June 28, 2005
By Bernard Weiner, The
Crisis Papers
Though
my degrees are in government and international relations, I hadn't
been part of the political activism arena since the '60s - from
roughly the Civil Rights movement (late-'50s) through the anti-Vietnam
War movement (mid-'70s). Instead, after years of college teaching,
I found myself more engaged in cultural work as a playwright, poet,
and newspaper reporter, and, for nearly two decades, as a theater
critic.
When 9/11 arrived, something snapped open in me, as it did for
many Americans. The world indeed had changed, not just the fact
that the U.S. was attacked in such a horrific way and had to respond,
but also, and perhaps more significantly, in the brazen, power-hungry
way the Bush Administration had chosen to use those multiple terror-murders.
My political instincts and intuitions were reactivated, along
with a desire to talk about what I saw happening, and I began writing
political analyses for a wide variety of Internet websites. If one
examined those early columns, one could see a moderate progressive
struggling, along with everyone else, in trying to make sense of
what was going on politically, socially, and economically.
After a year or so of writing for other publications, co-activist
philosopher Ernest Partridge and I founded our own website The
Crisis Papers in November of 2002, where we not only would publish
our political analyses but also link to the best writing we found
out there on the Web, and help the fledgling resistance gain momentum.
Two years later, just prior to the 2004 election, we found we
were receiving close to a half-million hits a month. We were able
to share our own ideas and stimulate our readers' thoughts about
the Bush Administration, the "war on terrorism," the various scandals,
the torture policy established from the top, and, especially, the
unwise, dishonorable, illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, etc.
CLARIFYING THE CRIMES
Below is a quick list of fifteen things that I - and maybe half
of my fellow Americans - have learned since George Bush first moved
into the Oval Office four-plus years ago. I don't know about you,
but making such lists helps me sum up and clarify my thoughts, giving
me something to chew on when figuring out what to do next, including
the possibility of moving on some of these items as grounds for
impeachment. See what you think.
1. I've learned that while many of us in the late-'80s
and early-'90s were celebrating the implosion of Soviet-style communism
and the end of the Cold War, others already had been drafting aggressive
plans to exploit the fact that the U.S. was now the sole superpower
on the planet. If you want to know why America is in Iraq, you need
look no further than the theoretical writings of the neo-cons associated
with The Project for The New American Century, who essentially run
Bush Administration foreign/military policy. Among the founding
members: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz.
For an introductory primer, see "How
We Got Into This Imperial Pickle."
2. I've learned that these neo-cons realized their aggressive
views were way out of the mainstream and thus that their goal of
assuming "global hegemony" would have to be put on hold "absent
some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
Their wish came true on September 11, 2001; then-National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice said 9/11 presented the Bush Administration
with "an enormous opportunity" for the implementation of its agenda
in the world. (Note: All the words inside quotation marks are theirs,
not made up by me.)
By the way, it seems overwhelmingly apparent that Rice, Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., were quite aware weeks ahead of 9/11 that
a spectacular terrorist attack was coming from Al Qaida, but, for
their own reasons, chose to look the other way and do little or
nothing to prepare themselves or the country for what was about
to come down.
3. I've learned that Karl Rove, et al., taking note of
how so many presidents (especially Bush the Elder) plunged in the
polls after successful foreign adventures, realized that while Americans
rally around a president during wartime, other concerns often take
precedence once the hostilities cease. So Rove and Rumsfeld and
Cheney and Wolfowitz decided to make sure that hostilities never
cease.
They reacted to 9/11 by declaring a never-ending "war on terrorism,"
therefore ensuring that the U.S. would be kept on a permanent war
footing, and Bush would therefore be a "wartime president" during
his entire residency in the White House. (Note: there are definitely
bad guys out there anxious to do more damage to the U.S., and those
murderous thugs need to be dealt with, but what we're talking about
here are the reckless, imperial measures chosen by the Bush Administration
that just happen to coincide with fulfilling their agenda.)
TORTURE AS STATE POLICY
4. I've learned that Bush toady Alberto Gonzales, then
White House counsel, used this "permanent war" rationale as a justification
for instituting the closest thing to a dictatorship in the U.S.
since Richard Nixon, except that the Bush Administration makes Nixon's
crimes look fairly puny in comparison. According to the twisted
legal philosophy Gonzales and his aides came up with, Bush can do
whatever he likes whenever he says he is acting as "commander-in-chief"
during "wartime."
Since it's a permanent war they say we're in, it follows that under
the guise of "national security" and "the war on terrorism," Bush
can do pretty much what he chooses to do. For Bush to make his own
law, or to ignore a law on the books, is permissible because his
authority to do so is "inherent in the President," the Gonzales
theory claims. Astounding!
The Supreme Court shot down Nixon when he tried to assert something
similar - that when the President takes an action, it is ipso
facto legal because he's the President. We shall have to wait
to see how the current Supreme Court will deal with this much more
expansive interpretation, especially if Bush can appoint a few more
Hard-Rightists to it. The Supremes already fired a warning shot
across his bow, telling Bush last year that though the President
is granted extra powers during "wartime," he went way beyond the
Constitutional pale by refusing prisoners in U.S. care access to
the legal system. But Bush simply continues to delay implementation
of the high court's ruling, or tries to go around the decision.
5. I've learned that Gonzales and Pentagon lawyers, using
the "commander-in-chief-during-wartime" rationale, have attempted
to legally justify use of "harsh interrogation techniques" (read:
torture) on those terror suspects by inventing a new term, "enemy
combatants," not used in the Geneva Conventions Against Torture
of Prisoners of War. Various watchdog groups, including the International
Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United
Nations, have expressed grave reservations about the treatment by
U.S. forces of their detainees; indeed, Amnesty International urged
governments around the world to consider bringing war-crimes charges
against American officials.
6. I've learned that among the first actions taken by the
Bush Administration in early-2001 were those eliminating legal liability
for U.S. officials or soldiers from domestic criminal laws and international
conventions regarding the torture of prisoners in U.S. care. We
didn't fully understand why the Administration was taking these
steps until a year or two later, when the extent of U.S. abuse (and
deaths) of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo and elsewhere
become evident. The Administration made sure that only lower-level
guards and officers were charged with the deaths and abuse crimes,
even though the orders and "atmosphere" that winked at anti-torture
laws had come down the chain of command from the White House and
Pentagon authorizing the use of "harsh interrogation methods" of
terrorist suspects.
"RENDERING" AND AMERICA'S SHAME
7. I've learned that the hardest prisoners to crack were
either "ghosted" - i.e., kept off the rolls so that the International
Red Cross would not know they existed to check up on their interrogations
and care - or were "rendered" to countries abroad (such as Uzbekistan,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, et al.) where they could be severely tortured
without running afoul of U.S. laws and military regulations. The
CIA uses special planes for flying these high-profile prisoners
to the severe-torture countries. Such behavior makes me ashamed
for my country. (Note: Bush has never ordered an end to all torture
and "rendering" activities.)
8. I've learned that torture and permanent war abroad have
been linked to police-state tactics at home - mainly in controversial
sections of the so-called USA Patriot Act, barely read (if read
at all) and passed in great haste and fear after 9/11. The result
is the creation of a militarist, neo-fascist atmosphere within America.
Those opposing this, or other policies of this Administration are
smeared with accusations of giving aid and comfort to the enemy
(Ashcroft), or being soft on terrorism (Rove/Cheney).
9. I've learned that much of the corporate-owned mass-media
- newspapers, network news, cable pundits, radio talk-shows - support
the Bush Administration, out of fear of reprisal or because they
are ideologically or economically in tune. This means that the broad
base of the American population, in a state of constantly-hyped
fear, does not have adequate information to counter the massive
lies and propaganda barrage of the Administration. Though there
are a few voices of rationality and truth-telling in the mainstream
media, in general citizens must seek out foreign news outlets and/or
progressive websites to access alternative points of view. (Note:
currently, the Administration is moving to neuter even moderate
alternative voices, such as might be found on NPR/PBS, and is devising
ways of reining in critics on the Internet.)
10. I've learned that the Hard-Rightists are not content
to control the Legislative and Executive Branches, and much of the
Judicial Branch and most of the news media. They are moving to obtain
near-total control of the Judiciary by packing the important appellate
courts with extreme conservative judges, and Bush is hoping to nominate
at least two right-wing justices to the Supreme Court during this
second term, which could alter American jurisprudence for decades
to come.
REALITY-BASED VS. SELF-DELUSION
11. I've learned that this is an Administration that appears
to be severely allergic to fact and truth. For example: to delay
the inevitable, Bush appointed his own scientific panel to investigate
the issue of global warming; when those supposedly Administration-friendly
scientists reported that the situation was even worse than other
scientists had thought and that immediate remedial action was called
for, Bush called their report the product of "government bureaucracy"
- as if that epithet ended the discussion right there - and continued
on his merry way.
When confronted by truths in Iraq and elsewhere - for instance,
that the war is not going well on the ground - the Bush Administration
just ups the decibel level on its lies and continues on with rosy-colored
optimism as if the truth on the ground just doesn't matter. Or,
it denounces the media that report what's really going on. In short,
Bush and his dozen or so most-trusted aides exhibit a bunker mentality,
letting nothing in that will interfere with their fantasies and
delusions and constructs of deception.
12. I've learned that the Bush Administration, which does
everything to ease law-enforcement pressure on polluting corporations,
has the worst environmental record in modern times. It permits the
polluters effectively to write the regulations of their industries;
it opens up natural areas to more logging, mining, mineral extraction;
it even lied to residents of lower Manhattan in the days and weeks
after the 9/11 attacks about how safe it was to return to their
homes, schools and businesses. It wasn't until two years later (!)
that the EPA revealed it knowingly had withheld the truth about
how bad the air was; thousands of New York citizens now face long-term
health consequences as a result of this mendacity.
DEMOCRATS AS AN "OPPOSITION PARTY"
13. I've learned that the Democrats in the Senate and House
too often are complicit in helping Bush & Co. implement their plans
and programs by rolling over in the face of the Republicans' smash-mouth
politics. The Dems are a bit better now than they were in Bush's
first term, but they still haven't figured out that being an Opposition
Party means acting like one, not trying to play patty-cake with
the Republicans, who mainly want to politically slash their throats
and eliminate them as an obstacle to seizing full control over everything.
It is not too soon to seriously start thinking, and organizing,
a broad alternative party - perhaps the Greens in association with
a new entity (maybe a reconstituted Progressive Democrats of America)
- if the Democratic Party doesn't start developing a consistent
spine in Congress. At the very least, it would be good to have this
new party gaining electoral ground on the local and state levels,
building the infrastructure and street-smart leaders for the future,
even if a national candidate is not put forward in 2008.
14. I've learned that America's voting system is thoroughly
corruptible and cannot be trusted to yield the actual results. It's
not that I object because Republican companies manufacture the voting
machines and control the secret software that counts the votes;
I would feel the same way if Democratic companies were in charge.
We simply cannot have a privatized voting system, with secret software,
and with no certified way of checking that the votes are honestly
cast and fairly counted. And, even if the companies are not manipulating
the tallies - and there are indications that they may have done
just that - it's been demonstrated many times how absolutely easy
it is for hackers (or company technicians) to enter the vote-counting
system, alter the numbers and exit without anyone being the wiser.
Our country simply has to return to paper ballots, hand-counted,
if we want to be taken seriously as a nation dedicated to fair and
honest elections. Right now, even with (or because of) our high-tech
computer systems, we're just about on par with the most corrupt
third-world country in terms of a transparent, honest vote-counting
system.
THE WHITE HOUSE HORRORS: IRAQ
15. Finally, there is Iraq, which (as was the case with
Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam) will be the death of Bush's legacy and
which potentially could get him impeached during his term, or put
on trial domestically and in The Hague after he leaves office. Thanks
to insiders who have left the Administration, the demonstrable facts,
and now the so-called Downing Street Memos from England, I have
learned, we all have learned, that there were immense immoralities
and crimes perpetrated by our own government (and the Blair regime)
in preparing for, launching, and carrying out this war and occupation.
And those crimes continue to this day.
Bush-Blair/Cheney/Rumsfeld, et al. tried to maintain that they
went to war against Iraq only because Saddam forced them to do so
because of his supposed stockpiles of deadly WMD about to be used
against America and Britain and Iraq's neighbors. However, it has
long since been clear, and now is verified by the leaked top-secret
Downing Street Memos, that both governments were lying through their
teeth about the supposed WMD and that Saddam "didn't allow U.N.
weapons inspectors in," and much more. (Here
are the actual texts of these top-secret minutes and memoranda.)
Both the British and the American governments knew that Iraq was
a paper tiger, devoid of imminent threat and any major weapons of
mass destruction, and that Saddam had no connection to 9/11; he
was contained and, for the foreseeable future, was going nowhere.
But the desire of Bush and the neo-cons to attack Iraq had been
an obsession long before 9/11, because of their plans to control
the oil and to use Iraq as a base for altering the geo-political
landscape of the Middle East. Bush and Blair, in order to justify
the war to their respective populations, and to the international
community, had to find "intelligence and facts" that could be "fixed"
around the already-agreed-to policy of war.
Both in England and in the States, there were no such intelligence
and facts; in this country, as hard as Cheney leaned on them, CIA
and State Department analysts were unable to supply believable facts
and intelligence to the White House. The political window for attack
was about to close. So Rumsfeld set up his own "intelligence" unit,
the Office of Special Plans, stocked it with political appointees
of the PNAC persuasion, and, surprise, got the "intelligence" the
neo-cons wanted, stovepiped it directly to the White House (thus
not having to run it by the professional analysts), and the war
was green-lighted.
The American and British peoples were simply lied to. The British
were told that chemical shells could hit U.K. bases within 45 minutes,
Rice and Cheney and others warned about mushroom clouds over U.S.
cities, U.S. Senators were told Iraq could launch drone planes to
drop toxins along the East Coast, and so on. (Note: lying to Congress
is a serious crime, an impeachable one.) Colin Powell was dispatched
to the United Nations and told some laughable whoppers based supposedly
on "incontrovertible" intelligence. The Congress, and the mass-media,
bought in to the lies; the U.N. Security Council, first wanting
to hear the final report from U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, didn't.
Ten million people in countries around the world demonstrated
to try to stop the coming war, convinced that it was illegal, that
it was based on lies and deceptions, and that it would open a Pandora's
box of increased Islamist terrorism around the world. Bush paid
no attention; he began bombing Iraq long before the invasion, in
mid-2002, nine months before he received authorization from Congress
to launch a war as a last-resort. The "shock & awe" invasion began
in March of 2003. To date, more than 1700 U.S. troops are known
to have died in combat there (if that government figure is the correct
total; how can we be sure?), with tens of thousands of our soldiers
maimed; maybe as many as 100,000 Iraqis have died, most of those
innocent civilians - "collateral damage."
FORCED ENTRY & NO EXIT PLAN
Because of its Iraq invasion, occupation and tortures, the U.S.
is a hated pariah in most of the world, morally isolated, economically
vulnerable, anathema to Muslims worldwide (many of whom have not
forgotten that Bush initially used the term "crusade" to describe
his mission), a magnet target for terrorists everywhere. Our already-stretched-thin
troops are bogged down in a bloody quagmire in Iraq now and presumably
will be for years to come; Rumsfeld the other day said a dozen years
is not out of the question.
Bush and Rumsfeld, who have botched the Occupation from day one,
have no plan other than to keep repeating the mantra that the U.S.
will "stay the course." Clearly, to stay is to prolong the agony
for all concerned; there needs to be a major adjustment to "the
course," but we see no evidence of any thinking along those lines
in the White House.
Well, I could go on and on with things learned since 9/11 about
this arrogant, greedy, power-hungry, bullying, ideologically-blinded
crew. But let's stop here. The American people - especially moderate
Republicans, appalled at how their once-proud party has been hijacked
by extremists - are waking up, shaking off their real and manufactured
fear. (Tom Ridge, for example, admitted recently that he had been
sent out regularly by the White House to announce phony terror alerts.)
As recent polls indicate, the American citizenry is voicing a demonstrable
lack of faith in, and support for, Bush and his cronies, and their
disastrous, reckless policies.
Perhaps this list - and ones you will devise on your own, and
pass around to your friends - can be helpful in keeping that momentum
building. It's time to get America back on its track. And to do
that Bush & Co. must go. This nightmare must end, before they take
us all down with them.
If they resign right now, I say let's pardon them all. Anything.
Just go!
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. has taught government & international
relations, at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with
the San Francisco Chronicle, and now co-edits The
Crisis Papers. Send comments to crisispapers@comcast.net.