J'accuse: The Bush Administration

Yesterday, the White House produced its "National Strategy For Combating Terrorism", and like the infamous "National Stratergy for Victory In Iraq" it is mostly a powerpointed regurgitation of talking points that bear little or no relation to anything like an actual strategy. The hypocrisy is tangible even in the press blurb:

The Long-Term Solution For Winning The War On Terror Is The Advancement Of Freedom And Human Dignity Through Effective Democracy.

Effective democracies honor and uphold basic human rights, including freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, association, and press. They are the long-term antidote to the ideology of terrorism today. This is the battle of ideas.

Defeating Terrorism In The Long Run Requires That We Diminish The Underlying Conditions In Society That Terrorists Seek To Exploit By Advancing Effective Democracy:

Terrorists Exploit Political Alienation. Democracy gives people an ownership stake in society.

Terrorists Exploit Grievances To Blame Others. Democracy offers the rule of law, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the habits of advancing interests through compromise.

Terrorists Exploit Misinformation And Conspiracy Theories. Democracy offers freedom of speech, independent media, and a marketplace of ideas to expose and discredit falsehoods.

Terrorists Exploit An Ideology That Justifies Murder. Democracy offers a respect for human dignity and rejects the targeting of innocents.[All emphasis as per original]

In other words, the long-term solution for winning the war on terror is to get rid of the Bush administration, for they have stepped upon every single one of these essential requirements.

They have insisted that Christianity be the State religion of the USA, going so far as to fund healthcare which is for Christians only and to deny appropriate grave-markers to those dead heroes who held a faith different from their own. They have prosecuted those who refused, through conscience, to serve in wars the objectors held to be illegal. They have clamped down on free speech and the freedom of the press, even suggesting that such is aiding the enemy in the most dire tones imaginable. They have interfered in the freedoms to assemble and associate where those freedoms impinged upon their own agenda. They have inflicted a monumental defeat upon America in the battle of ideas, one far larger than the terrorists have ever managed.

They have done their best to decrease Americans' ownership of their own society by voter supression and vote rigging, by the rhetoric of division and by ignoring every call for a reassessment of their policies, secure in their belief in their own righteousness.

They have deliberately walked away from the rule of law over their eavesdropping programs. Similiarly over detainments, renditions torture and secret prisons that contravene international and domestic statutes - no matter what those detained are alleged to have done. They have forgone peaceful resolution of international disputes via international entities and instead advocated and even carried out illegal pre-emptive aggression.

They have created and exploited misinformation and conspiracy theories for their own base ends, while usurping the freedom of the media, covering up their falsehoods and demanding that no voice should be raised against them.

They have knowing followed an ideology that justifies the murder of innocents as regime-change for those self-same innocent's good. The ideology they espouse has even tried to redefine what "innocent" is.

Even the party that backed this administration is having second thoughts and beginning to realize that it says it wants to preserve liberty and freedom while actually doing the exact opposite.

The Bush administration stand condemned, by their own words and by the massive body of evidence that those words are falsely uttered. The long war on terrorism cannot be won while they or their co-travellers remain in positions of power. They have deliberately misled the nation while at war and their actions, as opposed to their words, have aided the enemy.

Many uber-right pundits have said, while accusing critics of the Bush administration of treason, that "if the cap fits..."

So be it. The cap fits. The Bush administration and its supporters should wear it.