The Ben Tre Agenda
In the same speech before the American Legion which I referenced earlier, the GOPresident used the term “freedom agenda” to describe his policies in the misnomered War on Terror.
Orwellian in its irony, the phrase returns me to a number of items I’ve recently posted here, because even — or especially — on the White House’s own terms, the nation’s national security policy fails miserably, since its point seems to be to capitulate to the terrorists (or, to use Secretary of Pretense Rumsfeld’s terminology, appease them) by methodically working to rid the U.S. of the freedom which allegedly motivates the enemy to kill us.
The agenda of GOPresident Bush, Viceroy Cheney, Secretary of Pretense Rumsfeld, and Generalissimo Alberto — an agenda consisting of surveillance of American citizens, “free speech zones” at political and public events, use of secret evidence in the courts, sham trials or no trials at all for terror suspects, torture and rendition, indefinite imprisonment, overly-broad “no fly” lists, undermining both the legislative and judicial branches, tampering with elections, deceiving the nation into war, using terror alerts to obscure bad political news, and condemning critics (a group which include the 60% of the American public who want U.S. troops redeployed out of Iraq) as being at best confused and at worst traitors — hardly can be considered a “freedom agenda”.
Rather, we perhaps should begin calling the policies of the GOPresidency the Ben Tre Agenda: “It became necessary to destroy our freedom to save it.”