For Americans who may have some misgivings, or feel the stirrings of some gentle questioning of their government’s policies, the choices are somewhat limited.

For example, few Americans can truthfully say that they would welcome the invasion and occupation of the US by a foreign country, if pressed, most will be obliged to acknowledge that they would indeed resist such an occupation, and would have little sympathy for their neighbors who signed on with the invaders and for a few coins, hauled off their sons for “interrogation.”
Bush himself made it clear, when he repeated after his earpiece, “you are with (the US) or with the terrorists.”

That pretty much sums it up. Anyone who opposes the US is by definition, a terrorist, and every American, just like every Frenchman, every Arabian, every Palestinian, every Swede, must pay their money and take their choice.

For most folks outside of the US, it’s a no-brainer. They can afford to say, “well, hey, I oppose military aggression, I opposed it when Germany did it to Poland and France, I opposed it when the USSR did it to Czechoslovakia, and I oppose it when the US does it to all their various targets. Invasion and occupation are wrong in my book, no nuance, no gray, just wrong. And if any country invaded the US, you can bet I would be 100% behind Americans who resisted and did whatever they could do to drive those foreign invaders from those alabaster cities and amber waves of grain.”

But what is an American to do? If he opposed Germany, and the USSR, and supported the Resistance to those invasions, with what integrity can he now oppose the Iraqi Resistance?

And if he supports the Resistance, is he not opposing his own country?

Well, that depends on what he perceives his country to be, and which he holds dearer, his own moral sense of right and wrong, or the principle of “my country right or wrong.”

And what does he gain, in either case, and more importantly, what does he lose?

If he supports his government against his own conscience, he sends a message to that government that they are the master, not only of the lands and resources they wish to seize, but of his own conscience. Their moral values, they must acknowledge, are forged not in their hearts, but in the conference rooms of Halliburton.

Is it not their right to forfeit that freedom? Of course.

They have every right to weigh the consequences and cast their lot as they see fit. Some may call them hypocrites, but they do not need to bear such slurs in silence. They can stand proudly with Winston Churchill, Andrew Jackson, and Leopold, King of the Belgians, to name just a few, and proudly profess their faith and pledge their liege to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

They can claim a divine mandate as did the kings of old. The burden may not exist in the reality based sense, but it is real to their hearts. So what if they are called fascists, imperialists, colonialists? If that is their creed, they should defend it without shame, as did their fathers before them, and accept the legacy, and pass it on willingly to their children, because has not God himself, not to mention Madeleine Albright, decreed that the price is worth it?

But what if he chooses the other path? What if he stands up and says “I support all people who resist the brutality of occupation, whether it be in Ramadi, Ramallah, or Rhode Island, and I support it precisely because I am an American, and because I do love my country.”

Well, that fellow just declared himself a terrorist. He is now officially an enemy of the United States, an unlawful combatant, and while all Americans, just like everybody else on earth, is subject to extermination and/or seizure and perpetual imprisonment by US gunmen, he has just made himself a more likely candidate for that fate.

With the possible exception of pedophiles, he will have made himself the most hated and vilified category of American, in the eyes of the vast majority of his Americans.

Remember America is the place where Abu Ghraib whistleblower Joseph Darby’s family had to go into hiding, so many death threats did they receive, while Lynndie England has fan sites.

An American who supports the struggle for freedom and self-determination in a land under siege of a hostile invading force lives the spirit of another great American not so long ago, an American who was despised, spat upon, called every ugly name in the book, thrown in jail, beaten, dogs set upon him, and in the end was murdered, this man who had a dream that one day his country would live out its creed.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun?
… Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes