support the Troops" ribbons, we'd be letting down those who fought for our right to speak our mind.

See you at the memorial, I hope. I'll be the guy with the camera. I like to record important events that I witness. Have a good one.

NOT A ROGUE STATE

I refuse to believe that America is a rogue state, despite some evidence to the contrary.

A national religious leader such as Smilin' Pat Robertson calls for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.  To be more precise, he calls on the U.S. to do the dirty work.  Since Robertson is a former presidential candidate who leads his own Christian ministry with the 700 Club, which raises a lot of money, and is a big supporter of Pres. Bush, who has not disavowed the murder-call, one of the Conlawprofs just back from Europe reports that it appears to Europeans that the White House just may be in accord.

Meanwhile, on other fronts, the United States, bastion of liberty and justice for all, continues to hold without charging or affording a due process hearing to Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, despite his having the benefit of three court rulings ordering hearings including a Supreme Court decision.

One of the lawyers representing Padilla is Jenny Martinez, 33, a Stanford law professor, who clerked for Justice Breyer and clerked for the International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague, which is trying former Yugoslavian dictator Milosevic for war crimes.  I wouldn't want to see any of our top leaders in the dock alongside him.

Below is an interview of Prof. Martinez discussing constitutional issues in Padilla: