Bush, Congress--Like Ghouls Standing at Death Bed, Waiting for Political Accolades

Bush, Congress intervene in Terry Schiavo case: political thuggery in the service of reaction:
By the Editorial Board
21 March 2005

The intervention of Congress and the Bush administration into the case of Terri Schiavo—the Florida woman on life support for the past 15 years—is an act of unmitigated political thuggery, exploiting a family tragedy for the most reactionary political purposes. It is both a moral abomination and a frontal assault on basic democratic rights.

The assertion of unbridled government authority over the most intimate and private concerns is an ominous warning of the political direction of the US ruling elite and its political agents. The emergency bill being rammed through Congress has been accompanied by open appeals to religious hysteria and thinly concealed incitement to violence against Michael Schiavo, his lawyer, and the Florida judge who upheld Schiavo’s decision to terminate life support.

The cynical and brutal exploitation of an internal family dispute over the fate of Schiavo, whom doctors have declared to be in an irreversible vegetative state, is but the latest political provocation launched by Bush and his Republican allies in Congress. It follows a well established pattern of jumping on “hot button” issues—abortion rights, same-sex marriage, school prayer—in order to whip up the most backward, ignorant and intolerant social elements.

This is how the arch-reactionaries who control all of the levers of state power in the US seek to create a social base for right-wing policies that are opposed by the vast majority of the American people: militarism and war; the destruction of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the gutting of democratic rights. Behind Bush and company stand the most predatory and criminal sections of the US ruling elite, who pursue by such means their plans to eliminate all legal and political restrictions on the pursuit of corporate profit and the accumulation of ever more obscene levels of personal wealth.

As the Schiavo affair demonstrates, the Democratic Party serves as the willing accomplice in this assault on the basic rights of the American people.

Acting at the instigation of Christian fundamentalist groups that have targeted the Schiavo case as an example of the “right to life,” congressional Republicans made a series of attempts last week to overturn the Florida judge’s decision to permit the withdrawal of life support.

Both the House and Senate met in emergency session Sunday to consider a bill entitled “For the Benefit of the Parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo,” which would allow the parents to file suit in federal court to block the withdrawal of life support. President Bush flew back from a weekend at his Crawford, Texas ranch to be on hand to sign the bill, in a crass display of pandering to the Christian right.

Exemplifying the shameless hypocrisy that has permeated all of the actions of Bush and Congress in this case, White House spokesman Scott McClellan issued a statement that in matters of life and death, such as the Schiavo case, the president believed in careful reflection and deliberation. This from a man who, as governor of Texas, rubber-stamped the execution of 152 prisoners, giving an average of 15 minutes apiece to their death row appeals. The Bush White House’s record of “respect for human life” has included the razing of entire cities in Iraq, the dispatch of US Special Forces and CIA death squads around the world, and the widespread use of torture."

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