What would Roosevelt make of Cheney?
As Cheney and others attack anyone who questions the President's wisdom over Iraq and impugn them as "giving aid to the enemy", the words of Theodore Roosevelt seem especially apt.
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.There. Those calling for blind support of the President are "morally treasonable to the American public".
Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald.
tag: Dick Cheney, Bush, Iraq war, , surge and accelerate
2 comments:
Thank you!
An excellent, succinct statement that damns the neocons and the servility they have tried to normalize.
In particular, to defer to this President -- who has increasingly shown how out of touch with reality he is -- is a betrayal of our nation, of the Iraqi people now suffering through a vicous civil war, and of the US soldiers whose lives are being thrown away to protect George Bush from having to face his mistakes.
-- Fiona West
It is the soldiers now dying that compels most of us to speak and condems the logic of Cheney, one of the most foul men ever to hold the office of Vice President.
Post a Comment