10-28-05,9:14am

To Whom It May Concern:

I hereby resign my position as a silent accomplice to your perpetration of and involvement in bullying, rape, and murder. I will no longer sit dumbly by while you, purporting to be my government, fabricate and manipulate evidence in order to engage in illegal wars of aggression. I refuse to any longer tacitly support your policies of torture, abuse, extraordinary rendition, and 'disappearing.' I resign from aiding and abetting your hypocritical regime that preaches democracy abroad while subverting it at home.

I've had enough. Enough of ignoring that intelligence was fixed around policy, rather than the other way around. Enough of your fifteen-year-old policy of regime change, justified by fabricated fears of weapons of mass destruction, weapons you knew were destroyed long ago. Enough of your deliberate smearing and denigration of individuals and international bodies who dared challenge the lies and disinformation tarted up as truth. Enough of your representatives who, not wanting to appear unpatriotic, and more concerned with job security than principles, authorized a dim-witted megalomaniac to use whatever means necessary to finish a job his daddy was unwilling to complete.

I've had enough of your self-congratulations for bringing 'free' elections to autocracies you helped create, while your own elections are stained with fraud, won through theft, and far from free. Enough of the hostility toward theocracies abroad as you cultivate one at home, replacing science with dogma, facts with faith, and some bastardized version of Christ for the Constitution. Enough of your feel-good lies about a government of, by, and for the people, while you openly and unabashedly change the tax and bankruptcy codes to the people's detriment, but to the corporations' benefit. Enough of your evisceration of social welfare programs while you fatten up the industries of weapons, war, and death. Enough of your mythical land of opportunity that's kept closed to most, particularly those born poor, black, or brown.

I've had enough of your demands that other nations abide by international law and treaties while unilaterally declaring that you are not bound by such constraints. Enough of your self-righteous condemnation of despotic regimes that violate human rights while you repeatedly refuse to submit reports of your own violations to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Enough of claiming to condemn torture while you frantically develop 'legal' justifications to engage in torture yourself. (I suppose you expect to be complimented for even trying to make torture legally supportable. After all, in the past you didn't concern yourself with legal justifications. You just tortured.)

I've had enough of your back-door deals to exempt the CIA from Congressional prohibitions against torture. Enough of your threats to veto any bill that in any way limits your ability to systematically inflict pain on whomever you deem deserving. Enough of your scoffing at your obligations under international and domestic law in order to detain people in perpetuity, without either evidence or charge. Enough of a citizenry that is either too stupid, too morally adrift, too self-absorbed, or too apathetic to be angered, much less outraged, by your acts of illegal and abject cruelty.

Ya basta.

I'm done. Finished. I'm turning in my flag. You have so debased it for so long that it no longer stands for anything but your corruption, arrogance, and greed. It symbolizes nationalism, rather than patriotism. Oppression rather than freedom. Fear rather than hope. It is an emblem of your xenophobic militarism, and addiction to hegemony. It is the mark of your state sponsored terrorism by way of precision air strikes, economic sanctions, and CIA-supported juntas. It is the badge of your arrogant people who have not yet been disabused of the misplaced belief that because they are blessed by a particular geography, they are superior to and more deserving than any other member of humanity.

The flag has for too long been used as an excuse and justification for your short-sighted and morally bankrupt foreign policies. Foreign policies which fund, train, equip, and support despots and death squads, tyrants and torture. Foreign policies that are so lacking in foresight that they succeed only in creating future enemies and ensuring future violence. Foreign policies that are calculated to starve to death hundreds of thousands of children under the age of five; deaths which accomplished nothing, but which you nonetheless declared 'worth it.' (When are half a million dead children ever worth it? What are they worth? Who are you to say?)

The flag, like my hands, like your hands, is stained with blood. I will not ignore it any longer. I will not be a party to your crimes. I will no longer sit silently, a coward, while you kill, torture, and terrorize on my behalf. I will not carry this burden of shame any further. No more. I quit.

I quit, but I'm not leaving. I am staying to fight. I will fight you and everything you stand for. Your violence, corruption, and greed. Your arrogance, hypocrisy, and lies. I will fight until you are defeated or I am dead. I will fight.

I am not alone. There are others like me. Our numbers are growing.

We're coming for you.

Ken Sanders is a lawyer and writer in Tucson whose publishing credits include Op Ed News, Z Magazine, Common Dreams, Democratic Underground, Dissident Voice, and Political Affairs Magazine, among others. All of his articles may be found at politicsofdissent