What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.

George Wilhelm Hegel



I would like to stipulate for this essay that Barack Obama is honorable and really wants to do the right thing for this country and this world.



But I also want to go back in that so easily manipulated concept called "history." Barack Obama glorified the Vietnam debacle by honoring two war criminals, John McCain and Colin Powell during the coronation ceremonies in DC and he honored those who fought "for us" at Khe Sahn…so are we now officially re-writing history that Vietnam was an honorable war and that it was justified or moral in any way? That the 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese who were killed were killed for a "noble cause?" No war is honorable or noble, no matter if it is "legal or justified," but our religion of state is WAR and the robber class's god is PROFIT and if Obama was the stipulated honorable man of this essay he would reject it, not glorify it.



I realize how seductive the mantra of "looking forward" is and how tempting it would be to want to forget the history of the last eight years and move on from the horror, but we cannot move on when we are smack dab in the middle of the horror that has in no way alleviated, nor will, if we continue to put blinders on and not face reality to avert pending disaster.



President Obama was asked about the possibility of a truth commission to investigate the crimes of the Bush criminal regime and he said: "no one is above the law…but it is my general orientation to get it right moving forward." As Constitution Law Professor, Jonathan Turley said in an interview on MSNBC's Countdown about this: "if President Obama believes that no one is above the law then he cannot block a war crimes' investigation…this is not a principled position. If we fail to prosecute then Bush's crimes become our crimes and Bush's shame becomes our shame."



We cannot ignore the history of felonious behavior being perpetrated in the highest office in our country. We must not ignore that presidents have been allowed to commit the most detestable war crimes and crimes against humanity from the comfort of the Oval Office and then be allowed to build libraries and lead luxurious lives with stolen money when their sentence is up. Then when the president dies we are told to mourn a "great statesmen" instead of facing the reality that he was most probably a villain. If we continue to allow this, then we also become the war criminals.



We are living in apocalyptic (uncovering, revealing, or widespread disaster) times and certainly the American Dream, if not dead, is on life support and to millions of people in this country and millions more around the world, the Dream has turned into (or has always been) a living Nightmare.



We cannot put this country back together if we continuously ignore the malignant cancer of "poverty, racism and militarism" (Martin Luther King, Jr in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech) that is killing us and if Barack Obama stupidly turns his back on the disease by only trying to treat the symptoms, like Professor Turley says, he is no different or better than his predecessor. There can be no prosperity, equality, or peace without justice. The bloodied souls of millions of people around the world are crying out for this justice. The law is already there, it has been created to punish the Hitlers and Husseins of the world and to try and prevent the Bushes and Cheneys. We must use it on Bush and Cheney to really prevent evil in the future.



Philosopher George Santayana also famously said this: Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.



This is the history that we have been doomed, or cursed, to repeat throughout the relatively brief life of the USA:



"War, economic panic, war, economic panic, war…rinse, repeat." Ad nauseum…We have a unique opportunity to break this cycle, but only if we the people work together to cure the cancer once and for all.



Another meaning of "apocalypse" is when "good triumphs over evil."



Justice is good, injustice which is followed by non-justice is a foundational evil.



Apocalypse nigh?