Huffington Post
Brent Budowsky
Torture Day: George Washington Is Pounding His Fist In The Name Of God From Heaven
The rain pouring down on this cold dark day in Washington is made of the tears of heroes and patriots through the ages of the American Republic looking down on us, with outrage, and asking us, with rage:
What in the name of America have you done?
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad, that while the walls are crumbling around a failed policy of a war that should never have been fought, the great symbol of this policy, acts of torture that have never before been justified in this land of the free and our home of the brave, are sanctioned by smirking President, a supine Congress, and a nation that has lost it way.
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad that these acts are done in the name of our commanders, when the indisputable truth in eyes of a just God is that those commanders hate and despise being ordered to do these things, no matter what lies are told from the morally undisclosed locations of secret and corrupt power.
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad that while our intelligence community speaks with a unamimous voice that these policies create more terrorists, our leaders sanction the wrongs that created this nightmare that pours blood on our screens, while we eat our dinners and watch the television news.
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad that these acts done in the name of fighting for freedom and democracy are an insult to every generation of democratic Americans that has loved this land before us, and a contempt to the decent opinion of believers in freedom and democracy around the world, who hunger for an America that is a beacon, and have such contempt and sadness for an America that resorts to this.
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad, that these policies done by those who proclaim "One Nation, Under God" are despised by believers of every one of the world's great religions, and supported, only, by the spiritual advisors to the murderers, haters and killers we are unable to defeat in the battle of ideas.
In our greatest hour of domestic attack, when the fires burned, and the heroes died, and the mothers and widows cried, our entire nation rallied with the wrath of a just God, standing together as one, while virtually the entire world rallied behind us, with good people lifting their eyes to the sky, with the cry: "today we are all Americans".
In the name of God, in the name of simple justice and common decency, what kind of country do these advocates of torture believe we are, when we are divided each other, when we are town away from the decent opinion of the world, where even the anniversary of this solemn hour is defamed by the lies of a propaganda movie, demeaned by the partisan smears of desperate politicians abusing the occasion to rise two points in the polls, dishonored by the sickening slander that the widows of the heroes are harpies.
Let me clear, this is not the latest in the long list of liberals telling liberals who liberals should hate, or conservatives telling conservatives who conservatives should hate.
Some things are different. This is different.
Some things are more important. This is more important.
Some things are transcendant and timeless, and go to the heart of who are as Americans, whether we honor the legacy of those who came before, and what legacy we leave to those who will follow us.
This is one of those things. This is one of those moments.
This is not about our demon of the hour, to get its 15 minutes of reprobation, until we move to the next demon of the hour, to get its 15 minutes of fame. This is not about the Democrats or the Republicans. This is not about the liberals or the conservatives. This is not about the politics of the hour, the left's favorite grievance, or the right's favorite enemy of the state.
This is different.
This is different.
This is different.
Lt Commander Charles Swift should be given a major promotion and a Presidential Medal of Freedom and not the morally sickening and patriotically revolting violation of the core principles of mlitary justice, and the traditional prohibition against undue command influence.
The coming Congress should get the name of the man on the piece of the paper that did this great injustice not merely to a lawyer who stood proudly in the tradition of Justice Robert Jackson, but did great injustice to the nation that wants more of its young to emulate Lt. Commander Swift, not the avatars of torture or the politics of enemies who want our young to be too fearful, to do their duty to God, country, service and justice for all.
In the name of God, what kind of country do they believe we are, that when all of our commanders share a time honored notion of military honor we disregard them so casually, so brazenly, so wrongly, and so dishonorably, led by those who pin their flags to their lapels, and give speechs at picnics proclaiming their love for our troops?
In the name of God, what kind of country do they believe we are, that they say George Washington was wrong and George Bush is right on the matter of torture, telling us so casually, so brazenly, so wrongly and so dishonorably that we must act like a fearful and timid people, and do what no previous president or congress or court in the whole history of our land of the free and our home of the brave, has ever allowed be done?
In the name of God, in the name of patriotism, in name of decency, in the name of honor, in the name of dignity and truth and common sense and justice what kind of a country do they believe we are, what manner of people do they believe we have become, what kind of beacon do they think we offer this world, what kind of defamation do they do against the generations that have come before us, in this great and blessed land we love, that have never done things like this.
We walk in the footsteps of great generations, who faced far greater dangers than we do, who handed us an Americanism and patriotism and standards of freedom and justice and dignity but we are treated by our leaders as the coward generation, bullied into fear to justify the torture generation when our commanders, our ministers, our priests, our rabbis, and our allies from sea to shining sea, from one end of this earth to the other, are pleading and imploring us, to stop this madness before more damage is done, to ours soul and our security.
This is different.
This is different.
Never before in the history of our Republic have the military, the moral, the common sense and patriotic factors all told us to do one thing: stop this madness that must never be done in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Stop this madness that creates more enemies that want to kill us. Stop this madness that violates the cardinal morals of our great nation. Stop this madness that offends the commanders and clergy, that violates the most basic principles of common decency, the most basic principles of common sense, the most true ideals common to lovers of freedom and democracy everywhere.
This is different.
George Washington was right, and we must wage this fight until we win, whether it takes hours, or days, or months, or years, or decades because sooner or later we will win, because we are a better and nobler country. A better and nobler people. With a better and nobler mission that will outlast the politics, the polls and the partisans who have done so much damage to this land we love.
It is a dark, cold, day in our capital with the rain of tears from heaven pouring onto the Monuments and statues that bear the names of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.
There will never be such monuments in the Mall, within sight of the White House, that will carry the names of Bush, or Cheney, or Rumsfeld.
There will never be Walls or Monuments, within sight of the Oval Office, as we have that honor the heroes of the Great Generation and Vietnam, that will honor our achievements at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
We are not the first generation that faces its challenge.
We will not be the last.
But we will not be treated like the fearful generation by those who believe our legacy should be the torture generation.
We stand with Washington.
We have not yet begun to fight.
We will not stop until we win.
We will not let George Washington down.
We are the people of America, and we will never surrender the Dream, because we pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All.