By the way, your last name…are you tunisian?

My request for Christmas was a book signed to me from Condoleezza Rice. I am completing my graduate paper on Dr. Rice, and she is a role model and her character above par. To the young ladies out there that need a role model. Delve into the life of Condi,
it will give you a new prespective on your life, and hope for the future.

THanks,
Bree

The German poet Martin Niemoller (a World War I German U-boat captain turned pastor) wrote the Poem ‘First They Came’ in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

Allow me to quote various folks on the Internet commenting on this poem

“Unfortunately, the relevance of this poem is as true today as it was in Germany in the 1930′s. One only has to reflect on the “ethnic cleansing” which was taking place in the former Yugoslavia, the genocide in Rwanda, and the current situation in the Darfur region of the Sudan.”

“… this poem should be required reading for all school students in all countries. We enjoy our freedom today because of happenings in the past, but we are just a dictator’s nod from losing everything.”

“First They Came should stand as a stern warning against complacency. If one person is discriminated against, we all suffer from that discrimination, If one person’s liberties and rights are circumscribed, no one’s liberties and rights are safe from the same action. It is up to each of us to realize that we are all just a whim away from being deprived of all these things we take for granted.”

“The idea is simple: we are all connected. The phrase, “never again” has been in place since the Holocaust of WWII was revealed to the world. Yet, genocide still takes place. Yet, the poor are still with us. Yet, corrupt governments are still in place. Who speaks? Who stands? Who gives voice?
This poem is still relevant today. It is a wonderful piece to challenge complacent behaviors on the part of society, and on the part of individuals.”

Taiyon, the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots. Dictators and dictatorial regimes rarely look like what they really are until it is too late. Bush, Cheney, and the apologists for them like Condoleezza Rice represented the greatest attack on American values and American democracy since the Declaration of Independence. It is a credit to the strength of our system and to the good sense of the American populace that they, unlike Hitler and the Nazis, were unable to take us all the way to disaster.

Think about it!

The rehabilitation of Condaleezza Rice begins complete with $2.5 million tell-all book contracts in her back pocket and “glossing over these difficult and frankly not-so-fun-to-talk-about topics” in her remarks.

And her story about the “history arc being long” and “she — along with everyone else in the Bush administration — did the best jobs they could with the knowledge they had at the time.”

How quickly do we forget that this is the same Rice that became the mouth-piece for “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” lies that got us into Iraq; she who as national security adviser approved the greatest attacks of American citizen’s rights to privacy with monstrous wiretaps without warrants. This woman lied then, and she isn’t going to start telling the truth now… (just read the New York Times article today) about how she personally approved water-boarding of Arab prisoners… (she neglected to mention that in her testimony in front of Congress.)

Evil sometimes has a pretty face… don’t let it fool you.

If we are to protect American and the freedoms we take for granted, we’d better get a little more critical in our thinking, and not just be won over by her bright red smile.

Markus