So long, America...we hardly knew ya.

[driver8]

My dear America, we had such high hopes for you, once. You were born from men with ideas about freedom, equality, justice, truth, and compassion. The ideals that you represented were a source of pride and passion for many who lived within your borders. Wars were fought, blood was spilled, and lives were lost to defend our way of life and to protect those who could not protect themselves. America, you were the big brother of the world -- a country to look up to...a country that did what was right when it needed to be done.

Nobody is perfect, nor is a country. You stumbled along the way, my dear America...call it growing pains, if you wish. You were learning as you grew, and we understood that. Through it all, we hoped that you learned from your mistakes and that you made ammends...that was all that we could ask for. We knew that eventually you would come back , America...and that you would show the world what freedom and democracy were all about. We embraced you with open arms; comforted once again by your presence, your values, and your strength.

It seems like such a long time since we have seen you, America...and we don't understand why you left us. You were pushed, and pulled, and shaped, and bent into a country that we no longer recognized...or wanted to recognize. You have become what we have seen so many times before -- a country that we never thought you were capable of becoming. You were hijacked and taken away from us as we sat and watched...not really believing what we were seeing. We tried to keep you with us, but we failed in the end. The evil and hatred that now consumes you, my dear America, has held us down. We have lost our grip on you and cannot reach you now.

Make no mistake, we will stand and fight and are fighting...we are not quite ready to give you up. But if you feel that you must go, please wrap yourself in the Constitution and keep it safe; we will be needing it when you decide to return. I do not wish to say goodbye just yet so I will simply say this:

"So long, America...we hardly knew ya'."

[izzie]

1. They have voted to give power to pick up any one.

I do not see why they do not see this?

[HereSince1628]

2. Going? Perhaps, but surely not to be forgotten

Things don't always go very well in this complacent country, but the nation has a tendency to periodically wake up and in startled self-repugnance, raise itself up out of the litter of it's own making and straighten things up.

That time is at hand. Vote to retake the House and the Senate!

[Philosoraptor]

3. WE outnumber THEM

and perhaps they and we will both realize it.

[galileo3000]

4. I will not turn my back in the hour of need.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. We're going to get spanked someday if this passes the Senate.

Countries which will grow tired of their citizens being abused by our Draconian laws and they will unite against us, and even our allies will rejoice in our failures.

Come to think of it, nothing will change much from what it is today, since Bush has been in office. Carry on.

[mwb970]

6. They're already uniting against us.

...they will unite against us, and even our allies will rejoice in our failures.

Anti-U.S. leaders seek alliances
by Helene Cooper, Detroit News

But others here (at the UN) wondered whether they might be witnessing the birth of a new anti-American bloc, something that may eventually succeed the Nonaligned Movement, which originated in the Cold War.

The aggressive steps the Bush administration has taken on national security, as well as more general resentment against the world's strongest power, have made the United States vulnerable to charges of racism, hypocrisy and imperialism, particularly in the non-Western world, diplomats here said.

"Wherever he looks, he sees extremists," Chavez said Tuesday about President Bush to a roomful of General Assembly delegates, most of them from Africa, Latin America and Asia. "And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, 'Oh, there's an extremist.' Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him."

When Chavez says Washington sees imagined enemies in dark-skinned people, he is capitalizing on international anger over issues like secret CIA prisons and the Bush administration's attempts to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions. "Things like Guantanamo make people question whether we believe our own values, and whether what the president says about protecting civil liberties is actually true," said Edward Luck, head of the Center on International Organization at Columbia University. "That gives people like Chavez an opening that they can exploit."

More at:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060927/NATION/609270347/1020

It seems to me that with America emerging as an unpredictable, dangerous "rogue nation" that is likely to invade any country at all for no reason, a country of people who apparently are tired of their democracy and Constitution and would now like to establish a fascist dictatorship here and an American Empire abroad, the rest of the world has no choice but to band together to "contain" us, just the way we tried to "contain" the Soviet Union for all these years. They will impose economic and trade sanctions at first, but who knows where they will go from there?

The monster that America has become must be stopped, for the good of the world. If we can't do it ourselves, the rest of the world will do it for us.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Sounds like a personal ad:

Anti-US leaders seeking allies. Must like pain free walks on the beach and enjoy pollution free sunsets.