This week marked the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 bombings. It is a time of reflection and contemplation.
While I agree that it is a day to be remembered, we must look forward and deal with our current political situation.
I believe it is helpful to examine the present through the prism of the past. I believe that President Barack Obama is not getting that benefit of the doubt from many in this nation currently.
Intelligence and video shows that Syria has used chemical weapons against its own people. I encourage you to look up the video if you have not viewed it. It is certainly disturbing and surely not for young eyes; but sometimes ugliness needs to be shown to really understand it.
We can debate whether a military strike is warranted, or that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons should be the way to go.
Unfortunately, some in America’s conservative community do not really care. They still, after two lawful elections, want Obama gone.
These radical “wacko birds” as Sen. John McCain called them, want Obama impeached for anything and everything. Last week, the cry came out that if Obama bombs Syria, he must be impeached. How quickly “wacko birds” choose to forget.
Just a decade ago, former President George W. Bush started a war with Iraq with knowingly false intelligence of weapons of mass destruction and used Sept. 11 as the excuse.
Of course, those weapons were never found because they never existed. Millions of conservatives said nothing against this while thousands of our American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died for a lie.
All of this makes Watergate look like shoplifting; still there was no impeachment talk then from the conservatives.
In 1987, the Iran-Contra Affair came to light. For those too young to remember, former President Ronald Reagan and his underlings sold Iran— an avowed enemy— weapons and then funneled the cash to the Nicaraguan Contras. This violated our Constitution.
While investigated [and once again much worse than Watergate], no impeachment of Saint Ronnie was talked of then from conservatives.
One of the first things former President George H.W. Bush did upon taking the office of the presidency was to pardon anyone who could link him and Saint Ronnie from Iran-Contra. This was a de facto admission of guilt.
Any talk of impeachment of Bush the Elder? You know the answer to that question.
Our conservatives in America are sure a spoiled bunch. When they are in control— discriminating against any and all minorities and making the tax code so slanted that the middle class stops existing while the super-rich get richer— they are a happy bunch.
When they lose power in any branch, especially the presidency, they instantly become the rotten kid crying and stomping his feet in the grocery store checkout line. They have become the party of taking their ball and going home when they get mad.
The ultimate example of aforementioned bad, rotten behavior by America’s conservatives’ has been impeachment or the threat thereof.
While Reagan and Bush II committed far worse offenses than Clinton or Obama, the liberals in power knew that the power to impeach was put in the Constitution as a last wall of defense against lawlessness. Memo to conservatives: having an affair, being an African-American or using the lawful power of the Presidency is not grounds for impeachment.
It is time for much of our electorate to demand better representation in Congress.
It is also time for news outlets that flat-out peddle lies, innuendo and conservative fantasies as truth to die on the vine.
Most of all, it is time for this part of the electorate to smarten up.
While you are screaming for the banishment of anyone who isn’t arch-conservative, you should know you are being used. While you are screaming about birth certificates and how Obama is a Muslim [and what if he is] you are paying higher tax rates than millionaires like Mitt Romney and billionaires like Warren Buffett.
All that empty impeachment talk has certainly helped you, has it not?
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