Saturday, March 17, 2007
We are here to say, No More
Remarks of Mayor Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson
The Pentagon
Washington, D.C.
Rally for Impeachment
March 17, 2007
As patriots, we love and support our country – and we will not support a President who harms our nation and its people.
Our love for our nation – our regard for our Constitution – brings us here today to call for the impeachment of a President who has done, and continues to do, such tremendous harm to our country.
We have always been proud to distinguish ourselves from nations that kidnapped, disappeared, and tortured people. Now, under the Bush administration, we are becoming like them.
We have always been proud to distinguish ourselves from governments that ignored the rule of law – which violated treaties and their own constitutions with impunity. Now, under the Bush administration, we are becoming like them. We have always been proud to distinguish ourselves from oppressive governments that listened in on their citizens’ conversations and imprisoned people without charging them with any crimes. Now, under the Bush administration, we are becoming like them.
We are here to say, No More. What the Bush Administration has done is not reflective of who we are, as Americans or as human beings – and we want the world to know it.
Patriotic Americans – those who, as Mark Twain said, love their country always and their government only when it deserves it – come to the aid of their country during the worst moral and constitutional crisis we have ever faced by calling for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
A loving parent who leaves a child in the care of someone who harms the child has a responsibility to protect that child from the abuser and to hold the abuser accountable. So too do all patriotic Americans have a solemn obligation to protect our great nation from this president and vice-president who have so blatantly abused their power, to the great injury of our nation.
We are here to say to a mostly complacent, complicit, incredibly irresponsible Congress, impeach these men who have betrayed and harmed us all. We are here to say NO MORE.
No more war in Iraq.
No more movement toward war in Iran.
No more justification of killing and torture by God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense.
No more wars of aggression.
No more violations of the United Nations Charter.
No more violations of human rights treaties.
No more torture.
No more kidnapping and disappearing of people.
No more trampling upon our Constitution.
No more warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.
No more lies to Congress and the American people.
No more conveying of government propaganda by the complicit corporate media.
No more destruction of the rule of law.
No more timidity by Congress.
No more Dick Cheney or George Bush in the White House.
No more silence by the American people.
As we say "no" to the international and domestic outlaws in the
White House, we say "yes" to the pursuit of peace, to the rule of law, to our Constitution, to accountability, and to communicating to the rest of the world by impeachment that we are not the kind of nation that tolerates the violations of treaties, wars of aggression, and human rights abuses perpetrated by our vice president and president.
We will continue to raise our voices and demand of Congress: Stop the abuse of our nation and of its people, stop the damage done to our standing around the world, stop the atrocities, stop this insane, illegal, destructive war, and stop, without further delay, this president and vice-president.
Labels: George W Bush, Iraq, Pentagon, protests, Rocky Anderson, torture
