Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Ya think “unlawful enemy combatant” would look good in needlepoint?

I stand before you this day to declare that I, your obedient servant, may be in violation of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Specifically, it is within the provisions of the bill that allow for President Bush, via his minions, to deem me an “unlawful enemy combatant” for any poem, commentary or statement I have ever made, impugning his or his administration’s frighteningly ineffective and actively dangerous efforts to end global terrorism.

We’re half way around the world, bombing people who have done nothing to us. The administration seeks to influence policies and elections in other countries, and threatens intervention if they do not toe our political line. Isn’t that what we fought against during the cold war? Didn’t we stand against the Communists to keep them from venturing into other countries? I am not a conspiracy-theory left wing nut job, but I am way past offended that this administration sees their job as remaking the United States of America in the image of the late UNlamented Soviet Union. Democracy at gunpoint… if that isn’t an oxymoron, then President Bush can pronounce ‘nuclear’.

I cannot and will not be silenced by toadies like Donald Rumsfeld, who has never risked his overweight, coronary-ready ass for his country but presumes to tell ‘the faithful’ that he knows what will make us victorious in war. What he ‘knows’ is how to profit from corporate involvement in war, and how to make a few bucks for his friends in the bargain.

I shan’t be deterred by the religious right, put off by the neocondescending disinformation machine, or undermined by the unfair, unbalanced, untrue and unprincipled Fox News Network.

I will not be haunted the Coultergeist, shadowed by the government, governed by the incompetent or overruled by the supposed rulers of what was, until the MCA of ‘ought-six, a country both democratic and free.

Calling this law wrong is the understatement of the century. I am, as all Americans should be, ashamed for my nation and for the Great American Experiment, whose demise this law may very well portend.

With that, a final word… I have a house that’s paid for, a really cool motorcycle and a new love of my life…… if I disappear, I sure as hell didn’t run away.

Later.