Silence is treason

Cheney is still singing everything's coming up roses, while the formerly safe Green Zone explodes under rocket ordinance and people are dying by the score at the hand of sucide bombers in neighborhoods outside of the Zone. Nonetheless, Cheney, joined by the about to be anointed Gen. Petraeus and their faithful codependent Lieberman, insist that any criticism of their "new" plan for "victory" is tantamount to treason.

As usual, Glenn Greewald slices their overt slurs against patriotic Americans who dare question their "wisdom" into ribbons. Glenn reaches into the historical record to find the founding principles of patriotic dissent.

Finding a way to impose checks on the President's war-making abilities was a key objective of the Founders. In Federalist 4, John Jay identified as a principal threat to the Republic the fact that insufficiently restrained leaders "will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and objects merely personal, such as a thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people."

But the most compelling argument in favor of questioning the authority of the powers that be comes from one of our more effective Commanders-in-Chief, Theodore Roosevelt.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Indeed, our entire rule of law is based on swearing to testify to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Compelled silence would render the three co-equal branches of our system of government into little more than a pile of useless scrap wood. You can't build a free and democratic republic out of that.