For a long time, I wanted to ask President Bush why, if the Dixie Chicks knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he couldn't figure it out for himself.
The Dixie Chicks are sharp tacks, don't get me wrong, but are we really comfortable with them knowing more about foreign policy than the president?
I no longer want to ask that question, primarily because the answer is now obvious: George Bush knew what the Chicks knew, but he lied to us about it. He had a secret plan for Iraq from the get-go. He made that clear in a recent television address, when he said America would have to be in Iraq for a long time, maybe a half-century, just like in Korea. Can you say, "corporate robbery"?
Today, when I look around me, I see an America that I barely recognize. The economy is sinking faster than a bobber with a 50-lb. catfish on the other end. Health care has become a plaything for the rich. And we're in the middle of an immoral war that was started for the sole purpose of satisfying a handful of fat-cat Texas corporations.
If you think the latter claim is an exaggeration, consider ex-Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan's acknowledgement in his recently published book that we went to war over oil. The lifelong Republican wrote: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Pulling the strings for the oil grab, the sinking economy and the health-care mess, was none other than the Lizard of Oz, the best friend a corporation ever had—George W. Bush. As a nation we have a poor memory of how our founding fathers viewed corporations.
They mistrusted them because of evil-doing by three infamous British corporations: the East India Company, the South Sea Company and the Virginia Company, the scandalous activities of which tainted several generations of British society and had a profound impact on the leaders of the American Revolution.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Fearful of the power corporations could amass, James Madison twice proposed during the Constitutional Convention that the federal government should be put in charge of corporations "in cases where the public good may require them and the authority of a single state may be incompetent." The convention rejected Madison's proposal, which left us with the mess we have today.
As the price of the Iraq War becomes more evident—U.S. Senate researchers put the cost at nearly $2 billion a week, or $11 million an hour—Americans raise two interesting questions. How do we pay for the war? And what do we do about the corporations that are making obscene profits off the war? Doing nothing is not an option.
To pay for the war, we need to pull up the voting rolls across the country and try to separate registered Republicans from registered Democrats, where it is possible to do so. Once we've done that, we can assess a special tax on Republicans and allow them the honor of paying the full cost. It's only fair because the war was their idea—and they made all the money off it. But let's not be cruel. For each $10,000 in war taxes paid, let's give each Republican taxpayer a free pass to the Michael Moore movie of their choice.
As for the corporations, it's time that all corporations linked to national security—arms manufacturers, oil companies, etc.—be purged of their corporate status. It is wrong on so many levels for stockholders to make money off the cruelties of war.
If the purpose of the Iraq War was oil, then that oil belongs to the American people and not to American corporations. Since we already paid for the oil with our tax money, every American should get a free fill-up once a week for the rest of his or her life. And maybe throw in a free carton of soft drinks.
The Lizard of Oz presidency has been a disaster, as even Greenspan admits, the end result of which could well be the extinction of the Republican Party. The GOP, the party of Abraham Lincoln, deserves better than that.
In your heart, you must know that the worst is yet to come.
Even so, when congressional hearings about the war take place after the election of a Democratic president, will we, as a nation, be able to handle the truth?
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