Protest is Patriotic - DUH!

I support our troops, especially those in the Middle East. A Colonel commanding troops in Iraq is a college classmate of mine, and one of the finest guys you will ever meet. Our troops are dedicated, capable and courageous, and risk their lives implementing our nation’s policies and preserving our right to criticize our leaders. Unfortunately, through the arrogance, misguided idealism and poor judgment of the Bush administration, our troops have been placed in a horrific situation in Iraq, part of an ill conceived exercise in nation-building. It is my admiration for the troops and my compassion for their sacrifice that compels me to speak out against the string of bad decisions and failed policies that got our nation embroiled in Iraq.

On Saturday, thousands of Americans marched on Washington to protest the same failures of the Bush strategy, and to continue to pressure the administration to articulate specific conditions for withdrawal from Iraq. Some protesters wanted immediate withdrawal, while others wanted a gradual draw-down. But all believed that the Executive Branch has failed us, and failed our soldiers.

Yet some of our nation’s leaders cannot acknowledge, nor perhaps comprehend, that the President can make grave and unforgivable mistakes. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama spoke Sunday at a counter-rally that drew only four-hundred protesters. They described themselves as pro-troop, but their rhetoric was pro-war, not that the first requires the second. Sessions told them, "The group who spoke here the other day did not represent the American ideals of freedom, liberty and spreading that around the world. I frankly don't know what they represent, other than to blame America first.''

Sessions’ statement was absurd, the worst kind of corrosive and deceptive rhetoric.

Both groups of protesters were exercising the precise liberty Sessions references. Unlike tyrannical social systems like Communism, our citizens are free to speak out against the ineptitude of our leaders, to provide the ultimate check on power. When will Republicans admit that criticism is the ultimate form of patriotism? After all, when Republicans were out of power they spent most of their time criticizing, and it made for a better America then, too. Running out of justifications for the mistakes of the Bush team, they have no choice now but to bad-mouth the Bush critics.

Bill Moyers, hated by conservatives because he so capably describes their shortcomings, spoke at Union Theological Seminary recently about terrorists:

“They win only if we let them, only if we become like them: vengeful, imperious, intolerant, paranoid. Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use the fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think and reason together, allowing others to tell what's in God's mind. Yes, we are vulnerable to terrorists, but only a shaken faith in ourselves can do us in.”

By his measure, the terrorists have been winning. Our nation has become more vengeful, and many so-called Christians have become increasingly intolerant, their leaders certain they know the mind of God. We have killed many innocents in our effort to force democracy on Iraq. Our President has become more imperious and his administration more paranoid, using fear to bully us into keeping quiet about his failures. Calling protesters “un-American” is a form of bullying. And remember those regular terror warnings that suddenly stopped after the ’04 election?

A recent article by the Associated Press detailed how US Navy jets were secretly conscripted to fly our prisoners to places like Egypt to be tortured. I’ve yet to hear any compelling rationale for this unjust and immoral policy. It is disgraceful and against everything our great nation says it stands for. Our President and Senator Sessions apparently hope this kind of shameful news will just go away.

But thanks to patriotic Americans, the spotlight remains on the vast and growing catalog of misjudgments, ethical lapses, mistakes, bad policies and dirty dealings of our Executive Branch.