It’s been an interesting few weeks in the War on Terror. My interest was piqued in mid-May when George Galloway, a Member of Parliament, came to DC to dress down Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) for his “mother of all smokescreens,” ie: his investigation into the Oil for Food Program. Seems Mr. Coleman and his committee accused Galloway of profiting from oil sales under the Hussein regime. Here’s part of Galloway’s response:

I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001. [...] Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives -- 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever, on a pack of lies.

It is worth noting that Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) sat stunned during Galloway’s remarks, and refused to take part in the attack on Coleman and the Republican idiocracy. In fact, Levin revealed the sorry state of our democracy by attacking Galloway on some minor point that was a clear distraction. Levin is known to have voted against the war in Iraq, yet his allegiance with Coleman is quite revealing. Apparently Democrats are content to defend their erroneous colleagues rather than speak the Truth.

Last week Europe voted “non” etc. to the EU Constitution. Traveling through France a couple of summers ago, we stopped and toured the European Parliament in Strasbourg. During our tour I chatted up our guide on the interesting years that were to come to the fledgling institution known as the EU. While we both agreed on the necessity of creating a European counter-balance to the hegemenous US presence in the globe, we disagreed on how the EU should create their consitution. While our guide explained the necessity of embracing globalization and free-trade policies, I attempted to convince her that the damage done to countries like the US from these policies has been severe.

It seems more of France and the Netherland’s voters see things my way after all. While conservative news sources and pundits have tried to spin the recent “no” votes on the constitution to fit their limited understanding of the world (high unemployment, see! they need Wal-Mart!), what has really been happening is a large step to the left on the political spectrum. According to a dear friend of mine in Germany, Europeans are tired of free market reforms destroying their social base, and are voting en mass to reject globalized capitalism. Let’s hope their leaders are listening. If they are, the EU may actually have the potential to show us the way to a world in which labor and the environment are held to be sacred again.

But perhaps the best thing to come out of Europe in the last month is Amnesty International’s human rights report, in which they lambast the US for running “gulags” around the world. This report, and specifically the word “gulag” have obviously annoyed the head Bushies who are noww using terms like “absurd,” “offended” and the ever present “hate America.” Instead of bowing to this pressure, as so many American lawmakers do, AI is fighting back. Today’s letter to the editor in the Times illustrates the core of their argument:

No amount of spin can erase the myriad human rights abuses committed by United States officials in the "war on terror." The United States cannot simultaneously claim that it "promotes freedom around the world" while detaining tens of thousands at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and in Iraq and other locations without charge or trial and allowing those civilian and military officials responsible for orchestrating a systematic policy of torture to escape accountability.

Conservatives in America have spent an incredible amount of intellectual capital defending the actions of an obviously suspect Bush Administration. Democrats have failed to stand up and challenge this administration. It has been left to our old, wise friends in Europe to fight this battle for us. It is telling that this resistance is coming from Europe right now. Apparently few Americans have it in them to speak the Truth anymore.