editorial from sf chronicle July 4 2006

Military Families Speak Out is an organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq who have relatives or loved ones in the military. Click on the image to the left to go to their site.

I don't know or care if Riley B. VanDyke is a progressive or a conservative, all I know is that I agree with him. At this point these distinctions are unimportant.

Here it is:

'I'd like to declare independence ...'

Editor -- As America celebrates Independence Day, I find myself wishing I, too, could declare independence.

I'd like to declare independence from the overly simplistic rhetoric from both the left and the right that has virtually eliminated all rational political dialogue in this country.

I'd like to declare independence from a national government that noisily decries "interference" in the form of government regulation, but quietly enacts new regulations that award politically influential corporations more direct control over my daily life than "big government" ever had or wanted.

I'd like to declare independence from a foreign policy that labels all other nations as either subordinates or enemies, and from a government that invariably seeks to package its morally ambiguous uses of military force as new and improved versions of World War II.

I'd like to declare independence from a country that secretly and extrajudicially abducts suspects, holds them incommunicado in secret prisons, tortures them while in custody, then claims that it's spreading democracy.

Ultimately, I'd like more than anything to declare independence from what America has become in the last five or so years. It's impossible for me to believe that our nation's Founding Fathers wouldn't have wanted to declare independence from these things, too.

Have a happy Fourth of July.

RILEY B. VANDYKE

San Francisco


original source


Here is a quote that the criminal master mind behind the abuses at Abu Gahrib and Guantanamo General Geoff Miller surely never read:

" He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."
Thomas Paine

Also, To quote Andy Jacobs Jr., combat veteran and retired congressman in Indiana, " To die for one's country's politicians as a campaign gimmick is to be victimized by a cold blooded atrocity etched in eternity."