The rain pouring down on this cold dark day
in Washington is made of the tears of heroes
and patriots through the ages of the American
Republic looking down on us, with outrage,
and asking us, with rage:
What in the name of America have you done?
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how sick,
how wrong, how evil, how sad, that while the
walls are crumbling around a failed policy of
a war that should never have been fought, the
great symbol of this policy, acts of torture that have never before been
justified in this land
of the free and our home of the brave, are
sanctioned by smirking President, a supine
Congress, and a nation that has lost it way.
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how
sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad that
these acts are done in the name of our
commanders, when the indisputable truth
in eyes of a just God is that those commanders
hate and despise being ordered to do these
things, no matter what lies are told from the
morally undisclosed locations of secret and corrupt power.
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how
sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad that
while our intelligence community speaks
with a unamimous voice that these policies
create more terrorists, our leaders sanction
the wrongs that created this nightmare that
pours blood on our screens, while we eat our
dinners and watch the television news.
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how
sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad that
these acts done in the name of fighting
for freedom and democracy are an insult
to every generation of democratic Americans
that has loved this land before us, and a
contempt to the decent opinion of believers
in freedom and democracy around the world,
who hunger for an America that is a beacon,
and have such contempt and sadness for
an America that resorts to this.
How ironic, how demented, how vile, how
sick, how wrong, how evil, how sad, that
these policies done by those who proclaim
"One Nation, Under God" are despised by
believers of every one of the world's great
religions, and supported, only, by the spiritual
advisors to the murderers, haters and killers
we are unable to defeat in the battle of ideas.
In our greatest hour of domestic attack, when
the fires burned, and the heroes died, and
the mothers and widows cried, our entire
nation rallied with the wrath of a just God,
standing together as one, while virtually
the entire world rallied behind us, with good
people lifting their eyes to the sky, with the
cry: "today we are all Americans".
In the name of God, in the name simple justice
and common decency, what kind of country
do these advocates of torture believe we are,
when we are divided each other, when we are
town away from the decent opinion of the world,
where even the anniversary of this solemn hour
is defamed by the lies of a propaganda movie,
demeaned by the partisan smears of desperate politicians abusing the
occasion to rise two points in the polls, dishonored by the sickening
slander that the widows of the heroes are
harpies.
Let me clear, this is not the latest in the long
list of liberals telling liberals who liberals should hate, or
conservatives telling conservatives who
conservatives should hate.
Some things are different. This is different.
Some things are more important. This is more
important.
Some things are transcendant and timeless,
and go to the heart of who are as Americans,
whether we honor the legacy of those who
came before, and what legacy we leave to
those who will follow us.
This is one of those things. This is one of those
moments.
This is not about our demon of the hour, to
get its 15 minutes of reprobation, until we
move to the next demon of the hour, to get
its 15 minutes of fame. This is not about the Democrats or the
Republicans. This is not about the liberals or the conservatives. This
is not about the politics of the hour, the left's favorite grievance, or
the right's favorite enemy of the state.
This is different.
This is different.
This is different.
Lt Commander Charles Swift should be given
a major promotion and a Presidential Medal
of Freedom and not the morally sickening and
patriotically revolting violation of the core
principles of mlitary justice, and the traditional
prohibition against undue command influence.
The coming Congress should get the name
of the man on the piece of the paper that did
this great injustice not merely to a lawyer who
stood proudly in the tradition of Justice Robert
Jackson, but did great injustice to the nation
that wants more of its young to emulate Lt.
Commander Swift, not the avatars of torture
or the politics of enemies who want our
young to be too fearful, to do their duty
to God, country, service and justice for
all.
In the name of God, what kind of country do
they believe we are, that when all of our
commanders share a time honored notion
of military honor we disregard them so
casually, so brazenly, so wrongly, and
so dishonorably, led by those who pin their
flags to their lapels, and give speechs at
picnics proclaiming their love for our troops?
In the name of God, what kind of country do
they believe we are, that they say George
Washington was wrong and George Bush
is right on the matter of torture, telling us so
casually, so brazenly, so wrongly and so
dishonorably that we must act like a fearful
and timid people, and do what no previous
president or congress or court in the whole
history of our land of the free and our home
of the brave, has ever allowed be done?
In the name of God, in the name of patriotism,
in name of decency, in the name of honor, in
the name of dignity and truth and common
sense and justice what kind of a country do
they believe we are, what manner of people
do they believe we have become, what kind
of beacon do they think we offer this world,
what kind of defamation do they do against
the generations that have come before us,
in this great and blessed land we love, that
have never done things like this.
We walk in the footsteps of great generations,
who faced far greater dangers than we do, who
handed us an Americanism and patriotism and
standards of freedom and justice and dignity
but we are treated by our leaders as the
coward generation, bullied into fear to justify
the torture generation when our commanders, our ministers, our priests,
our rabbis, and our allies from sea to shining sea, from one end of this
earth to the other, are pleading and imploring us, to stop this madness
before more damage is done, to ours soul and our security.
This is different.
This is different.
Never before in the history of our Republic
have the military, the moral, the common
sense and patriotic factors all told us to do
one thing: stop this madness that must never
be done in the land of the free and the home
of the brave. Stop this madness that creates
more enemies that want to kill us. Stop this
madness that violates the cardinal morals
of our great nation. Stop this madness that
offends the commanders and clergy, that
violates the most basic principles of common
decency, the most basic principles of common
sense, the most true ideals common to lovers
of freedom and democracy everywhere.
This is different.
George Washington was right, and we must
wage this fight until we win, whether it takes
hours, or days, or months, or years, or
decades because sooner or later we will
win, because we are a better and nobler country. A better and nobler
people. With
a better and nobler mission that will outlast
the politics, the polls and the partisans who
have done so much damage to this land we
love.
It is a dark, cold, day in our capital with the
rain of tears from heaven pouring onto the Monuments and statues that
bear the names
of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.
There will never be such monuments in the
Mall, within sight of the White House, that will
carry the names of Bush, or Cheney, or
Rumsfeld.
There will never be Walls or Monuments,
within sight of the Oval Office, as we have
that honor the heroes of the Great Generation and Vietnam, that will
honor our achievements at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
We are not the first generation that faces
its challenge.
We will not be the last.
But we will not be treated like the fearful
generation by those who believe our legacy
should be the torture generation.
We stand with Washington.
We have not yet begun to fight.
We will not stop until we win.
We will not let George Washington down.
We are the people of America, and we
will never surrender the Dream, because
we pledge allegiance to the flag, of the
United States of America, and to the
Republic for which it stands, one Nation,
under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and
Justice for All.