May 26, 2014
RE “MERE disagreements no excuse to dump graduation speakers” (Editorial, May 17): Your support for Condoleezza Rice (click here) as commencement speaker at Rutgers shows a shocking sanitizing of her history before the Iraq War. After more than a decade of journalistic investigation into that war, I doubt a “reasonable” person would consider Rice’s actions a subject of “mere disagreement.”
As secretary of state under George W. Bush, Rice, along with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, helped deceive the American people into supporting the attack on a country with no connection to 9/11. Her famous statement that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” was based on no evidence that Iraq had nuclear capability or the ability to use it against its enemies. It was one of several war-mongering deceptions the administration used to sell the war.
Your editorial states that she has an instructive story to tell, including her climb to power against gender or racial barriers. But it would be more instructive to learn how the Bush administration’s deceptions prevented thousands of young American and Iraqi women from ever having a chance to rise to power.
theguardian.com
Re-elected US president George Bush (click here) today said he intended to spend the "political capital" he earned campaigning for the White House.
In his first press conference since the election he acknowledged he had to "explain the decisions I make" but said he had every intention of following through with a second term agenda stretching from an overhaul of the tax system to "spreading freedom" in the Middle East.
"The people made it clear what they wanted," he said. "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and I intend to spend it."...
When I heard those words, my first reaction was, the election no longer matters, the right wing will simply do as they please to satisfy their cronies and disregard the American people. I was proved to be correct when Bush then immediately turned to the Social Security System to attempt to tap it for $2 trillion US for the purpose of privatization.
There is no such thing as political capital that will carry anyone into permission to overrun the people of this country.
When Ms. Rice came forward to speak at a commencement which defines the future projection of a graduating class she was counting on the fact no one remembered the atrocities of the White House administration she was a participant. Once again Americans were faced with this discounting of reality known as 'Right Wing Political Capital.'
This idea right wing politicians are untouchable entities of power from the day they enter office because it is important to 'the politics of the nation' is the biggest myth this country relies on to call itself a two party system. There are no two parties anywhere on the landscape. There are the Democrats willing to take up the liberation of citizens forced to the fringe and there is the party of Wall Street. The Republicans are no more about small business than they are about immigration. They are no more about freedom than the latest Voter ID laws to control the outcome of their power brokering.
There is no two party system in the USA, it is the Democrats vs Wall Street. When a right winger like Ms. Rice comes forward to speak it is an attempt to push back the disgustingly corrupt image of her party and not to bring a message graduates want to hear or a message the rest of the country wants to hear. It is for sound bits and the casting of political images completely affront to our democracy.
The American people can no longer isolate issues into right and left wing. There are profound problems facing the USA and any attempt at image making needs to be put in check when it is matched with the depth of corruption of the Bush/Cheney White House.
