Will the Demcrats Become Part of the Problem?
Enforcers or Enablers?
It only took six years for Americans to comprehend George Bush and the Republican Party and to realize that the Republicans were not leading America in any promising directions.
Exit polls and interviews with voters across the country by CNN political analyst Bill Schneider show that the November 2006 election was a vote against both Bush and the war in Iraq. Schneider reports that voters did not even know the name of the Democrats for whom they voted. Voters said: "I am going to vote Democrat, because I don't like Bush, I don't like the war. I want to make a statement."
I believe that voters recognized that the peril of one-party rule is that political accountability exists no where except at the ballot box. With the Republican built and programmed electronic voting machines, even accountability at the ballot box was disappearing.
Americans realized that they had made a serious mistake giving power to one party, and they rectified it.
With Republican control of the legislative branch ended, Pentagon Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was immediately swept from power. With the troops, generals, and the service newspapers calling for Rumsfeld's head, only the delusional warmonger, Vice President Richard Cheney, wanted to keep Rumsfeld in power.
It was a battle that Cheney lost. Cheney's defeat is an indication that reality has elbowed its way back into Republican consciousness, pushing hubris and delusion away from the control they have exercised over political power.
The lust for unbridled power proved to be too strong a temptation for normally cautious Republicans. The Republicans waved the flag and shouted "terrorist sympathizer" at every civil libertarian who attempted to defend the US Constitution, the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions' proscriptions against torture, and America's reputation from a nazified US Dept of Justice (sic) and a president who behaved--with the approval of Republicans--as if he were above the law. In violation of his oath of office, Bush used signing statements to negate laws passed by Congress, not with a veto, but with his personal opinion. Bush, thus, elevated himself above the rule of law that has protected America from becoming a tyranny and made a mockery of the separation of powers that are a foundation of American liberty.
Americans may not have understood this as clearly as the Founding Fathers did, but the people recognized, however dimly, a problem and exercised corrective action. The question now is: what will Democrats do?
The Democrats clearly have no mandate for their pet issues of gun control, homosexual marriage, and higher taxes--especially at a time when the average American is deeper in personal debt than at any other time in history and jobs are being offshored at a rapid rate destroying the economic prospects of the American people.
After the years of illegal war and the overnight destruction of civil liberties that were 800 years in their creation, the United States stands at a watershed. If the legislation that has been put on the books permitting spying on Americans without a court warrant, legalizing torture and self-incrimination, and repealing habeas corpus and the right to an attorney, remains on the books, the United States will be a police state regardless of which party is in power.
If the Democrats are to make a real difference, their first task is to repeal the Orwellian-named "Patriot Acts," the torture legislation, the detention without court evidence legislation, and the right-to-spy and invade privacy without court warrant legislation. The White House tyrant needs to be quickly told that one more "signing statement" and he will be impeached, convicted, and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague.
The notion that Americans can be protected from "terror" by giving up the Bill of Rights is absurd. Democrats are complicit in this absurd notion. Many were intimidated into voting for police state legislation, because they lacked the intestinal fortitude to call police state legislation by its own name. The legislation that has been passed during the Bush regime is far more dangerous to Americans than Muslim terrorists.
Indeed, the prime cause of Muslim terrorism is the US interference in the internal affairs of Muslim countries and America's one-sided stance in favor of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When Jimmy Carter was president, his even-handed approach made the US respected throughout the Muslim world. 9/11, if it was actually an act of Muslim terrorism, was the direct consequence of US one-sided meddling in Middle Eastern affairs.
When, and only when, the Democrats have erased the Bush administration's police state legislation from the books, thus restoring the Constitution, they should clear the air on two other issues of major importance. The Democrats must convene a commission of independent experts to investigate 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report has too many problems and shortcomings to be believable.
Recent polls show that 36 percent of the American people do not believe the report. Such a deficient report is unacceptable. 9/11 became the excuse for the neoconservative Bush regime to launch illegal wars of aggression in the Middle East. The 9/11 Commission Report is nothing but a public relations justification for the "war on terror," which in truth is a war on American liberty. As long as politicians with a police state mentality can cling to the cover of the 9/11 Commission Report, the Bill of Rights will remain endangered.
The other issue is the blatant corruption in the Bush regime's contract practices. So many contracts are tainted with their connections to Republican power brokers, including Vice President Richard Cheney, that the taxpayers are being fleeced on the level of the Grant administration. Indictments and long prison sentences are in order.
This leaves the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both are lost. Both invasions were illegal. Those responsible must be held accountable.
The American prosecutors of the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg emphasized, as Robert Jackson put it, that Germany's crime was not in losing the war but in starting it. Under the Nuremberg standard, to launch a war of aggression is a war crime. It is punishable with a death sentence.
As the wars are crimes, they must be stopped. Having overthrown a stable secular regime in Iraq, the US and its craven allies have no recourse but to accept that Iraq will break into three states: In the north the Kurds will unite with the Turkish Kurds, and Turkey will have to deal with the situation without US interference. In the south, the Shiites will have an Islamic regime similar to the government in Iran, with whom the Iraqi Shiites will be allied. The Sunnis will be isolated in the middle without any oil.
The US and Britain no longer have any role to play in the Middle East. As the King of Jordan predicted, there is now a Shiite crescent that runs from Iran through Iraq into Lebanon. This Shiite crescent is the most powerful force in the Middle East.
The Iraqi Sunnis can come to terms with Shiite power or be destroyed. The American puppet states of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates are faced with the instability that comes from being allied with the "hegemonic" West against their own people. It is up to their own wits whether they can make the transformation.
The US has neither the resources, the finances, nor the credibility to intervene.
Republican rule in the 21st century has devastated American civil liberties and American prestige and leadership capability. Can Democrats restore American liberties and leadership, or will a lust for power corrupt them, too, and cause Democrats to retain the police state powers Bush has created?
If the Bush regime's police state legislation is still law in 2008, the Democrats will have failed.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com?
9 comments:
Well that's the trouble since the Democrats are largely as corrupted by the special interests as the Republicans, but at least they had enough decency to try and hide it so the damage wasn't half a great as when the Republicans gave up all pretense of trying to do the right thing.
But I agree that if the Democrats don't at least make some show of reversing the worst the incompetency what has gone on the 6 years they won't have a chance in the next election because the people already can't stand politicians, it's just that they held out some hope of maybe the Democrats being able to do something if they had a chance.
If they don't show any progress and blame the Republicans of interferring and stonewalling on legislation, they probably will be written off as proving they were ineffectual.
You know, the Dems didn't so much win as the Reps lost. I don't think people voted for Dems, they just voted against Reps. This puts a huge responsibility on the Dems to actually DO something.
I don't care what they do, if they don't start investigations into the crimes of the Whitehouse, then no other good they do will matter to me.
Here's the order I want the investigations to go in:
1. The false reasons for starting this war, since we all know it had nothing to do with WMDs or 911.
2. 911 itself. What's the truth behind it, how was it able to happen, and what really brought down the towers.
3. I want investigations into the war contracts given to Haliburton, and I want those found to be profiteering to be shot on the Whitehouse lawn.
4. And if there's anyone left standing after #1, 2, and 3, I want investigations into the oil companies and the hijacking of the price of gas.
That’s a pretty tall order for a bunch of Democrats...but a girl can dream!
I doubt they'll be able to do all of that especially if Haliburton and the oil companies start throwing moeny at them so I wouldn't hold your breath on 3 and 4.
I personally don't put much stock into the conspiracy theories I've heard about 911 and the most they'd probably be able to prove is that they knew something like terrorist were cooking up some kind of plan that they didn't take the threat seriously and that they took advantage to push their agenda after it happened but not that they had anything to do with the actual attack. That proof would be hard to come by though and probably won't be reveal until many years after.
I do think for the Democrats to be able to show that they are making any kind of progress that they would have to tackle the first though since that is in their purview and what they should've done at the outset.
They bear a lot of responsibility for accepting the all the disinformation that was foisted upon them before the war started and should've done a lot more debate and digging before they voted to support and not be goaded into reacting to being called "unpatriotic"
It certainly did remind me a lot of school yard peer pressure when a bully dares you to do something stupid and taunts you by saying "Are you chicken?"
They should have a lot better evidence now to be able to prove that Bush was manipulating all the reasons for invading Iraq and mishandled enough of the strategy and forces to be impeached for not listening to the people that tried to tell him different.
Yep I totally agree that the Dems wussed out for fear of being called unpatriotic, or worse yet, traitors. Not to make excuses, but just remember what a tense time it was back then. Anyone speaking against the Administration would have been quickly swift boated AND Dixie-Chicked. Can you be both swift boated and Dixie-Chicked, or would that be redundant? I don’t know, perhaps we should ask Kerry. Scary to think it’s still going on.
But I digress. Man you’re really bursting my bubble on #3 and 4. I want Halliburton and Cheney to go down in flames. And I have this obsession about gas prices. I’ve turned it into a game now. I’m totally obsessed with gambling on when gas prices will rise. Should I get gas today? Will it go down a penny or two tomorrow, or will it go up? It’s not that I give two licks about the extra pennies I save, I could care less. It’s about NOT giving those extra pennies to big oil. Every time I get gas just before the price goes up I feel totally vindicated, like I stuck it to big oil personally. I get a big kick out of it! Unfortunately I’m a terrible gambler and I usually end up filling up just before the price drops a few pennies. Totally irritates me! And yes, I realize I’m a freak. :>
As for conspiracy theories about 911, have you ever seen "Loose Change"? There’s also a "Loose Change 2" out now. If you haven’t seen it I’ll post the links, it will change your life. I’m serious. Just the prospect that our government could have had a hand in it is mind-boggling. It’s not tin foil hat stuff. You must watch it and tell me what you think afterwards. All the film does is pose question after question. It’s chocked full of facts and they back all the facts up with proof. It will blow your mind, and I hope everything in the entire film is bogus. The fact that it might not be scares the hell out of me.
Yes I have seen the Loose Change things and questions aren't proof. The facts they use are out of context since they only prove circumstantial points. All the evidence I've seen in they Loose Change doesn't add up to answering the questions they pose since there are other facts that explain the questions more simply than the theories they use.
They all add up to the government didn't take the threat seriously and they took advantage of it but it doesn't prove that explosives were used on the Towers and it doesn't prove that a missile was fired at the Pentagon.
I'm sorry for spoiling the fantasy about the corporations, individual people in them take the fall as scapegoats like Jeff Skilling and Jack Abromoff but the corporate greed continues. You know all politicians seem to have a problem with resisting undue influence in policy making from major donors regardless of what party they're in, there have been plenty of examples of it.
That fear of the terrorists that they used on the voting public wasn't the only effective use, since they also used the fear of being a traitor on Congress, but you would've thought that since it was their job to be more informed about it that they wouldn't have fallen for the peer pressure and stood up to it. I guess that was too much to hope for.
Well, I think the investigations are a major waste of time and money. For all the investigations of Clinton and money thrown at that little project, nothing came of it. Spend the money elsewhere, like on education. I think it's possible the Dems won't be able to do all that much with their slim majority. Some of the Dems that were elected are just as conservative and right-wing religious as the Republicans. Don't be surprised if they vote with the Republicans, particularly on social issues.
Cait,
Do you really think some of the Dems are as far right as the Reps? Or do you think maybe they just "pertendin’" to get elected? I would think being called terrorists by the president just days before the election would have soured them from leaning to the right, but who knows.
While I agree that most Dems are not much better than Reps, what I do hold out hope for is that there is so much attention on them that it will force them to fly right. The whole world is watching Pelosi, and probably will be for a while. You KNOW the Reps are going to be watching her, if for no other reason than to bash her at every turn.
If the bloggers (who get so much attention) will do their jobs and hold Dems to the same degree of responsibility as they do the Reps, and shout it from the rooftops when the Dems screw up, then it could get interesting. It’s a shame that government needs a babysitter with a bullhorn, but they do. Now if only the babysitters would be as non-partisan as we want our politicians…
Argon,
I realize that Loose Change asked a lot of questions, but don’t you think that there are just too many questions for it to have happened the way the WH says it did? Perhaps I just think this administration is evil enough to actually do something like 911.
I know the admin. disregarded all the warnings. Do you think it was ignorance, laziness, or perhaps something more sinister, such as allowing it to happen as a justification for a little war?
I think one of the problems with 9/11 is that various agencies had bits of information and all were guarding their turf and wouldn't share. If the information could have been pieced together, the attack might have been stopped. I don't think Bush & Co. "allowed" the attack to happen. I think the CIA might have, though.
I just don't think the Dems can accomplish as much as they hope because their majority is so slim. And, yes, I think some of the newly elected Dems, particularly the Southern ones, are probably just as right-wing as the Repulicans they may have replaced. The old-fashioned "Dixiecrat" is alive and well. I agree with the Republicans on almost nothing. They are supposed to be fiscal conservatives, and they've been anything but that while in power. Their stance on social issues is sickening.
Well allowing it to happen is a lot different than making it happen. I do think that GOP is evil enough to allow it to happen since they've known for decades that terrorist attack were possible and that enemy groups like Al-Queda were planning stuff. But I doubt they actively did anything specifically in the 9/11 attack because it surprised a whole lot of people that anyone would be stupid or suicidal enough to fly airliners into buildings.
That's probably why the conspiracy theorists have so many questions because it's easier to believe in a inside job to blow it up than such a stupid plan like flying a jet into a building would work.
The GOP should take responsibility for allowing it to happen instead of trying to blame Clinton since it happened almost a year after Clinton left office and they didn't do anything more than he did to stop it.
What was worse is they did everything they could to take advantage of it to push their agenda and whip up the fear about it. That's what I meant by they left all pretenses behind about even appearing to try and do the right thing when they continually used scare tactics and outright lies to get their way. That's the thing the should pay the price for even if it means jail time.
As cait said it's a slim majority and so I wouldn't hold your breath about them accomplishing anything. With any luck at all it will finally prove to more people that a 3rd party is needed and a major reform of the political system since any politician (a very slim minority) that isn't already corrupted is thwarted by all the ones that are.
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