Stolen in its entirety From Bill in Exile:
"All those people who supported the war, and most especially all those who voted for it, bear the moral responsibility for the results of the war. At least 100,000 dead Iraqis (and probably closer to a million). 4,000 and rising dead US soldiers. Rape. Murder. Torture. Orphans who got to watch their parents being killed. Husbands who saw their wives die, or wives who watched their husbands gunned down or blown into bloody carrion. Families who have buried multiple children.
All because members of Congress didn't care and because they were gutless. Because they thought to themselves "I might have to face attack ads if I vote against this war." Can you think of anything more weak, anything more pathetically evil, than to care more about your reelection than about thousands dying? Than about the certainty that from your vote will come rape and torture and murder?
And can you think of anything more pathetic, more redolent of bad judgment than to say "but I didn't know. I trusted George Bush?"
As far as I am concerned most of Congress doesn't just have blood on their hands, they are in it up to their chins. Their gutlessness, cupidity and selfishness is such that most of them, in a just world, would be preparing their defenses for a Nuremburg trial. They attacked a country which had not attacked the US, based on lies that were debunked at the time, for petty personal reasons of political ambition or cowardice.
We all know that won't happen, but what I will tell you is this. Without the Iraq war, the financial crisis happening right now either wouldn't be, or would be much less harsh. It is quite likely that Iraq is the last mistake of the American century and marks the end of America as a superpower.
This is only fitting. Those who have proven they cannot be trusted with power must have that power taken away. America had its chance, in 2004, to take that power away from the worst of its elites. It didn't. For an outsider, whether the election was stolen in 2004 or not is irrelevant, all that matters was the lesson of the result—that Americans are no longer capable of disciplining their own elites."
Ian Welsh in a re-posted blog post from 2008 titled It is in Blood that Empires, Like Humans, Are Born, It is in Blood That They Die.
Go read it.
Because I think Ian is absolutely correct: America can no longer be trusted with the power and influence it has wielded since the end of World War II.
And therefore we must have it taken from us.
We've abrogated our responsibilities as a nation and as a people and are therefore now no longer deserving of the leadership position we once held.
We allow war criminals to run free — and make a good living as tee vee pundits on Fox.
We normalize torture as a legitimate means of interrogation.
We have a president who claims for himself the right to order the murder of American citizens without trial or even charges being brought.
We see trillions of dollars stolen by malefactors of great wealth who not only get off without even so much as a slap on the wrist but who then get paid billions in bonus money from the pockets of the very citizens that they robbed, while the people whom they defrauded lose their homes and their life savings.
I adore the idea of the country we were supposed to be, and perhaps one day we'll find our way back from the wilderness that we now inhabit.
But I have little respect for the country we've become for what we have become is toxic.
I will live out my life here deeply saddened that we all, every single one of us, allowed it to come to this.
We are, in a word, spent.