On Shopping While the Constitution Burns

Amy Branham, mother of Sgt. Jeremy R. Smith -- a casualty of the war in Iraq, has an insightful and impassioned essay on Buzzflash entitled, "America Went Shopping While Our Consitution Burned." Here's an excerpt:

Good American citizens across the country wanted to know what they could do to help. Go shopping, the President told us. Travel, and do the things you have always done. Don't change your lives. Don't let the terrorists win.

So we went shopping in droves. We bought up gas guzzling SUVs and RVs, went to Wal-Mart en masse to buy up cheap goods from China, and we traveled the country. We continued to take our kids to soccer and baseball practice, went to movies and football games and did what we in America do best. We spent money. We bought homes and got mortgages we couldn't really afford and the housing industry went through the roof.

We shopped until we dropped. We did this for years. We ran up our credit card debt and spent every penny we had to pay our bills. Savings went down and spending went up. But we were being good little patriotic citizens to win our war on terror. We couldn't let the terrorists change our lives. And we didn't.

The average American citizen did not go to war and did not see it. There was no draft. Our military men and women, America's sons and daughters, were called upon time and time again to go to Iraq for longer and longer periods of time. And the government would not give them equal time at home with their families. Veterans benefits were cut and those who returned home with PTSD and other disabilities were not helped and cared for as they should have been. Our military was broken.

We were too mind-numbed and shopping happy to see that our Constitution was being disassembled piece by piece. The enemy of freedom and democracy was not a foreign terrorist -- although they do exist and are a threat. The enemy was our own government.

Behind the scenes, in the name of the Great War on Terror, people were being quietly picked up around the world and flown to secret bases and tortured for information -- policies strictly forbidden in the Geneva Convention. This is called Rendition. We put hundreds of men and young boys into Guantanimo Bay and held them without charge for years on end, away from their country and their family and all they hold dear.

American citizens were spied on, had their phone calls listened to, and e-mails read without the benefit of warrants and the FISA court.

In the name of the Great War on Terror and all Americans, prisoners at Abu Ghraib were tortured in the most hideous of ways and further humiliated by having their pictures taken by their torturers.