Are Protestors Viewed as Terrorists by the U.S.?

We can remind the FBI and the Secret Service that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants American citizens the right to free speech, but it will fall on death ears. These stone-faced, stoic protectors of our government officials are told to ensure that our highest ranking government officials never are witness to our protestations. They even have it written in their own manual how to keep protesters away from the President as well as the media.

One glaringly huge loophole in the First Amendment, that this administration in particular has abused to the extreme, is that it does not guarantee that our exercise of this right must be witnessed by our government officials. With the presidential advance team exercising their mandated duties to ensure that protesters are out of earshot of the president and relocated well out of sight of the president, just what good is the Right to Free Speech when armed bullies forcibly remove the messengers from the area?

The American Civil Liberties Union is taking their job very seriously as well. The ACLU and the ACLU of New Mexico filed a lawsuit on January 15, 2008, on behalf of several New Mexico residents and advocacy organizations who were made to stand more than 150 yards (that’s one and a half football field lengths, for you football fans out there) away from the site of a fundraiser being attended by the president as they peacefully protested the views of the administration, while a group of people expressing support for President Bush were allowed to stand only a few feet from the fundraiser site.

Favoritism? You bet your ass. Favoritism is one of the hallmarks of this administration. Not giving a damn about what his opponents have to say is another. It falls in the same category as refusing to sit down with his enemies to work toward peace instead of hiding behind his military giving out orders to attack. To hide himself away from disagreements, cheapens his stature as a leader. Keeping himself shielded from what his own citizenry has to say whitewashes his reality of our world and makes himself look even more ridiculous when he claims to be ‘in touch’ with American citizens.

Some agents carry their job too far. They block free speech written on t-shirts. They block free speech with larger posters to block out disagreeable ones.

Jeffery and Nicole Rank were arrested at one of the President’s speeches in Charleston, West Virginia, for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts. They settled their case for $80,000.

Leslie Weise and Alex Young were ejected from one of the President's speeches in Denver, Colorado, for arriving at the event in a car with the bumper sticker reading "No More Blood For Oil."

It is bad enough that protesters are forced out of sight and told to keep their opinions to themselves but when armed agents of our government start getting physical and using excessive force against targeted dissenters, then the situation becomes discriminatory, illegal and an affront to every American’s sense of freedom.
http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/protest/26084prs20060706.html getting physical and using excessive force

This increased level of violence and discrimination against protesters can only lead to one conclusion, that our federal government has deemed us to be terrorists. Those of us who care enough about the sanctity of our given right to protest this president’s deeds and misdeeds, have been demonized by our public servants and the ultra conservative right wing radio talk show hosts who label themselves patriots just because they tow the party line.

How did the term patriot become so bastardized as to be limited to only those people who blindly follow wherever the president leads? Their definition is ludicrous and by adhering to this twisted view they willingly subject themselves to falling under tyrannical control. They find it insanely ridiculous that any true American citizen cannot simply accept whatever our president tells us.

"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up." -- Reverend Martin Neimoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the Gestapo in 1937

History is no stranger to this breed of patriot. Their past deeds are scary, immoral, illegal and lethal. These are the type of people who blacklist citizens and sabotage their futures based solely on suspicion-McCarthyism; these are the type of people who break into political opponents offices-Watergate; these are the type of people who arrest innocent citizens under the banner of national security-the Gestapo; these are the type of people who hang innocent citizens for being different than themselves-KKK; these are the type of people who resort to illegal wiretapping on American citizens because they are afraid of losing their power over us-NSA warrantless surveillance program.

It is against their doctrine to simply accept our difference of opinion on how this county should be run and allow us our right to say so. They have to spy on us and infiltrate our ranks and even enter our names in a terrorist database as though we are common criminals with an agenda to bring down this government.

The hired enforcers of America’s patriot idealism are a special group of individuals unto themselves. Ultra conservative with a license to harass, they are almost robotic in their strict, single-minded adherence to the enforcement of governmental policy. Homeland Security, FBI and CIA have all the makings of a Gestapo force and they will arrest anyone who speaks out against the president. We have already seen proof of this. It matters little to the victims of these tactics or others who may now think twice about exercising their right to free speech that the courts found in favor of the victims. The mindless minions of the government are ready and willing to step on us whenever and wherever they see fit.

I ask you, how far from the Gestapo of 1930’s Germany have we really come?

Are protesters terrorist? Only in the eyes of those who are protested against. Should we allow them to dictate when and where we protest? Absolutely not. It isn’t a matter of fighting against this government as fanatical Islamic terrorists are. We protest out of love for our country not to be the instrument of its destruction.

Very few of us today are willing to follow the path of those true patriots who fought to free this fledgling nation from the tyranny of England’s King George. But we simply cannot stand idly by and watch in abject horror as this president systematically undermines all that our forefathers protested for, fought for and died for just to appease those who paid money for the privilege of being counted among George W Bush’s cronies.

These so-called modern-day patriots have forsaken their fellow countrymen and placed protesters on the ‘other side’ instead of listening to the protests and taking something positive from what is said with the goal to make this nation stronger and less divisive. We are all in this thing together. It is not ‘Us vs. Them’.

A war is a war is a war

I don’t understand what has changed in America that we applaud soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan when those who returned from Vietnam were jeered and called criminals.

I support our troops 100%, no matter where they are told to go. This war is not of there choosing. Vietnam wasn’t either. They go where they are told just as they have throughout history.

This war in Iraq is an illegal war based on the lies the Bush administration forced upon us seemingly overnight. Vietnam, though not technically a war but a police action, was forced on us too but it took years of gradual buildup responding to an ever increasing threat. Politicians back then were more open as to the reason we were there. Not so in Iraq.

Communists were never going to come to our shores and turn our citizenry into state-sponsored zombies working only for the state. And today, terrorist are not coming to our shores to destroy every thing we believe in.

Sure the whole atmosphere of protest during Vietnam against anything authoritarian was turning this country inside out and we were all turning against each other and therefore honoring our troops was just too far out of the question. But is the lack of protest today over what this single most undemocratic of administrations has perpetrated upon us an admission that we don’t care? Have we just thrown our hands up in resignation to the realization that we are powerless to change anything?

Patriotism back then was a dirty word uttered under the threat of being ostracized by the very people these soldiers were fighting to protect. Patriotism today is merely a tool used by right wingers to declare themselves ‘better Americans’ than anyone who voices their opinion against this war even when they support the soldiers.

What has changed over the last forty years?

Soldiers then were drafted and forced to fight, some volunteered but this nation’s citizenry turned their backs on them just the same. There was no applause, no pat on the back for a ‘job well done’. There were no large cheering crowds welcoming them home to the nation they put their lives on the line for.

Soldiers today volunteer, although the latest reports show those numbers are dwindling. Is this the reason we as a nation view them so differently? If these soldiers today were drafted and forced to go to Iraq, would they be jeered and called criminals just as they were during Vietnam?

The U.S. became the aggressor in this war. We went in uninvited, supposedly to rid the world of an evil man who was in reality no threat to the U.S. In Vietnam we answered a call to protect a friendly nation. You can decide for yourself which war was more ‘just’.

Has America grown up since Vietnam? Do we now realize we should support our brothers and sons no matter where they are sent knowing the reason could be unjust?

Supporting the troops is not an admission that we support the war. Protesting the war does not mean we are unpatriotic. We can all be patriotic and still admonish an evil, lying, manipulating president. Right wingers need to understand that doing our patriotic duty out of a sense of honor can be separate from the disdain we feel for the fool that sent us into battle.

Our brothers who fought in Vietnam should have been treated better than they were. That shame is on us at our own hands and cannot be washed away.

We can however, pay attention to what our elected officials are up to and force them to be transparent in their dealings so that we are never blindsided again and forced into another illegal war.

If we have indeed learned anything from our mistakes with Vietnam, I can only hope we will also learn from our mistakes with George W Bush.