December 20, 2005 - “I, George W, Bush, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States so help me God.” The President has repeated those words twice; once when he was inaugurated President in January 2001 and again when he commenced his second term eleven months ago. Our public officials from the President own to the newest military recruit take that same solemn oath as they enter into public service. Each of them swear allegiance, not to an monarch, not to a tyrant, but to that which the President has called “just a goddamned piece of paper.” We say that we are ruled by law and not by men setting ourselves apart from those totalitarian societies ruled by the despotic whim of men wielding dictatorial power. We call it “democracy”.

We have long appreciated what a totalitarian society looks like. Secret police monitor what the citizen reads; what the citizen hears; and control what a citizen may say. Secret police abduct people from the streets and they disappear into a system of secret prisons where they remain, unprotected by any law or court until enough information is wrung from them or they succumb to the methods used to extract intelligence from them. None of that could happen in America. That revered scrap of paper which our public officers swear to preserve, protect, and defend prevents us from descending into that kind of political Hades in which a perverted patriotism forbids questioning the men who sit in the seats of power. In our Constitutional democracy dissenting voices are not stifled as disloyal but heard as part of the dialogue out of which wise decisions emerge.

There is no place in our Constitutional Democracy for secret prisons; secret torture chambers; or secret police who monitor our libraries and book stores; who abduct men and women from their hometown streets. There is no provision in that sacred scrap of paper for a citizen to be declared an enemy of the state and imprisoned without charge and held indefinitely with out a charge, with out a trial; and without the protection of any pretence of legal process. There is no provision in the Constitution permitting the President to authorize extra-Constitutional means whether in time of peace or in time of war.

For the past week the President has been engaged in a concentrated campaign to convince the American people that the commitment to conquer Iraq has been in America’s interest and compliance with America’s Constitution. One of his predecessors tried a similar public relations stunt as he proclaimed that “when the President does it that means it is not illegal”. That President learned that his office did not elevate him above the law. This President and his Attorney General claim to have found authority to ignore the Constitution within the designation of the President as Commander in Chief of the armed forces and the Congressional resolution authorizing the President to use military force in the wake of the September 11 th, 2001 attacks – a Gonzales extension of the failed Nixon doctrine, “If the Commander in Chief does it that means it is not unconstitutional.”

In his first speech from the Oval Office since he sent the troops into Iraq the President declared, “Not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq.” Paraphrasing we might ask, “What does it profit us to conquer Babylon if in the process we destroy America’s liberty?” We may be conquering Babylon but the reality is that in doing so we have consigned thousands of Americans for the next generations to a Babylonian Captivity of their own making. We must occupy Iraq for generations to come.