Political treason..?

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President Bush committed political treason today

by Will Bunch
Philadelphia Daily News - H/T: BuzzFlash

I’ve seen a lot of sad things in American politics in my lifetime — the resignation of a president who became a national disgrace after he oversaw a campaign of break-ins and cover-ups, another who circumvented the Constitution to trade arms for hostages, and yet is now hailed as national hero. And those paled to what we have seen in the last seven years — flagrant disregard for the Constitution, the launching of a “pre-emptive” war on false pretenses, and discussions about torture and other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum.

But now it’s come to this: A new low that I never imagined was even possible.

President Bush went on foreign soil today, and committed what I consider an act of political treason: Comparing the candidate of the U.S. opposition party to appeasers of Nazi Germany — in the very nation that was carved out from the horrific calamity of the Holocaust. Bush’s bizarre and beyond-appropriate detour into American presidential politics took place in the middle of what should have been an occasion for joy: A speech to Israeli’s Knesset to honor that nation’s 60th birthday.

Will Bunch then goes on to say:

As a believer in free speech, I think Bush has a right to say what he wants, but as a President of the United States who swore to uphold the Constitution, his freedom also carries an awesome and solemn responsibility, and what this president said today is a serious breach of that high moral standard.

Of course, there are differences of opinion on how America should handle Iran, and that’s why we’re having an election here at home, to sort these issues out — hopefully with respect and not with emotional and inaccurate appeals. Not only is the president’s comment a gross misrepresentation of Barack Obama’s stance on the issue, but ironically, it comes just a day after his own Secretary of State, Robert Gates, said of Iran: “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them.” Is Gates a Nazi appeaser-type, too? And Bush has been hardly consistent on this point, either. Look at his own dealings with oil-rich Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, linked to deadly terror attacks like Pan Am Flight 103.

But what Bush did in Israel this morning goes well beyond the accepted confines of American political debate, When the president speaks to a foreign parliament on behalf of our country, his message needs to be clear and unambiguous. Our democracy may look messy to outsiders, and we may have our disagreements with some sharp elbows thrown around, but at the end of the day we are not Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives.

We are Americans.

And you, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all. To use a diplomatic setting on foreign soil to score a cheap political point at home is way beneath your office, way beneath your country, and way beneath the people you serve. You have been handed an office once uplifted to great heights by fellow countrymen from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Eisenhower, and have plunged it so deeply into the Karl-Rove-and-Rush-Limbaugh-fueled world of political destruction and survival of all costs that have lost all perspective — and all sense of decency. To travel to Israel and to associate a sitting American senator and your possible successor in the Oval Office with those who at one time gave comfort to an enemy of the United States is, in and of itself, an act of political treason.

Mr. Bunch ends with this:

Today, it’s a whole new ballgame. I believe this treacherous statement by a U.S. president in Israel is a signal to the Democrats in the House in Washington, that it’s time to play its Constitutional role in ending this trauma, before even greater acts against the interest of America are wrongly committed in our name.

Read the entire article.

Mr. Bush’s words today need to be loudly and publicly condemned. Will Bunch nailed it with this opinion piece.

Members of Congress need to come together and also condemn them, loudly and powerfully, and finally do what Mr. Bunch strongly suggests. Its time for impeachment. Now. Before its too late.

UPDATE: Here are lots of other responses found at Huffington Post.

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Filed under International - Israel & the Palestine, News - Politics, Opinion, PO(TU)S - George W. Bush

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