Mel Goodman: "Incredible" Shrinking Presidency

“Incredible” Shrinking Presidency, by Mel Goodman (September 9, 2005)

Thus far, the American people, along with the Congress and the American media, have been incredibly complacent in responding to the brutalities of Abu Ghraib, the horrors of the war in Iraq, and even the criminal negligence in New Orleans. There is still no anti-war movement in this country and the few attempts to rally opponents of the war have been disappointing. Such voices of conscience as Cindy Sheehan in Crawford and Senator Robert C. Byrd in the Congress have been largely ignored or marginalized. Fortunately, we the people have one more chance to demonstrate our opposition to the policies of the Bush administration. On September 24, 2005, there will be a series of anti-war rallies in Washington, D.C. and other American cities. If we cannot assemble hundreds of thousands of citizens on that day, then our silence will have established that the American people have the government that they want and even deserve. For the sake of the nearly 1,900 lives that have been lost in Iraq and the untold thousands that have died on the Gulf Coast, it is time for the American people to speak with the only voice left to tell truth to power.

Mel Goodman, a fomer CIA analyst is a co-author of Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives Are Putting the World at Risk, and is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.