Et tu, Congressman Baird?

Some would have dubbed me only a mild political activist during the last two decades, but the seriousness of our country's empire-building has inspired me to stand up and be counted in all my aged glory. This presents very real risk - not just my paranoia about the US Patriot Act or what the Bush Machine might do to me personally - as I live and have a business in the same community. 

The first time I participated in a candlelight peace vigil a few years ago, I felt an aching two-pronged sadness.  My dewy youth was gone yet here were the same battles, the same horrors and the same young people dying for greed and power, dressed in a new winter coat called "Patriotism by Rove".

Back was the agony of feeling helpless to stop the slaughter coupled with an ingrained dissolusionment and soulfelt understanding of the corrupting power of money.  How could I have forgotten the lyrics to the anti-war protest songs?  I confess that would include even the ones I wrote myself. 

It threw me back to another time when my older sister's high school friends were coming back without body parts, or worse yet, in a flag-draped box.  The soldiers were our friends and we young girls wore our hearts on our sleeves, shamed by our secret plot to send my brother to Canada if the war was still going when he came of age.  Now I have a son I will have to worry about, which makes me shudder as he is brave and patriotic and would sacrifice himself.

This is mutiny in my proud family with generations of military service by every man, but even my grandfather thought the Vietnam war was an insult to those then serving in the military and were he alive today he'd kick Bush's derriere.  We supported the troops, by God we did, but we wanted them home and out of harm's way.  I still don't understand the benefit to the Cititzens of the United States of America of when we went into Vietnam any more than why we were idiots enough to go into Iraq.  Gulf War I made us arrogant and foolish enough to think a month or two would be enough.

This administration has banned even the photographs of the coffins that return now, as too many of us might remember that war equals horror and death. 

Warfield emergency medicine has greatly advanced for which we all are grateful. However, in another example of an ill-conceived plan, these survivors are forced to endure delays and rationed health care as the huge number of wounded has stressed the Veterans' health facilities beyond the breaking point.  This national disgrace, by the way, is not only in evidence at Walter Reed Hospital, but in a thousand other places where mental and physical medical care and rehabilitation are denied or delayed to these heroic veterans upon their return.

I felt like hiding at the back of the crowd the first time I publicly announced I was 'different' from the conservatives who are plentiful in my county.  Alas I learned one cannot be 'creative' without others assuming one is a 'democrat' anyway, so although I outed myself I had probably been 'out' anyway. 

After the last election, previously silent sympathizers nudged me at my volunteer groups and whispered things like,  "Too bad the democrats didn't win at least a 60% majority".   Until that point, I had assumed I was one progressive out of about three countywide.  With the ugly political divisiveness of past years, it has become more than bad manners to risk disclosing one's politics to friends. 

It is an act of courage merely to pose a question with the current feces-slinging administration as there is no respect for a citizens' right to know.  This administration has classified information or stone-walled to such a degree that even our Congress and Senate have to guess what is going on and cannot effectively prosecute plots concocted in a million erased emails.

And who is so lily white and steely-spined they could hold up to the Swift-Boaters or dare to run for political office?  Not only does it require huge amounts of funds, but even something as local as a school board race is seen as a stepping stone to wealth and power.  Better not piss anyone off is the rule, which translates into  candidates who are invertebrate chameleons, shifting course like sailboats depending on which way the wind is blowing the money that day.

This latest unwelcome shock to my ailing psyche in this reversal of position by my U.S. Congressman, Representative Brian Baird (D-WA), was fashioned after he made an administration-financed, Pentagon-guided, congressman-let-me-kiss-your-ass 'fact-finding' mission to Iraq.  Baird, in his creepy diabolical conversion has now declared the Petraeus/Bush Surge, and pro-occupation Administration policy, as the only righteous course of action.  Do you want burka-clad illiterate Iraqi women, he screams in defense, showing how little he knows as Burkas are not worn by Iraqis nor are women illiterate there.  May I say politely, WTF!!!  (My apologies to those who Gather and don't like even initialed obscenity.)

This blasphemy felt like being run over by a truck, as I voted for Baird each time he ran and believed he was a man of honor, intellect and conscience.  The group MoveOn.org, perhaps not as easily shocked as some of us, publicized his ship-jump nationally so he couldn't get away with it. 

A Washington Democrat becoming a turncoat overnight inspired more political reaction, however, and Baird is being held up as some sort of Omnipotent Hero by the Bushies on the Washington D.C. scene. 

MoveOn.org recently started a chapter in Vancouver, Washington, to help combat what they saw as a horrendous betrayal of the voters in our district, but the damage has already been done.  The sickening part? Today I verified with our Secretary of State the exact final tally.  Baird was so popular he received 63.1234% of the votes in November of 2006.  How could we all have been so wrong?  I guess that made him arrogant enough to think his job was no longer to represent his constituents, but to kiss you-know-what in D.C.

His press office, shocked by the reaction and the stunning national coverage, claims his standing on this issue has improved.  Only 8 out of 10 of his constituents are enraged, he jokes, which is an improvement over the 9 out of 10 who first blew a gasket over this.  (I am paraphrasing, by the way.) 

In 2006, 147,065 citizens in this congressional district voted for him, which means that he has become quite cavalier about not having any responsibility for the wishes of 117,652 people whom he claims are now agonizing over his idiotic flip-flop.  What does he care?  He's got Bush and Petraeus and probably a wonderful appointment or some high-powered job in Dubai he can count on at the end of his newly-shortened, political career.

I doubt he finds this as humorous as he's playing it as not even he can deny the value of the American (and Iraqi) lives he's so eager to waste.  So many of us feel betrayed.  How can an anti-war candidate - who campaigned on a platform claiming the war he now supports was one of the worst military mistakes every made -  now play the patsy spouting Bushisms on his flip "B" side?

The insanity of this, from a political viewpoint, is that Representatives must run for re-election every two years.  With people like me fuming over his new-found religion and feeling callously violated, I cannot imagine he expects to be re-elected.  A further indication that he's got other career plans per my suppositions above.

I see the Democrats in Congress wearing self-imposed chastity belts, claiming to be political virgins who don't know how to speak up or get anything meaningful done.  The Bush strategy is spreading through the Senate and Congress with the most evil intent.  Finance an endless occupation, but screw little kids whose families cannot afford medical insurance or medical care. (Bush's recent veto.)

With the usual undermining, deceiving, lying, cheating, imprisoning, torturing, press and free speech censure, court-martialing (of military dissidents) and 'disappearing' that goes on daily?  There must be some powerful Congressional and Senate blackmailing going on too or none of this makes any sense to me at all. 

If Baird were just some dummy, I would say, what the hell?  But he's a psychologist and retired college professor and although I know him vaguely, it is well enough to verify that he's very smart if not smart enough to understand how he's been conned. This fact ideally illustrates that the Bush administration has a conscienceless strategy to overcome any and all opposition to the intended theft of Iraqi oil resources.  I would guarantee they have more than one 'profiler' in their employ to find the weaknesses of their prey, and exactly how to tweak them for the administration's gain.

Even good men and women are starting to fall down, which horrifies me by the very implications of what must be happening to accomplish this.  After all, with warrantless wire taps, sneaking and spying on huge numbers of people, there is bound to be some juicy garbage they can use against everyone.  Of course, we already know that there doesn't need to be any truth involved, as again, rumor, false leaks and innuendo are much more effective than evidence and facts.

Here is the link to an article written by Professor Steve Niva of Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, who attempts to explain how this blind-siding could have happened to Congressman Brian Baird without stooping to any obscenities by some f***ing miracle.  Sorry for the much too long introductory rant, but I had to get it off my chest.  

One more thing, Brian?  Come to your senses and we'll try to work something out, but keep on this suicide mission of yours?  I guarantee it will be 'sayonara' in 2008. 

http://www.counterpunch.org/ 

If this link doesn't work, please cut and paste it into your browser!  It is so worth reading and helps one at least understand what we are truly up against.