Mary Pitt: , Dread, And Utter Terror

These are the emotions that are being felt by those of us who have been appalled by the actions of George W. Bush during these last four years and have now learned that he has another four years to complete the job of dismantling the democracy which our Founding Fathers risked their ''lives and fortunes'' to establish.

We watched helplessly as he and the Republican Congress gave away the budget surplus which was left by the Clinton administration. We saw him sit dumbfounded in a room full of school children for several minutes before he was whisked off to a secure bunker on September 11, 2001, to appear a few days later at Ground Zero as a "heroic" leader.. We supported him when he sent troops to Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, only to lose him and his men in the mountains of "our ally", Pakistan.

We were astonished when he pulled most of the troops from Afghanistan and sent them into Iraq to punish Saddam Hussein for possessing weapons of Mass Destruction, tons of them, and ready to fire at the United States on fifteen minutes notice. This invasion was so urgent, we were told, that there was no time to wait for United Nations inspectors to go in and look again, or for our traditional allies to decide whether to join us. "We're going now, with or without you!" they were told and so we went without them.

Who will ever forget our Commander-in-Chief as he paraded on the deck of the aircraft carrier before the "Mission Accomplished" sign and boasted about how easy it was to defeat Saddam. Saddam who, by the way, had also escaped and his whereabouts were unknown for some months afterward, though his sons and a grandson would be mercilessly slaughtered. In the mind of the Commander-in-Chief, the war had been won, the reconstruction would be uneventful, democracy would be established in the Middle East and it, as well as Christianity, would spread over the world.

Once again, the American people were misled by this rosy scenario. The people of Iraq had other ideas. They had their rifles, which they were allowed to keep as they were sent home, they had caches of ammunition all over the country and they had the huge ammunition dumps which the American forces had received no orders to destroy or to secure. There was ready material for the hidden roadside bombs which were so devastating to the sons of America who were traveling in vehicles without the needed armor to protect their occupants. This materiel is now used against our own troops and a portion of it could eventually be used against New York, Seattle, or Los Angeles. And, of course, no Weapons of Mass Destruction have yet been discovered.

In addition, there was a new communication from a healthy Osama Bin Laden, who we were led to believe was living in a cave in the mountains, surrounded by hostile troops and struggling with a terminal condition which could lead to his death at any time. He appeared to be not only well, but vigorous, informing us of his intentions to oust the West from the Islamic nations by whatever tactics available to him and warning of future attacks on our homeland.

And yet, fifty-one per cent of the American voters appeared to have voted for four more years of the same because they feel "safer" with George W. Bush as their President. We do not! Those of us who opposed President Bush because of his fumbling and stumbling in the attempt to do a job of which he is not capable, must state that we are now terrorized, not by any international "terrorists", but by the incomprehensible thought processes which convinced the majority of the American people that it was only by the subtle machinations of the Bush administration that no attack such as we experienced on September 11, 2001, has occurred in the meantime. Osama is still alive and well, with a whole nation of fresh and trained recruits in Iraq, waiting for directions to move their base of operations into the American mainland and capable of doing it, thanks to the lackadaisical policies of Mr. Bush, with adequate munitions available and insufficient Homeland Security to keep them out.

Yes, we are "terrorized". The fact that, to a majority of the voters of the United States, it is more important to unequivocally prevent gay people from marrying and to deprive women of the choice of whether to bear children than it is to maintain the integrity of our democratic nation and the abrogation of civil liberties which are steadily being eroded by the regulations of the Bush cabal in order to suppress opposition to their policies, scares us to death! We do not fear invasion by radical, independent groups from abroad; we do not fear attack from any foreign nation; we do not fear the policies of President Bush in his efforts to force us to conform to his muddled thinking. The one thing that scares the hell out of us is the prejudice and self-centered thinking of an apparent majority of the citizens of the United States.

We are terrifed at the thought of our neighbors passing laws which allow them to control our personal decisions and our intimate relatiionships. We find livng our public and private lives according to the standards of the Evangelical Right in America no more appetizing a prospect than would be living according to Islamic standards in the Middle East. Tyranny by any other name is still tyranny. This has been the doctrine of this nation since its inception and any other is no less than treason. That is the reason for our dread, our fear and our terror. No other nation in the world can destroy us. Only we can do that, and a continuation of the Bush policies is a very real threat to accomplish that very thing

Mary Pitt is a septuagenarian Kansan who is self-employed and active in the political arena. Her concerns are her four-generation family and the continuance of the United States as a democracy with a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people". Comments and criticism may be addressed to mpitt@cox.net . \

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