We The People: An Open Letter to Congressby
Tom Chartier Dear Members of the 110th Congress: May I offer my congratulations to those of you who are newly elected. To those of you who were re-elected or whose seat was not contested in this election, my best wishes. Herewith, let me serve notice on behalf of the American people: you are no longer a rubber stamp. You live and work in a world far removed from that of the American citizen. Yours is a world filled with wheel-greasing lobbyists, back-stabbing cohorts, more legal mumbo jumbo than Jarndyce v. Jarndyce And always in the background there’s that droning noise from your hard to please but easy to fool… some of the time… constituency. Well, the rules have changed. In the legendary words of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, "I put a spell on you, because you are mine." We The People of the United States of America are mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore! And you, members of Congress, have been elected to do our bidding. We pay your wages. No longer is your constituency easy to fool. So now would be a good time to look at exactly why you were elected. Understand this clearly for it is all too often forgotten. You work for us… plain and simple. You do not work for big corporations. You do not work for special interest groups. You do not work for the Military-Industrial Complex. And you no longer work for President George W. Bush or Vice President Richard Cheney! You work for us, the American people. Do I make myself clear? Forget, or ignore, this at your own peril. Corporations and special interests may fill your campaign war chests, but we cast the votes. Bush and Cheney may cajole and blackmail or they may promise to reward your loyalty to their agenda, but there’s a catch: they are supposed to work for us too. Trouble is, you, Bush and Cheney have been working for yourselves all along… not us. However, remember this. We made you. We can break you. We The People have chosen you for a very specific task. You have been hired to rid us the tyranny that has engulfed our land. Your first and foremost job is to restore the Constitution of the United States to its former glory as the uncontested Law of the Land. You have been elected by us to restore our constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. Those civil liberties have been stolen from us by a power-mad Executive Branch under the guise of "keeping us safe" from terrorists. Today your mission is to keep us safe from that very evil Executive Branch run by George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. From before Day One, George W. Bush’s goal has been the acquisition of total power and the creation, by force, of a vast military empire, Constitution and the American people be damned. We The People are mad as hell at George W. Bush’s endless stream of self-serving lies. We are mad as hell at the destruction of Habeas Corpus, the attorney-client privilege and we are furious at the White House authorization of illegal domestic spying and wiretapping. We are mad as hell at over 2,800 dead American service personnel, and counting. We are outraged by the wild bin Laden chase in Afghanistan and the illegal war in Iraq both of which were launched to enable that President "Payback" Bush to play "war president." We are mad as hell at the mounting waste of our money in Bush’s war, now estimated to cost America at least $2 trillion… and counting. We have elected you to rein in the spend-a-holic in the White House and to restore sanity to America’s finances. We The People are mad as hell at a Bush’s hypocritical meddling in the affairs of other nations for self-serving oil lust and Halliburton profits. We are sick and tired of Bush’s unending threats of terrorists, and now Islamo-Fascists, used as an excuse for an ever expanding, never ending, Military-Industrial Complex. We are angry at Bush’s foreign policy, which has fanned the flames of radical terrorism rather than snuff them out. We are mad as hell that a bunch of radical "right-wing crazies," a.k.a. neoconservatives, with a death grip on the state of Israel, have taken over America’s foreign policy. We The People are mad as hell at the Bush Administration for destroying America as the best hope of freedom and democracy. We are furious that Bush has squandered the worldwide sympathy that was with us on September 12, 2001. We are livid that Bush has turned the US into a feared and hated global bully. Bush’s America is a rogue state bent on world domination. It’s a loathsome creation that believes might makes right. Armed with a paranoid assertion that all who oppose Bush are "against us," America threatens with "bombing back to the stone age" those countries that do not bow to the will of Bush. Bush’s America is a state where torture is a "no brainer" and the Geneva Conventions are "quaint." Bush’s America is a place run by war criminals who hold that "liberating" civilians means the murders of 655,000 them… and counting. This America is NOT the America of Americans We have elected you to end the illegal war in Iraq, to end the occupation of Afghanistan. You will bring home the troops. You will honor our commitment to their rehabilitation and medical treatment. That is what it means when we commit to supporting the troops. Staying the course with endless Catch 22 style redeployment of combat weary troops on an impossible, endless mission that is guaranteed not only to fail but also to cause more harm than good – that is not supporting the troops. It must cease, at once. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove, Bolton and a whole slew of shady, corrupt characters must be held accountable, impeached and imprisoned. They must be removed from office. Now. America must face facts. Neither is America capable of ruling, nor is it morally entitled to be ruling the world. We The People want you the Congress to end Bush’s neoconservative military adventure aimed at forcing the world to do his bidding. We The People are fed up and mad as hell at a government that condones torture, domestic spying and illegal war as its God given right. We The People are mad as hell at a government that has divided its own citizens into a "with us or against us" society of fear and hatred. This has to stop now! We have elected you take the abominations of the Patriot Act and the Military Commission Act and Bush’s 800… and counting… signing statements off the statute books. Make no mistake. You, the members of the 110th Congress are charged with the task of reversing the six-year Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld nightmare of shame. We The People have elected you to perform this large task. We The People are mad as hell at being hated for being Americans because of the folly of the Bush/Cheney government. Do NOT disappoint us.
November 13, 2006 Tom Chartier [send him mail] played lead guitar in legendary Los Angeles punk band The Rotters for 26 years until their final appearance in January of 2004. He has lived in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Currently he resides somewhere in the Caribbean. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |
Elizabeth
Gyllensvard edited and contributed to this story.