coldhearted scientist وداد

I woke up in the middle of the night, which I normally never do, with a new consciousness of the absurdity of the reasons students in one of my classes say they cannot learn. I then moved on to realize how much it would take to unpack two questions from my neighbor:

1. Since Cheney will be gone in a few months anyway, why is it worth the trouble of impeaching him now? I can think of several reasons – one of which is that he will not really be gone – but I am interested to know what anyone else has to say on this matter.

2. Given that there are terrorists within the United States plotting to kill us at this moment, and given that the suspension of civil liberties could reduce the number of deaths occasioned by these terrorists, how many deaths per year is the retention of civil liberties worth?

This question is an absolute doozy, I know, but it is the kind of mis-framed question regular people are trained to ask, informed by the reasoning whose flaws they do not see. Do you have any input on how to handle it?

One of my immediate responses is that we risk, and also suffer death and mayhem on many fronts in this country just to make or save money. Do you remember Hurricane Katrina? Another is that historically we have loved, supported, and embraced many terrorists, and we still do. Do you remember our friend Augusto Pinochet? And what is a terrorist? We are in grave danger from activities of the terrorists in our own government right now!

To better make my point I offer these paragraphs from a key article by Scott Ritter:

The vice president is the single greatest threat to American and international security in the world today. Not Osama Bin Laden. Not the ghost of Saddam Hussein. Not Ahmadinejad or Kim Jung Il. Not al-Qaida, the Taliban, or Jose Padilla himself. Not even George W. Bush can lay claim to this title. It is Dick Cheney’s alone. Operating in a never-never land of constitutional ambiguity which exists between the office of the president and the Congress of the United States, Cheney’s office has made its impact felt on the policies of the United States of America as had no vice president’s office before him. Granted unprecedented oversight over national security and foreign policy by executive order in early 2001, many months prior to the terror attacks of 9/11, Cheney has single-handedly steered America away from being a nation among nations (albeit superior), operating (roughly) in accordance with the rule of law, and toward its present manifestation as the new Rome, a decadent imperial power bent on global domination whatever the cost.

The absolute worst of the rot that has infected America because of the policies and actions of the Bush administration has originated from the office of the vice president. The nonsensical response to the terror attacks of 9/11, seeking a “global war” versus defending the rule of law at home and abroad, taking the lead in spreading the lies that got us involved in Iraq, legitimizing torture as a tool of American jurisprudence, advocating for warrantless wiretappings of U.S.-based communications (regardless of what the Fourth Amendment says against illegal search and seizure), and pushing for an expansion of America’s global conflict into Iran–all can be traced back to the person of Cheney as the point of origin.

America today is very much engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the forces of evil. The enemy resides not abroad, however, but at home, vested in the highest offices of the land. Neither Osama Bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein threatened the life blood of the United States–the Constitution–to the extent that Cheney has. Not Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Ho Chi Minh. Not since the American Civil War has there been a constitutional crisis of the magnitude that exists today, threatening to rip the very fabric of American society apart at the seams, courtesy of Dick Cheney.

Axé.