Remember that George Allen has been there every step of the way.
We find ourselves caught up in petty distractions of personal indiscretions and personality problems time and time again in the cutthroat cycle that is American politics. Tomorrow we face a referendum on a Bush Administration that has taken our country to the precipice of doom, and brought us to the brink of the very destruction of what America is, the sacrifice and surrender of the values we hold dear at a smoldering pyre of terror.
In the last five years since the shattering of American innocence, the Bush Administration and their rubber-stamp Republicans have gleefully taken credit for our protection from the terrorists to which we have so willingly abdicated the spine of America, dangling over our head infinite Swords of Damocles to keep the voters in line. We have faced no terrorist attacks in the last five years. Not a single American has died on American soil at the hands of al Qaeda, and we comfort ourselves with false security in the form of random screenings and superficial color-coded alerts as we fear bombs in shampoo bottles and terrorists driving taxicabs. We are not a nation at war. We are a nation terrified.
Yet no one is able to consider that al Qaeda no longer needs to kill another American in order to win. George Bush and the Republican Congress have done their bidding. They use lofty rhetoric and fighting words to rally us behind their agenda, telling of how we must continue the fight and how we must never surrender, of resolve and of the fight. Day after day, the specter of death is raised above the heads of a fearful public by them, they pretend that to do so otherwise is giving in to the terrorists. Death is not the threat.
For al Qaeda has already received AmericaGÇÖs surrender.
What is victory to the terrorists? What is an American surrender? An American surrender is not the blood of its citizens nor is victory to the terrorists the 72 virgins that await them in paradise. We must consider the most basic, undisputable definition of surrender from the dictionary: GÇ£to yield to the possession or power of another; deliver up possession of on demand or under duress.GÇ¥
We have yielded under terror, we have delivered up possession and power upon demand to an administration that tramples under their feet the most sacred tenets of the freedoms that separate us from al Qaeda, under duress, for the most dire and pressing of circumstances, for the very survival of America itself, we yield our civil liberties. We have surrendered. Under duress, under terror we deliver up as an offering to our terrorist tormentors our very identity as Americans.
To be successful at terrorism, all al Qaeda must do is cause us all to fall in line, terrorized, cowering in fear. Not one drop of American blood needs to be shed, and bin LadinGÇÖs forces know this. We have brought our fear upon ourselves.
In times past, we have surrendered our liberties to our enemies, but never has the path looked so dark. An example cited frequently by Bush supporters is Abraham Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus for Southern prisoners in 1863, overlooking the fact that this limited directive was necessary for the fight of the Civil War, and once the war was over, habeas corpus was restored. It was for a temporary war with end, for a definable objective.
During World War II, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, condemning thousands of Japanese-American citizens to concentration camps solely based on race. Despicable as it was, that war had an end also. With one pen stroke the lives of thousands were changed forever. All this in the name of fear, fear of the enemy, fear of the other. Amazingly, Japanese internment is invoked as a justification for our treatment of prisonersGÇöitGÇÖs wartime, they say.
This time, however, the threat is more grave, and historical context does not cover it. This time, we have given up our liberties for an open-ended war not against a state, or an enemy definable, or a war with end. We have given up our liberties for a permanent war against fear, and it is a war we will never win, but cannot lose. All wars against states and nations have definable ends.
There is no temporary in terms of terrorism. There will always be terrorism. American hegemony, AmericaGÇÖs role as the lone superpower, forces our enemies to fight us not with brute force or military power, but with a jihadist insurgency that we fuel with every action. We have given up our liberties not for temporary safety, but for permanent safety. Ben Franklin wrote against giving up liberties for temporary safety. When will our liberties be returnedGÇöwhen the war is over? There will be no end unless the Republicans are voted out. We have cowed in the face of terror. We have yielded under duress the fabric and fiber of American freedoms.
Not one more drop of American blood needed to be shed before we availed ourselves to warrantless wiretaps. We have turned the doctrine of innocent until proven guilty on its head. This authority is ostensibly to listen in on terrorists, but without a warrant as an arbiter of justice, as the deciding factor on whether the wiretap is built on reason, there is nothing stopping a president from wiretapping political opponents, or anyone else he can get his hands on. When there is no check on power, it lays waiting for abuse. With no warrant required, whatGÇÖs the difference between a terrorist and a teacher? Our culture has turned to ask whether one has something to hideGÇöprove yourself innocent by spilling your guts. Under duress, we relinquished our rights to terror, the same terror we ostensibly were to fight.
Not a single drop preceded the sequestering of protest and the silencing of dissent that has taken place in a nation muzzled by the strains of a false patriotism that fails to distinguish from blind loyalty to the President a true love for America and by necessity the values and freedoms it was based on. Protesters have been shoehorned into GÇ£free speech zonesGÇ¥ in the name of security. Free speech zones, as if our Bill of Rights, our fundamental, basic right to speak truth to power, can be sequestered inside a line of barricades. No one batted an eyelash as we surrendered, under duress, to terror.
Not one more drop of American blood needed to be shed before we surrendered habeas corpus. There is no longer a right to question your imprisonment if you are accused of terrorism, no matter how baseless. The President can simply lock you up and throw away the key, and the truth is no longer required to be told as you are left to rot. Such abuse is characteristic of Saddam HusseinGÇÖs Iraq, not America. Without a right to habeas corpus, what is to prevent the president from simply throwing dissidents into jail on suspicion of GÇ£terrorismGÇ¥? The GÇ£terroristGÇ¥ will never be able to prove that he isnGÇÖt one. Under duress, we surrendered this right to our enemies.
We have not learned the lessons of Pastor Martin Niemoller. If we allow one groupGÇÖs liberties to be taken away, soon, we will all be destroyed.
Not one more drop of American blood needed to be shed before we were terrified into a war with a rationale based on a quicksand of lies. It is indisputable. There are no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein was not a threat. I need not hammer this into your heads.
Terrorism wins when we are in terror, and that is exactly what the Republicans in Congress and the Bush Administration have forced us into.
It is ironic that those who say ending the war would be surrendering to the terrorists have done nothing but surrender to terror.
This Tuesday, you choose between a continued surrender to the terrorists, or an America where we defend the values that separate us from them.
This Tuesday, you hold a ballot that will decide the future. A century from now, America will look back on these dark days and regret. This Tuesday, you hold a vote.
Vote these bastards out. If not now, when? If not you, who?
These are the stakes.
Vote tomorrow.