My (longish) essay the morning after (For IP if you wish)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Professor Jonathan I. Ezor" <jezor () tourolaw edu>
Date: November 4, 2004 3:16:25 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: My (longish) essay the morning after (For IP if you wish)
Reply-To: jezor () tourolaw edu

MORNING IN AMERICA; MOURNING FOR AMERICA

Professor Jonathan I. Ezor
Touro Law Center
jezor () tourolaw edu

        The day after Election Day 2004, the weather is sunny outside my
window, but the outlook is bleak for the United States.  For a Democrat 
like
me, the results from yesterday's election are both depressing and 
sobering,
putting the lie to the word "United" in our nation's name.  Even if 
Senator
John Kerry had been able to successfully challenge enough Bush votes to
obtain the 270 necessary Electoral College votes (not out of the 
question,
considering the many stories of lost absentee ballots, voter suppression
efforts and even the August 2003 statement by voting machine Diebold's 
head
Walden O'Dell that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its 
electoral
votes to the president next year"), we would at best have ended up with 
yet
another President who lost the popular vote but won the electoral.

Now that President Bush has been declared the victor, we are faced with 
at
least another two years of a one-party federal government, including a
Supreme Court with an expected two or even three new justices appointed 
by
President Bush.  This was not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when
they set up our system of "checks and balances."  Instead, we will 
continue
on the path of "checks and cash," unfettered spending and fiscal
irresponsibility which has driven our national deficit to record levels.
What is even more troubling, and what should be bothering the American
people, is that there will continue to be little or no accountability 
for
actions by federal officials, up to and including the President.

Consider the past four years as an example.  We've seen a CIA 
operative's
identity leaked to the press (Valerie Plame, wife of Bush Administration
critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson), jeopardizing both her life and those 
of
her operatives, with the subsequent investigation focused on harassing 
and
threatening New York Times reporters who had nothing to do with the 
actual
leak.  We have a serious charge in Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" 
that
the Bush Administration improperly redirected $700 million appropriated 
by
Congress for Afghanistan to the buildup before the Iraq war, again with
little or no response by Congress or the Justice Department.  The 
torture
scandal involving prisoner abuse in Abu Graeb prison in Iraq has led to
convictions of enlisted personnel and noncoms, while the senior 
officers and
Administration members who may have ordered the abuses escape unpunished
(and the White House lawyer who wrote the memo endorsing the use of 
torture,
Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, has been rewarded with a federal
judgeship).  Even 9/11 hasn't resulted in any discipline of aviation
officials or intelligence or military personnel who were negligent in
preventing or responding to the tragedy.  Nor has the President 
exercised
his Constitutional oversight of Congress-in his almost 4 years in 
office, he
has not vetoed a single bill placed on his desk, a tribute to the 
lockstep
in which Congress and the President walk.  Even the few times that the
Supreme Court has put limits on the Administration are likely to be the 
last
for a long time, given the expected appointments that will put a clear
majority of pro-Bush justices on the Court.

In short, no one in this administration has taken any responsibility or
suffered any consequences for any mistakes other than people who 
disagree
with the administration's policies, like General Eric Shinseki, the 
former
Army Chief of Staff who correctly stated in 2003 that 200,000 troops 
would
be needed to keep the peace in Iraq rather than the smaller number sent 
by
the President and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and who was retired soon
thereafter.  Another potential casualty of the truth was chief Medicare
actuary Richard Foster, who was threatened with firing by then-Medicare
Chief Thomas Scully if Foster disclosed that the true cost of the Bush
Administration's Medicare overhaul would be $100 billion more than 
reported
to Congress.  Scully, by the way, was condemned for this threat by the
Congressional Budget Office, which called for him to repay part of his
annual salary to the government; the Bush Administration declined to 
have
Scully do so.  The Bush Administration seems quite happy to threaten or
penalize junior officials and soldiers, leaving the senior 
decisionmakers
untouched and unblamed.

Iraq stands apart from the other actions of the Bush Administration 
because
it is both so egregious and so misunderstood by the President's 
supporters.
The President justified the war in Iraq by massaging intelligence about
potential weapons, encouraging Americans to believe there was a 
connection
between 9/11 and Iraq (when his administration knew there wasn't), and 
using
a plan to invade Iraq that apparently predated 9/11 or even the 
President's
being elected.  In sharp contrast to the evil picture painted by 
President
Bush in the run-up to this war, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was the least
extremist of the Islamic states, had a defanged military under constant
surveillance, and was once more permitting U.N. weapons inspectors to
investigate potential sites.  Iraq had also provided a 12,000 page 
report as
required by the U.N. detailing the destruction of its former weapons
stockpiles, but this was not enough for President Bush-he didn't even 
wait
enough time for the report to be fully analyzed.  Moreover, President 
Bush
got a resolution of support from the U.S. Congress that specifically
required him to continue consulting with the U.N., then unilaterally 
chose
to avoid doing so.  Instead, he continued on his course to an 
unjustified
war, resulting in the deaths of more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians and 
more
than 1,000 American soldiers, and creating a country-wide breeding 
ground
and armory for terrorists.  Iraq wasn't a friendly place for Al Qaeda 
before
we attacked, but it is now.  And neither that, nor any of many other
problems caused by this Administration, were enough to keep Bush from
reelection.

More troubling to me than the election results themselves is the stark
realization that the America of President Bush and the majority of the
voters who reelected him is not my America.  This country's actions do 
not
reflect what I believe to be the ideals it should stand for: equal 
rights
for all, the power of the rule of law over brute force, the example set 
for
other nations of fairness and democracy.  I have never felt less 
represented
by my "representative government," and at times it's as if I were a
foreigner rather than the proud citizen I have always been.

I literally cannot understand how anyone, let alone a majority of 
American
voters, could give George Bush another term after what he has done with 
his
first.  The best answer I can come up breaks down into one of two
possibilities.  The first possibility is that the majority of voters
selected President Bush based on his expressed policies, while complete
ignoring the fact that his actions were the exact opposite of his words.
The President preached fiscal conservatism, but expanded federal 
spending
and borrowing to record levels.  He ran on his national security 
stance, but
his invasion of Iraq and failure to secure either borders or shipping
containers in any meaningful way have further compromised our security. 
 He
claimed to support the environment, yet rejected existing global 
treaties on
greenhouse gases and allowed oil and timber companies to literally 
write the
Federal regulations covering their exploitation of natural resources.  
He
decried "flipflopping," yet his first term showed numerous changes from 
his
expressed positions in his 2000 campaign or even during the term.  He 
spoke
of "personal responsibility," yet could not name a single mistake he or 
his
administration made in office.  He said he "supported the troops," yet 
chose
to put them at risk by the thousands in an unnecessary and poorly 
planned
war in Iraq, not even attending a single of the thousand funerals for 
men
and women killed in action.  He claimed to be fighting a "war on 
terror,"
yet took troops out of Afghanistan rather than fully destroying the 
actual
terrorist network and leadership that attacked the U.S.S. Cole and 
committed
the mass murder of 9/11.  Putting the best face on the election results,
those that trusted Bush's words rather than looking at his deeds were
seriously misled.

The second possibility, though, fills me with greater dread: the 
majority
knew what Bush did and agreed with it.  That so many of my fellow 
Americans
could look on the Administration's secrecy, dishonesty, poor judgments 
and
major miscalculations with approval is at once a terrifying and 
depressing
thought.  I have never thought of myself as a radical, taking centrist
positions on economic issues among others, but if the mainstream of 
America
supports what the President has done, then I find myself (as Mr. Bush
himself accused Senator Kerry) on the "far left bank" of that stream.  
It's
not entirely a lonely location, given that I share the bank with 55 
million
other voters, but it's not particularly comfortable either.  Meanwhile, 
my
country and its President are taking actions I deplore, and I can do 
nothing
to stop it.

Perhaps out of self-preservation, I choose to believe that this 
election was
driven by misinformation rather than conviction, and that Americans as a
whole still strive for the ideals of freedom and integrity that are our
birthright.  With luck and a lot of hard work, we may be able to stem 
the
tide in two or four more years and return to our place of pride in the
world.  In the meantime, I look out at four more years of President 
Bush's
leading the United States, and mourn for the America we don't have, but
should.
-------------------
Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor
Assistant Professor of Law and Technology
Director, Institute for Business, Law and Technology (IBLT)
Touro Law Center
300 Nassau Road, Huntington, NY 11743
Tel: 631-421-2244 x412  Fax: 516-977-3001
e-mail: jezor () tourolaw edu
BizLawTech Blog: http://iblt.tourolaw.edu/blog


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