by the Floundering Fathers

(Washington, 28 January 2003) —Last September, the White House published, with great fanfare, ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,’ which presents the President’s vision for how American national security interests will be pursued in the 21st Century. The new strategy, which supporters and critics alike have described as a dramatic departure from Cold War-era concepts of national security, has excited great interest and debate among the Washington elite, and within the ranks of the defense and foreign policy intelligentsia. However, as the countdown to war with Iraq accelerates, the Administration is concerned that the document has not yet made much of an impression upon the broader public—principally because it comprises thirty-three pages of dense text filled with terms and concepts that will be unfamiliar to the average reader. The Administration has accordingly decided to take the bold step of updating a fundamental document from the nation’s hallowed past to reflect the new, post-9/11 realities, and timing its release to coincide with the President’s State of the Union address.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all nations are created unequal in relation to the United States; that this administration is endowed by the Creator with the unalienable right to dictate the terms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all of humanity. That governments are instituted among men to serve the foreign policies and domestic political interests of this divinely-ordained administration, deriving their just power from our consent. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these policies and interests, it is the right of this administration to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to us shall seem most likely to enlarge our profits and electoral tallies.

Prudence, indeed, would dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But, when a long train of our abuses and usurpations excites criticism of our administration and party, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such governments in order to distract the electorate's attention. Such is now the necessity which impels us to alter our former systems of government and international relations. The history of this administration is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all having, in direct object, the establishment of an absolute hegemony over the planet. To prove this, let these facts be submitted to an incredulous world.

We will maintain an absolute and unchallengeable supremacy in all fields of military power, sparing no expense in order to ensure that our righteous hegemony is preserved for all time.

We will extend our martial supremacy into space, and thereby militarize a realm that has heretofore been deemed off-limits to all weaponry.

We will vigorously oppose the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction abroad, while ourselves developing new types of nuclear weapons and adopting doctrines that lower the threshold for their use - including against non-nuclear foes.

We will spurn the use of diplomacy and other peaceful means of resolving international disputes - secure in the knowledge that our military supremacy renders it unnecessary for us to observe such niceties.

We will consult with our allies and international institutions only to the extent that they support this administration's policies without question or complaint.

We will enter into no new international treaties and agreements, no matter how wholesome and necessary for the common good.

We will refuse to abide by the terms of existing international treaties and agreements to which this nation is a signatory whenever these are deemed vexing or inconvenient.

We will unilaterally develop novel interpretations of existing international treaties and agreements, most notably by asserting that the UN Charter authorizes preemptive wars in 'self-defense' against nations that even we admit have no existing capability or intent to attack us.

We shall, moreover, insist that such novel interpretations apply only to ourselves, and will accordingly deny the right of 'preemption' to lesser nations.

We will claim to act in the interests of peace and of upholding the will of the United Nations, while openly planning war, and disparaging the value and authority of the UN.

We will refuse to permit our soldiers to be subjected to the machinery of international justice, while denying captured enemy soldiers access to any institutions of justice whatsoever.

We will champion the cause of universal and unalienable human rights, but deny them even to our own citizens and on our own soil.

We will proclaim our commitment to spreading freedom and democracy around the world, while lending moral, financial and military support to foreign despots whenever it is thought expedient.

We will preach that free trade is a moral imperative, while imposing protective tariffs designed to benefit our domestic political interests.

We will warn other nations against the evils of corruption, while maintaining known perpetrators of wholesale fraud in offices at the highest levels of this administration.

This administration has combined, with others, to subject the US to a jurisdiction foreign to its constitution, and unacknowledged by its laws; by unilaterally asserting new and revolutionary executive powers and giving assent to acts of legislation:

For depriving the people, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury.

For allowing secret evidence to be used in US courts of law.

For denying the people access to witness public legal proceedings.

For transporting prisoners beyond the seas to be held indefinitely without indictment or trial.

For allowing the people to be spied upon in many public and private venues, including their places of worship.

For obliging citizens to spy and inform upon one another.

For abolishing the nation's most cherished rights, and altering fundamentally the forms of its government.

We have plundered the treasury, ravaged the economy, burned the constitution, and destroyed the savings of our people.

We are, at this time, transporting large armies to foreign lands to begin the work of establishing our hegemony, under pretexts totally unworthy of the heads of a civilized nation.

In every stage of these oppressions, we have been petitioned for redress, in the most humble terms, both by our own citizenry and those of foreign lands. Their repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British subjects. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their Legislature to resist our jurisdiction over them. We have appealed to them to disavow these futile efforts, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

We, therefore, the members of the George II administration, in the White House assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare, that we are, and by right ought to be, hegemons of the world; that we are also absolved from all allegiance to international law; and that all limits on our power are, and ought to be, totally dissolved. And, for support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we gamble the American peoples' lives, fortunes and sacred honor.

George II

(Harken Energy, Inc. - President)

Richard Cheney (Haliburton, Inc. - Vice President, Head of the Secret Government, Arthur Anderson Spokesman)

Donald Rumsfeld (Gilead Sciences, Inc. - Secretary of Offense, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Director of Central Intelligence, etc., etc., etc.)

Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Offense for Warmongering)

John Ashcroft (Attorney General, Defender of the Faith, Lord High Executioner)

John Snow (CSX, Inc. - Secretary of the Deficit)

Thomas White (Enron, Inc. - Secretary of Fraud)

Karl Rove (Minister of Partisanship)

Ari Fleischer (Minister of Propaganda)

Colin Powell (Minister without Portfolio)