From Donna Marsh O’Connor
First let me say, after years of skepticism re the Democratic Party, I am a Progressive Democrat and so my comments reflect that. Someday perhaps someone more powerful than I will be able to dismantle the two party system, and make more genuine choice possible in this country. Right now, there are two parties. For eight years George W. Bush and Dick Cheney impostered as Republicans. I have said before and will say again, they would not have fit into my party and of this I am proud. They led a band of rogues that brought this country to the brink of absolute despotism. Let the Republicans worry about that mess. I remember telling my students long ago, I didn’t vote for Bill Clinton for what he would do, I voted for Bill Clinton for what he said, for the values he espoused, for the way his insistence on social justice resonated. After his election, his actions were, indeed, another matter.
The good news: Barack Obama seems to be a decent man, tough enough to steer this nation in the left direction, confident enough to know he will succeed, smart enough to know that the powerful right still has the means to inflict great pain and re-enter greater and stronger. His election has elated many, particularly me, for a whole host of reasons, but for our purposes the following two:
The reign of Bush/Cheney/Rove (given a peaceful transition) is over.
Though I don’t believe that this election cycle was completely fair and free of vote tampering, we did remove Bush from office.
We don’t know how Obama will govern. He says he will govern to the center and there is some clear evidence of that. But I believe there is no person in government with living brain cells who really believes that the narrative constructed by the Bush/Cheney administration regarding 9/11 is entirely plausible, and so there may be rapid changes to some of the laws that have made the argument for an investigation impossible.
The bad news: We won’t see Bush, Cheney, Rove or Rumsfeld, et al steered out in handcuffs anytime soon. No one in the Democratic Party will steer us toward an investigation anytime soon. 9/11 Truth will be an argument that falls on deaf ears across this nation for a very long time. People will feel that there is no need to bring pain where jubilation sits. Many people don’t grasp what the German citizens do so palpably because only some of us knew we sat at the door of fascism.
We, ultimately, don’t know what changes will come under Barack Obama–how much of the violence (to citizens of the world and to the Constitution of the United States) of the Bush administration will end. We don’t know (though there is clear reason to worry) whether Obama’s idea of centrist government is synonymous with Pelosi’s.
We do know we need to prevent another 9/11 and we do need to have some access to data that will help us to hold accountable those who allowed or facilitated the events of that day.
Some things we should press on immediately:
Obama’s promise to end the Iraq War and to allow the Iraqi people freedom to self-govern.
An immediate end to the Patriot Act.
An immediate end to warrantless wiretapping.
The immediate closing of Guantánamo Bay.
The appointment of a scientist as the head of NIST (perhaps the most important).
A reconfiguration of Homeland Security that re-evaluates its mission and methods as well as its appointed head.
Finally, we need to remind President-Elect Obama that for eight years, whether they know it now or not, the people of this country, the people of the world, were endangered by the Bush administration. Though Bush was enabled primarily by the Republican Party, he was also enabled by the Democratic Party. It was the individual citizens to the left and far left who suffered most under Bush/Cheney
rule because we saw it. Governing to the center should not include every policy and every issue. Some, as a matter of the most common sense, need to be changed expediently.
It is imperative that those who fought for our collective integrity the hardest, who fought for his election with the most energy and fervor, be given some hope now. It is one thing to hear the voices of the entire population, another to ignore the voice of reason, particularly when we’ve seen so clearly what can happen in reason’s absence.
Donna Marsh O’Connor is a member of the 911Truth.org Advisory Board, with a brief bio available here .