What is it good for?

Joe Costello has an excellent post on Of By and For on the constantly changing justification for the Iraqi War:

Last week, the inane reasons trifecta came in on why we invaded and occupied Iraq. No WMD, no al Qaeda, and finally the third horse made it passed the wire, no democracy. Of course, that was always the hardest drivel to swallow. What does the political class of this country have to teach any other nation about democracy?

Joe has evidently forgotten about America's manifest destiny. We're more moral than everyone else because God made us that way. And unlike other country's, our nation's politicians are solely motivated by God and patriotism (despite millions of dollars pooring in from corporations.)

So Iraq's and our symbiotic spiral continues. Our president hails the new Iraqi constitution, enshrining religious law, as part of the American tradition. Despite the fact, that in 1787, this republic unprecedently built, as Jefferson stated, "a wall of separation between church and state." This administration attempts to bend all perception to their corrupted and failed unreality, repeatedly trumpeting a disregard for our republic and its traditions. Next, the president reiterated, “as long as I'm the President, we're staying,” revealing another great degradation in our two century old republic – unbridled executive power.

I guess these psuedo-cowboys from Texas ain't into bridles. But aren't these special times. Unlike during the American Revolution when we just had wimpy Britain to deal with, we're really threatened at this point by countries like Iraq and Venezuela.

In 1973 Dr. Thompson wrote, “By the time Richard Milhous Nixon goes on trial in the Senate, the only real reason for trying him will be to understand how he ever became president of the United States at all...and the real defendant, at that point, will be the American Political System.”

Indeed. There was the decrepit underbelly of the American political system exposed: an out of control executive branch stomping on rights here and instigating imperial misadventures abroad; an electoral system in the pocket of big corporate money, an increasingly effete and insular political class; and a complicit media.

But, we didn't have that needed trial in 1973. Instead, we had a pardon and incremental reforms that proved completely ineffective. The deep questions this war beg are not about Iraq, but about the failure of American politics. The hard questions needing to be asked are how do we revitalize this republic and evolve a healthy politics?

We can start by hanging the president and his fellow cronies from the nearest tree. There's a nice tall one just about twenty paces from the White House.