WHY THE PATRIOT ACT?

Column No. 36 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - October 28, 2004

In my column of Sept. 30, 2004, “The 800lb. Gorillas in the Room,” I referred to the Patriot Act as Gorilla No. 2.  Fortunately and importantly, Senator Kerry is beginning to talk about the Act a bit.  However, he still only dances around the issue, if for no other reason than that the Republicans have set up a “Patriot Act Trap” for the Democrats with legislation now before Congress, conveniently just before Election Day.

Guess what?  If you are against the Patriot Act I, if you are against making permanent all of the provisions of P.A. I, if you are very concerned about limitations on freedom and liberty already imposed under the original -- which limitations will become even more oppressive under the new legislation should it pass – then, according to DeLay et al you are at the very least a wimp on domestic security and probably even an outright ally of the terrorists.

We know what the Patriot Act I has already done to seriously undermine the protections of both liberty and freedom traditionally provided to Americans by the Constitution.  Of course in the history of our country there have been lapses at different times in those protections.  However, for the most part those lapses have occurred because the constitutional protections were violated in particular instances for particular persons.  For example, during World War II American citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned simply because they were of Japanese descent; during the McCarthy Period free speech protections for many left-wingers were abrogated.  By stark contrast, though, with the Patriot Act, the very nature of the Constitution is being changed, for everyone.  The Constitution is in fact being amended, and it happens that it is being amended by statute, not by the amendment process itself.

As noted in my Sept. 30 column, I have visited the issue of the evisceration of major elements of the Bill of Rights by Patriot I in many other columns, so will revisit it only briefly here.  Under the present Patriot Act among other things, the President can designate any person as a label any person, citizen or non-citizen, a “terrorist” or “terrorist threat.”  Then the President or his designee can: order, under the President’s authority alone, the search of such a person’s home without obtaining a judicial search warrant or even notifying the person that such a search was made; then proceed to have that person arrested and imprisoned without making the fact of the arrest public, without informing the person about the offense with which they are being charged; and may hold the person indefinitely without access to a lawyer and without being brought to trial, not even before a grand jury proceeding.  Thus, at a stroke, the Patriot Act has repealed the Fourth Amendment’s protection against warrant-less searches without probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of the due process of law, and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantees of “speedy” jury trials and the right to cross examine witnesses in criminal cases, with full knowledge of the charges and the opportunity to call upon witnesses for the defendant.

Certain of these provisions have been held unconstitutional by a closely split Supreme Court, but the current regime has not backed down in its drive to have them on the books in some form.  If the Georgites win the election, and get the opportunity to replace even just Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, rest assured that the current anti-Administration decisions would be reversed.  It is likely that the reason that they have not gone further than they already have is that they are waiting until they have a compliant Supreme Court in place, in a second term.

But why do the Georgites want these powers?  Certainly not because they have to have them in order to “fight terrorism.”  If they really wanted to do that, they already can under pre-Patriot Act statutes.  For example, there is plenty of evidence, as gathered by the 9/11 Commission itself, that the plans for the World Trade Center horror could have been detected and the attack aborted.  If only this Administration, instead of focusing from its beginning on finding a reason to attack Iraq (viz. Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke) had concentrated on counter-terrorism, perhaps they might have been able to do as well as the Clinton Administration did when it foiled the 1998 “12 airliners” and the 2000 “Millennium Bomb” plots.  Further, European nations are constantly finding and arresting potential terrorists without enacting basic changes in their criminal justice systems.  (The latter, it happens, would be very difficult for any EU nation to do, given the human rights mandates built into the EU agreements.)  No, the police forces of the numerous countries that have caught a whole bunch of bad guys are just doing what police forces are supposed to do, and doing it well.

The purpose of the Patriot Act would not be, it would seem, further to strengthen “Homeland Security,” beyond improving police work.  As Ari Berman pointed out in “The Nation: The Daily Outrage,” of 10/18/04, 5:20PM: “President Bush frequently invokes homeland security to bolster the commander-in- chief credentials essential to his re-election campaign.  ‘One thing is for certain,’ Bush told reporters in a rare press conference last August.  ‘We will do our duty to best secure our country.’  However, report after report, from a multitude of bipartisan sources over the last three years, directly contradicts Bush's promise, citing dangerous under-funding, misplaced priorities, over-reliance on private industry and dire neglect at local, state, and federal levels.”

Berman goes on to say that “a new report released Monday by the nonpartisan watchdog group Public Citizen examines the security of our nation's nuclear and chemical plants, seaports, water supply systems, and transportation of hazardous materials.  ‘The overall security picture reveals that the United States has made very little progress in the sectors that may put Americans most at risk,’ the study found.  ‘In many cases, the administration and its Republican allies in Congress have either opposed security reforms or obstinately refused to act even though ready solutions are obvious.’”

So if it the Patriot Act is not about catching about particular terrorists and not about improving homeland security in general, what is it about?  By the process of elimination it would seem that, it cannot be about anything else but giving the Georgites broad-ranging powers of oppression and repression against any kind of dissent, verbal or physical, legal or illegal, to virtually any of its policies and programs.  The Attorney General is already on record as equating any disagreement with this regime’s approach to dealing with terrorism as treasonous.  Ann Coulter, one of the darlings of the Republican Religious Right, equates what she defines as “liberalism” on any issue with treason.  With the powers granted to the President by the act as it now stands, even before Patriot II strengthens those powers, he can label anyone he wants as a “terrorist” or an abettor of same, and lock them up indefinitely, without charges, without access to any part of the judicial system, and without any public notification.

If, in the realm of civil rights and liberties, the powers granted to the President seem to bear a strong resemblance to those granted to Adolf Hitler by the German Enabling Act of March 24, 1933 (see my TPJ columns of June 3 and June 24, 2004 on the comparison between how the Hitlerites used the Reichstag Fire politically and how the Georgites are using 9/11), in my view that is no coincidence.  Now one might say: “But Hitler and his financial backers were looking for ways to suppress major political and economic dissent from the Communist and Socialist Parties and the powerful German trade unions.  No equivalent of any of those powerful forces exists here, now.”  That is true.  However, consider the following.

Perhaps Bush and his financial backers may not have done very well in advance planning for dealing with the situation in Iraq following the invasion.  But dollars to donuts they know very well what is going to happen in this country as the chickens come home to roost as a result of  their policies on taxation, the economy, Social Security, higher education, the military, and foreign policy.  For example, when the credit crash, described by David Broder in his article, “Fiscal Ruin on the Horizon” (The Washington Post on Sunday, October 17, 2004; Page B 07), that will surely come should the Georgites get in again by hook or by crook, does happen there might well be millions of people protesting on the streets.  And that is not the only issue that would bring people out in numbers never seen before in this country.  Think: the financial collapse of the health care delivery system under the assault of the profit-makers; the end of Social Security as we have known it under the assault of the privatizers; the next Great Depression resulting from the credit crash and the increasing export of capital; to say nothing of the results of the Draconian laws governing private thought and behavior that could be enacted in a second Bush term as part of implementing the agenda of the Christian Right.

In my view, it is to be able to very forcibly control the massive dissent foreseen to the oppression and repression of the vast majority of the people of our country on behalf of the super-rich and the major corporations that form the foundation of the Georgites and Georgitism that is what the Patriot Act is all about.  Pure and simple, and frightening.

SPECIAL UPDATE - THE CHENEYS’ DAUGHTER FLAP

Column no. 35A

By DR. Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – October 25, 2004

The flap created by the Republicans over the reference by Senator Kerry to the well-known (to most) matter of the sexuality of the Cheney’s daughter is indicative of a serious problem in the current Presidential election campaign: just how desperate the Republicans are becoming about their chances of winning.

Bush needed a win in the last debate, preferably a big one, but any kind of win would have done.  Instead, the President did fair to poorly, and the Republicans, despite the brave face they put on, knew it instantly.  So what do they do in such a situation?  They create as big a distraction from the real issues as they possibly can.  Their most common technique is to attack the messenger, not the message.  That they seem to be able to do it instinctively, without thinking about what they are doing, I have always found quite remarkable.  And so.

Bush really had had a tough time in the third debate.  He not only had ducked a series of questions, on job-exportation (read exportation of capital), unemployment, the minimum wage, but he did each time with the same irrelevant answer: “do something abut education.”

And then he also ducked the question of whether homosexuality is a choice, not, thankfully, with his education shtick but with “I don’t know.”  That is an answer that satisfies no one on his side, neither his socially-liberal but economically suicidal/Fuhrer Prinzip-type supporters nor his Far-Right, Alan “Cheney’s daughter is a selfish hedonist” Keyes/Gary Bauer-type supporters.

So when Sen. Kerry gives a straightforward answer that happens to use the Cheney’s daughter, a well-know Lesbian living openly with a partner with whom she campaigns (for selected audiences to be sure), as an example, the Republicans sense their opportunity.  They take it, apparently unmindful of what hypocrites it shows them up to be, how insensitive to the daughter it reveals them as, what an idiotic contradiction it reveals their campaign position on homosexuality to be.

Bush actually said in that debate that every American must be treated equally and with respect at the same time, he strongly supports an amendment to the Constitution that would make second-class citizens out of gay people.  Their position also shows up the Cheneys as being truly ashamed of their daughter, at least politically finding her a major inconvenience, and reveals that they had been engaged in something of a cover-up, hoping that at least some of their “gays will burn in hell forever” folk didn’t know.

The icing on the cake is this.  Supposing that the Cheneys’ daughter were a world-class triathlete, and the question was, “Can anybody achieve that status, or is there a major genetic, inborn component behind it, that most people could not simply make the choice to become one and then get there simply by training hard?”  As a 22-year triathlete who trains regularly but is really slow, I can tell you that it is not simply a matter of choice: for speed, genes do count.

If the question had been about genetics in the world-class triathlete context, and Sen. Kerry had used the Cheneys’ daughter as an example, everyone would have applauded.  The only reason for the controversy in the real case is that most unfortunately our society does not treat homosexuality as simply another example of genetic determinism.

One very loud minority, the Christian Right, treats it as a chosen sin, a sin of the highest magnitude.  This is a position that is scientifically wrong and socially highly destructive.  Moreover, the Republican Party chooses to use it as one of their major political issues.  Coming out of the last debate, on this issue that is what is wrong.  Sen. Kerry forthrightly chose to applaud the Cheneys’ daughter for being who she is, just as biology determined her to be, should indeed be applauded.

GEORGE BUSH’S AMERICA

Column No. 34 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – October 21, 2004

A lot is made of George Bush’s “misstatements,” internally contradictory pronouncements, distortions, and outright lies.  Based on what he says, it is very difficult sometimes to tell just what George Bush stands for.  For when he talks about the famous “compassionate conservatism,” “spreading freedom and democracy,” “securing the homeland,” “creating a fair tax system,” “fighting a war on terrorism,” “protecting traditional values,” one is often reduced to the “huh?” response: what exactly does he mean, how does he intend to get there, and where are the resources?

When one looks at what he actually does, however, then Bush policies and their meanings become much clearer.  As my good friend, personal editor, and The Political Junkies contributor Tony Pell says about the Bushes (and he coined the following phrase in reference to George I; it applies with a vengeance to George II): “Read their lips; but watch their hips.”

And so this column is not about Bush lies.  The Georgites always say, “no they’re not,” regardless of the facts on the ground.  The spin around the Duelfer Report on Iraqi WMD, as “reposted” as “news” by Fox “News” Channel for example, made it sound like the contents of the Report supported the reasons the Georgites gave for going to war.  They just hope to get into an endless and distracting “are, are not, are, are not” argument.

This column is not about Bush mis-use of the language, which the Georgites always pass off as “well, that’s just the country boy in him” (the Andover, Yale, Harvard country boy!).  It is not about any of the outrageous Bush statements like the “war on terror is unwinnable,” which he and/or the Georgites always manage to “correct” by the next day or so and then deny that he ever made, or at least ever meant, the original.

This column is about policies and programs that George Bush has either implemented or clearly proposed for implementation.  Some are prominent; some are obscure.  All of them present a very clear picture of what George Bush wants our great nation to be, to become.  If you possibly have any undecided voter friends, you could present this list to them with the question: “Is this is what you want our country to look like?”  And then follow up with, “If you do, make sure to vote for Bush.”

George Bush will propose to the next Congress, if he is re-elected, “the further reduction, if not the elimination, of taxes on savings and investments, including taxes on dividends and on capital gains on stocks, bonds, and real estate” (New York Times, Taxes for an Ownership Society, Editorial page, Sept. 15, 2004).  If Bush is re-elected, he will have clear majorities in both Houses of Congress, and legislation to implement this proposal will pass, meaning that all that will remain of the income tax will be a wage tax.

The Patriot Act, that piece of civil liberties-busting legislation that the Georgites must have written before 9/11 because its 340-plus densely written pages were introduced to the Congress within about two weeks of the tragedy, will be made permanent.  Presently, it is due to expire in 2005.  George Bush wants it in place forever.  (In a future column, I am going to deal with the question no one seems to ask: why?)  Yes, George Bush does permanently want the power, on his own authority, to bypass the Constitutional guarantees for protection against non-judicially-warranted search and seizure (the Fourth Amendment), the right to due process of law (the Fifth Amendment), and the right to a speedy trial by jury in criminal cases (the Sixth Amendment, for any person, US citizen or not, whom he deems to be a “terrorist threat” of one sort or another.

In the United States, marriage is both a religious and civil procedure.  It is defined in and regulated by the law in each of the 50 states, as well as by the numerous codes of the numerous religious entities that exist in our country.  George Bush supports the passage of the “prohibition of gay marriage” amendment, which would deny the benefits and obligations of civil marriage to same-sex couples.  That would vitiate the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that prevents any state from denying “to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  It would restore the status quo ante bellum (the Civil War, that is) that one or more classes of persons, defined by who they are, not anything they have done, can be placed outside of one or more provisions of the law, this time at the Federal as well as at the state level.  If the homosexual community is hit first (as it was in Nazi Germany), which one would be next?  (Just guess.)

As detailed in the September 18, 2004 Report from the office of Congressman Henry Waxman of California, the Bush Administration would continue its process of creating the most highly secretive Administration in United States history.  For example, Bush has already issued an Executive Order severely restricting access to the papers of former Presidents, denied access to any records of the famous Cheney task force on energy, adopted a policy to refuse initially any requests for Executive Branch information under the Freedom of Information Act, and doubled the number of government documents put under the seal of “classification,” including ones issuing from such Departments as Agriculture and Health and Human Services.

The Bush Administration is in the process of giving border patrol agents “sweeping new powers to deport illegal aliens from the frontiers with Mexico and Canada without providing them the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge” (R.L. Swarns, US to Give Border Patrol Agents, New York Times, August 11, 2004).  Who will be the next group of persons for whom a police agency will be able make a determination of law violation and go right on to determine and then impose punishment?  This, by the way, is the exact same power that the Nazi German Schutz Staffel (known colloquially as the “SS”) had.  Who, here, might be the first victims? Protestors against such policies, perhaps?

If Bush has his way in a Second Administration, his choice for CIA Director, politico Porter Goss, would have the power to engage in domestic intelligence gathering and surveillance, whether or not any criminal activity is suspected.  Presently, the FBI does need some semblance of suspicion of criminal activity in order to do the same thing.

It is already clear that Bush follows the dictum of Hermann Goering, pronounced by him shortly before his death at this own hand at Nuremberg: to enhance the power of government over the individual.  Goering said: “whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship . . .  all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.  It works the same in any country.”

George Bush appoints people like Prof. Diana Schaub to the Federal Bioethics Commission.  Speaking on stem cell research, she said: “Every embryo for research is someone’s blood relative. . . .  I would not be prepared to restore the intellectual functioning of a 93-year-old man by sacrificing embryonic life” (Stem Cells and Slavery, Science, June 18, 2004, p. 1742).  Talk about the imposition on all of us of one particular personal belief on the matter of when life begins! The Georgite approach is to apply the “life-begins-at-the-moment-of-conception” doctrine to both the beliefs and actions of every member of our society, regardless of whether or not they agree with it.

“The U.S. adolescent pregnancy rate is the highest in the industrialized world -- 10 times more than in the Netherlands or Switzerland.  Of the 900,000 U.S. teenagers who become pregnant every year, 8 in 10 say their pregnancy was un-intended” (Playing Politics with Women’s Lives, Science, July 2, 2004, p. 17).  The Bush policy for dealing with this situation is a combination of abstinence preaching, sorry “teaching,” and the criminalization of abortion.

On a wide variety of environmental, health, labor, and personal safety matters, the Bush Administration has re-written existing regulations to suit the wishes of industry, often with former industry employees and/or lobbyists writing the self-same regulations (J. Brinkley, “Out of the Spotlight, Bush Overhauls U.S. Regulations,” New York Times, August 14, 2004).  The article’s headline says it all about the public relations approach of the Administration on this policy.

This ends this litany of what Georgitism really means.  Among Bush’s many failings, however, is not a “failure of leadership,” as Bob Herbert described the Administration’s conduct in relation to Iraq policy in his New York Times Op-Ed column of August 6, 2004.  While I agree with much of what Bob Herbert has said over time, I totally disagree with this position.  It is not a failure of leadership, on Iraq or on any of the issues presented briefly above.

The Bush Administration’s ideology is clear: it is an approach to government and governing that puts as much power as possible, with as little legislative, judicial, or public accountability as possible, in the hands of the Executive Branch.  It takes the country back to the Coolidgean view that “the business of government is business.”  Moreover, since George Bush is capable of distracting huge numbers of people who are in fact negatively affected by his governmental philosophy and actions, and actually get them to support him, from the Georgite perspective he is the perfect leader for their movement.  After all, look at just how much the twin forces of the Radical Reactionary Right (mis-named the “neoconservatives”) and the Republican Religious Right have achieved in such a short time under George Bush’s leadership, and at how much more of their agendas they will be able to achieve, should their chosen leader be re-selected.  For the implementation of his chosen policies and for his voters, George Bush is a fine, almost a perfect, leader.

The ‘Nader Problem’ in a Broader Perspective

Column No. 35

By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - October 21, 2004

A friend sent me a comment on the upcoming election from a just-retired senior government department employee, certainly strongly anti-Bush, but concerned about what a Kerry Administration might mean for the country as well.  As my friend said, the comment speaks volumes.  I have paraphrased it here.

“I have been involved with education all of my life.  It happens too that I have been concerned from the beginning of the Bush Administration’s term with the influence that the thinking (if you can call it that) of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has on its policies.  I felt that if our countrymen understood the agenda of the current administration, which comes right out of PNAC, we perhaps could do something about obstructing their objectives.

“In regard of the upcoming election, I am very concerned that, should he become President, in substance, although certainly not style, Senator Kerry’s foreign and domestic policies won’t differ that much from Bush’s.  I have been reading in several left-wing journals that tell this to their readers.  These writings have led me to believe that even if Kerry is elected, we have a heck of a job ahead of us if we think for one minute that a Kerry win will give us our nation back.  Although he would appoint reasonably-minded judges, would pay more attention to environmental preservation, try to do something about health care and education, show some concern about the preservation of civil liberties, and have a markedly less confrontational and aggressive foreign policy, he still will, these journals and their writers say, ultimately be beholden to corporate interests in the United States.

“This is, of course, pretty much what Ralph Nader says when he tells us that there is no difference between Kerry and Bush, and that, therefore, people who really want to make a change in our country should vote for him.  Thom Hartman's ‘We the People’ explains quite succinctly how Corporations became ‘persons’ and why this is not a good idea for the human beings who are living their lives on this planet, especially the ones who inhabit this nation.  I know all about Bush, but if these analysts are correct, in the long run there really isn’t that much difference between him and Kerry so why not go with Nader in trying something new?”

My friend asked me for advice on how to answer this friend of his.  This is what I suggested to him.

Here's an alternate response to the "Nader Question" that your friend raises that I have developed.  See what you think.  The usual response begins with “But there is really is a difference, a huge one.  Let me count the ways.”  However, let us for the sake of argument grant everything that these Nader-leaning folks say, that there is really no, or very little, difference between Kerry and Bush.  To begin with, this is like saying that there was very little difference between Roosevelt and Hoover, they were both capitalists, so why vote for either one, or that, in Philip Roth's account of the 1940 election, there was very little difference between Roosevelt and Lindbergh.  So what if one was anti-Semite, they were both capitalists.  Obviously, there is a good deal to dispute on the facts of that statement, but let us even grant it as a premise.  Then the following issues and questions arise:

1.    Nader will not win.  Nader is not now and never has been, even when he was the Green Party's standard-bearer, a political organizer.  (Now it happens that he has been even cast out by the Green Party.)  Thus, granting that his goals are both laudable (I would grant much but not all of that) and achievable in America in the foreseeable future (I would not grant that), and given that achieving them would require a long-range political plan, money, and a huge amount of very hard work, what positive purpose will be achieved by voting for him, knowing that he is no political organizer, totally lacking in any of the necessary skills for building an alternate political movement?

2.    The Nader vote could very well tip the election to Bush.  While people like your friend and the left-wing magazines she reads believe that there is not any real difference between them, the Kerry voters and the Democratic Party do think, very strongly, that differences are there.  How would a Bush victory in this context help Nader both promote his ideas and organize (well, not Nader himself, but like-minded thinkers) in the Democratic Party and among the Kerry voters, Democrat and non-Democrat alike?

3.            Let's say that in a second Bush term, the country slides into Depression, and/or has a major credit collapse, public and private, and/or moves steadily in the direction of concentration of governmental power in the hands of the Executive Branch which then uses that power to crush dissent, and/or the Iraq crisis turns into the Iraq Disaster (of one kind or another), and/or you name it, the results of known Bush policies.  In addition, let us say that it would be the Nader vote that will have caused Bush to get in, or at least that is what the public perceives would have taken place.  What then happens to Nader's ideas and the possibility of promoting them?

4.             Let's say that Kerry wins, despite the Nader vote.  How much traction would Nader and his followers, and even the Green Party, tarred by the Nader brush, have in a Kerry Administration?  Who would give them the time of day?  I would not, and I happen to like many of their ideas.  Would that be a good outcome for the future of their good ideas, much less Nader personally as an influencer of policy?

5.            On the future of the Democratic Party, win or lose this time around.  For many years, well before 2000, Nader has carried no weight with me because he refused to work within the Democratic Party to try to change it.  He offered no plan for trying to get it back to its progressive New Deal roots, for using that heritage of the modern party to get it to offer real alternative policies to those of the Republican and their friends in the DLC.

Nader’s claim has always been that he wanted to change the Party, not create a "third force" or third party.  Well, you do not change a party by working outside of it.  You change it, as Howard Dean already has done in spades in two short years, by working inside it.  You change it by organizing, by raising money for its progressive wing, by supporting its lesser-office candidates who are progressives, by working on philosophy, ideology and platform in the off years, and so and so forth.  Nader has done none of this and has shown himself incapable of doing any of it.  Nor does his campaign this time around offer the prospect of leaving any structure in place for working, in whatever way one can think of, to change the Democratic Party.  Nader's statements seem to indicate that the Party should change its positions on various issues because he says they should.  I wonder if your friend really takes such a position seriously and thinks that Ralph Nader and like-minded people can really affect change this way.

6.            Finally, does anyone seriously think that, for the foreseeable future, anyone who is not well-connected with the corporate power elite in this country is going to be elected President?  What in my view many people do not realize is that at this time, with no strong anti-capitalist working class organizations in place, the corporate elite is hardly unified.  Just look at how they are lining up on the two different sides in the present election.  There are major splits among them on how best to govern the country and indeed on what the role of government in a capitalist country is, precisely.

Further, as readers of  these columns know, I think that there are huge differences between Kerry and the Georgites on such fundamental questions as what Constitutional Democracy means here at home, much less in Iraq.  I have written more than once in this space about how The Patriot Act, among other things, vitiates the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and how the proposed “gay marriage amendment” would eliminate the equal protection clause of the 14th.  The Patriot Act substitutes the Rule of Man for the Rule of Law, and doing so constitutes the essence of fascism.  Just how far does my friend’s correspondent, and the analysts she is presently listening to, think the “process of progressive change” in this country could go were the Georgites to really get their way in dealing with dissent, just the way they have already told us they want to.  They would do this through their use of The Patriot Act, with their newly-appointed in-pocket Federal judiciary that couldn’t wait to have the chance to give them these powers, in a second term.

In summary, granting everything that Nader and his left-wing allies say how would anything that Nader is doing or could, given his make-up, possibly do, help the progressive cause.  (Funnily enough, it is now coming out that Nader has received significant contributions from Republicans and he knows of the sources.)  No, I am afraid that if we want to create a truly progressive Democratic Party in this country, we are going to have to do much better than Ralph Nader, in every sense of the term.

THE DEBATE

Column No. 33 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – October 7, 2004

This comment on the first Presidential debate, Sept. 30, 2004, comes in two parts.  The first consists of comments based on live notes that I took down on my laptop computer as the debate progressed.  The second, very short, presents a few thoughts about particular issues that did not come up, and their significance, and a couple of comments on post-debate commentary.

Part I

First, I thought that the questions coming from Jim Lehrer of PBS were well-done, to the point, no zingers; none planned out specifically to embarrass either candidate a la the famous question to Dukakis in 1988 about Kitty and the death penalty for a potential rapist.  Second, I thought that Kerry was marvelously well-prepared and so well-rehearsed that he did not look at all like he was rehearsed, just the way the top method actors do it.  Bush, most observers agree, looked tired, weak, wimpy, out-of-place, the trademark smirk replaced by a look that could have come from a Mad magazine cartoon.  To me, Kerry looked Presidential.  Bush looked like an arguer, not even a debater (but then I am prejudiced).  Bush often appeared halting: the “uhs” and the “you knows.”  Kerry didn’t utter one “uh” until almost the end of the 90 minutes.

Kerry came out fighting on such on-the-ground Iraq issues as shortages of body armor and armed Humvees.  He pointed out the truth, that the situation on the ground, for the Iraqis and American troops, is getting worse by the day.  He attacked Bush on what he has done and not done, and put forward positive plans.  Bush’s main response was to immediately lie about the connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and then make the amazing claim that America’s security lies in “securing freedom around the world.”  Kerry kindly did not ask him just how Bush planned to go about that monster task, especially with a military that is already way over-stretched, at the same time that he is clamping down on freedom so fiercely here at home.

Bush ducked on the question, would the election of Kerry make it more likely that a terrorist attack would occur.  “He won’t. win, I will,” said Bush.  Bush went to the argument he kept repeating ad nauseum, that the US is “attacking the enemy everywhere we find him.”  He talked about the progress of voter-registration in Afghanistan.  He did not talk about voter-registration and what his party is doing to ensure that the lowest possible number of Afro-Americans get to vote in Florida.  Bush attacked the “ideology of hatred,” but did neglect to mention the hatred that spews forth every day, against, for example, our homosexual community, from his base in the Republican Religious Right.  Kerry used the opportunity presented by the question to say that he will be strong on terror, by going after it in places it is truly bred.  In that context, he attacked Bush on going into Iraq, citing the Bush lies on WMD, etc.  Kerry then used the opportunity to he list his military endorsers (and the list is a long one).

When Kerry was asked (Lehrer using Kerry’s own words) “What colossal misjudgments has Bush made?”  He cited: not wanting to go to the UN on Iraq in the first place; giving up on the UN inspection process (he did not say the obvious: Bush knew that he couldn’t let Hans Blix proceed to the end because he, Bush, already knew that Blix would in the end find no WMD); Bush did not use war only as a “last resort,” that Bush lied (although Kerry was careful never to use that specific word) in saying that “the inspections failed.”  Kerry got in a Kerry-type (that is subtle) zinger by pointing out that Iraq was not at the center of the war on terror until Bush went to war in Iraq.

Kerry called for new spending on homeland security and Bush asked “how is he going to pay for it?” Bush of course has never raised similar questions about the cost of the war in Iraq, and it was on raising the money to pay for that war by not giving yet another tax cut to the rich that Kerry voted, once, against the famous “$87 billion.” When Kerry attacked tax cuts in relation to paying for homeland security, presenting at the same time a detailed plan for taking many specific homeland defense actions that Bush has not, Bush didn’t respond.

Bush continually called all the Iraqi insurgents “terrorists,” that is until towards the end he referred to them as “Saddam loyalists” and “Ba’athists.”  Hmm.  One of Kerry’s subtle jabs that will get continuing play is his use of George I against George II on not going to, and going to, Baghdad without a doable exit plan.  Another is Kerry’s admission that he made a mistake in how he talked about the war, while the Pres. made a mistake in invading Iraq.  Which mistake would you rather have, Kerry said?  Brilliant.

When Kerry was asked about Bush lies, he said that he wouldn’t use that word, but gave examples Bush “not being candid:” “yellow cake and the State of the Union address,” “building a real coalition,” “not allowing the UN process to go to completion,” “abandoning other lines of diplomacy,” “told us he had a plan.”  Kerry also used the opportunity to talk about his own foreign policy experience.

Kerry used his Vietnam experience in a very sophisticated, understated way.  A great one-liner was that we “must not confuse the war with the warriors.”  He went on to say that he is determined to make sure that the outcome of the Iraq War honors their nobility.  He said that he has a plan for winning in Iraq, and spelled it out in detail.  The President never did the same thing, either because he doesn’t have a plan, or does but couldn’t possibly share it with American people or the world, not to mention the people of Iraq, because it primarily focuses on making sure that American oil companies get their hands on that Kurdish oil.

The President is not getting the job done, Kerry said, and he very smartly referred to his website where viewers can find more detail on his position. Kerry talked specifically about giving up the bases the US is building in Iraq, and said that he will make a clear statement that US has no long-term designs on Iraq.  He pointed out that when US forces first arrived in Baghdad, they guarded the oil ministry, but not the nuclear energy ministry.  He could have mentioned many other civil ministries and the museums being left to the predations of the looters, but did not.

Kerry pointed out that 35 to 40 countries around the world have a capability of making WMD.  Any pre-emptive war must be undertaken with credibility, he said. Another fine one-liner in this context was: “We didn’t need to rush to war without a plan to win the peace.”   In this context he did make the one statement that the Republicans will use to their advantage: “the global test” one.  What he meant was that before going to war on its own, the US should make sure to take into account the positions of our allies and see if they will come along with us in significant numbers, but if in the end the President decides to go it alone, after exhausting all other options, he should.  But that is not how the Republicans will spin it, and since they have little else to go with, spin it they will.  Kerry is going to have to fix that one quickly.

Kerry responded instantly on the question, what is the most serious threat to US security: nuclear proliferation.  He stated that he will help Russia to clean up its left-over nuclear material as quickly as possible (which Bush is not doing; has actually cut funds for that project) and that he will give up our own new nuclear weapons expansion program as quickly as possible, for it is totally hypocritical to ask for nuclear proliferation controls when the US is developing an entirely new generation of nuclear weapons.  In relation to relations with Russia, Bush said that there need to be checks and balances in a democracy.  Funny, he doesn’t seem to think that when it comes to government in the United States. He is working as hard as he can to eliminate that primary feature of our Constitution. Oh yes, also on Russia, Bush approved on Putin’s response to the Beslan horror.  Kerry let that one go.

There are many other observations to make, such as that Kerry pointed that Powell had had to apologize for mis-leading UN, Bush has messed up in North Korea, Bush talks about negotiations and sanctions in dealing with the truly dangerous North Korea and Iran, but for some reason didn’t want to follow the same rout in dealing with the much less threatening-to-us Iraq, but this note is getting rather long as it is.

Part II

Let me just mention of a couple of issues that weren’t there, and why not.  Lehrer asked Bush to address the “character” issue.  Bush just lobbed compliments in Kerry’s direction.  He couldn’t get into the Swift Boat Brownshirt-type lies because then that would have given Kerry the opening to bring up the truth about Bush’s own “military service” record.  Nor did he openly raise the “flip-flop” issue, because his handlers knew that Kerry would come back with both barrels on Bush’s own, much more serious, flip-flops (like, for example, the reason he went to war in Iraq).  Second, Bush couldn’t mention 9/11, formerly a big “how great did I respond on that one, folks” issue for him, because that would have given Kerry an opportunity to bring up Richard Clarke, Treasury Secretary O’Neill, the 9/11 Commission Report and what his party is and is not doing with it in Congress, the famous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, and so on and so forth.  Sometimes what isn’t said can be as fascinating as what is

And finally, briefly on the immediate post-debate analyses.  Bush is in real trouble.  The only people saying what a great job he did were his flacks, especially Karen Hughes who was all over the place.  I held my nose and watched Fox on purpose.  Well, when Morton Kondracke and Bill Kristol, big Bush cheerleaders, say that “on balance” Kerry “did better” (“won” was a word that just couldn’t cross their lips, now could it), that means that it went extremely well for Kerry.  Friday morning, again, even a commentator from The Wall Street Journal, interviewed on NBC, was saying that Kerry did very well and Bush didn’t.

I do have to note that post-debate on Fox, after their pundits, mainly right-wingers of course, gave it to Kerry on points, right-wing flack Sean Hannity, playing “journalist,” came on, to “interview” Hughes.  So one of Bush’s strongest national-media supporters interviews one of Bush’s strongest inner-circle supporters.  And then the same flack “interviews” (yes, it was a second debate in fact) Richard Holbrooke, representing Sen. Kerry.  Well that’s “fair and balanced” isn’t it?  After all, they had one from each side, with the rather weak liberal Alan Colmes nowhere to be seen up front.  He did come on later, after most people (including me), on the East Coast at least, had turned off their televisions sets and gone to bed.

And now I am turning of my computer.  Hope that you found something of interest and use in this not-so-little missive.

VIETNAM AND IRAQ: SOME COMPARISONS

Column No. 32a By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - OCTOBER 6, 2004

The military situation in Iraq is reportedly deteriorating with amazing rapidity.  Despite what Bush and his Iraqi Charlie McCarthy “Prime Minister” say in public, the Georgites realize this too.  That this is so is indicated by the column that appeared from the pen of the White House’s official leaker, Bob Novak, he of Valerie Plame fame, beginning to prepare the way for the institution of a “cut and run” strategy, presumably to be implemented as soon as possible after a putative Bush victory on Nov. 2 (perish the thought!)

On one level, there is an amazing, and tragic, reprise of the US War on Vietnam taking place in this US War on Iraq.  Recall that in the Viet Nam era the American people were first told that it would be a militarily easy task to beat the “Commies” and install “democracy,” just as we were told it would be easy to find those Iraqi WMD, break up the Iraq/al-Qaeda link, beat Saddam and install “democracy.” Yet in both cases that has proved not to be the case. Given that covert American intervention in Vietnam began around 1956, the military situation in Iraq is actually deteriorating at a faster pace than it did in Vietnam.  In Vietnam, there was a real “South” Vietnamese, anti-nationalist, army and at some point “Vietnamization” of the war (referring to those Vietnamese who fought on the US side) against the Ho Chi Minh communist-nationalists appeared to be a real possibility. But in the end “Vietnamization” never happened. “Iraqi-ization” now appears to be a dead letter from the git-go.

And so, there is an increasing amount of analytical interest in comparing the two wars waged by the US at then, one end and now, the other end of the Asian continent.  In these examinations, most people look at strategy and tactics of the wars themselves.  In this column, however, I am looking at the issue from a rather different perspective, that of one real American victory (in Vietnam) and the other a potential one (in Iraq).

“Victory?” you might be saying at this point?  “American victory” in Vietnam?  We lost, didn’t we?  Well, militarily we seemed to have lost.  Nixon began the military disengagement, and the final pullout took place under President Ford, with those haunting photographs of people leaving by helicopter from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, as the legitimate government of Vietnam entered the city, providing a visual exclamation point.  But if one examines what happened in terms of the original goals for the US Vietnam intervention, set by Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers in the 1950s, the US won: their goals were achieved.

The French-Vietnamese War ended in 1954.  The Geneva Conference of that year produced a treaty signed by the French and the Vietnamese and guaranteed by Great Britain and the Soviet Union.  It brought hostilities to an end, temporarily divided the country in two, and provided for national elections to be held in 1956 -- elections that everyone knew would be won by Ho Chi Minh and his people.  Pointedly, the US refused to sign or recognize the treaty.  They knew that if the plan in it were allowed to proceed, the chances were very good that Vietnam would peacefully progress to socialism and could be an economic success.  If that happened, the same thing might well peacefully occur in other Southeast Asian countries, were democracy to be given a chance.  The “domino theory” about the spread of “socialism with a national face,” distinguished from and not necessarily allied with the Soviet Union, and certainly not with the traditional enemy, China, communist or not, was quite correct.

And so, in the view of the US leadership of the time, everything had to be done that could be done to prevent the democratic process from introducing socialism to a country and then possibly succeeding in a peaceful setting.  If looked at in this light, the Vietnam War was a US victory.  The peaceful establishment of socialism was prevented.  Its spread by example and peaceful means to neighboring countries was prevented.  Vietnam today has a sort of market socialist economy, but the country was ravaged by almost 20 years of war and two to three million of the best and the brightest of its people were killed.  It is hardly the economic or social engine of the development of democratically-installed socialism that it might have become had it been left alone.  In terms of the original American goals for the intervention, this was a win, a palpable win.

And what then, of Iraq?  Is there not going to be a definite US loss there, especially if the Georgites themselves are openly (through their Novakian mouthpiece) considering “cutting and running?”  Once again it depends upon what the real objectives of the invasion were.  We know that it wasn’t WMD, because there were none, and it wasn’t a “Saddam-bin Laden” link because there wasn’t one of those either.  We also know that it wasn’t “bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq” because a) that was a Georgite afterthought, b) the inimitable Paul Wolfowitz told us so in the following little noticed statement: “The purpose of this war wasn’t to remake Iraq any more than the purpose of World War II was to remake Germany and Japan”  (Tierney, John, “The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts,” New York Times News of the Week in Review, May 16, 2004, p. 5),  and c) since when have Republicans, given their record around the world since World War II, been interested in bringing “freedom and democracy” anywhere?  This crew doesn’t even believe in it for our country, viz. rigged elections and The Patriot Act.

So what was, and is, the objective then?  By a process of elimination if nothing else, it’s got to be oil, bases, and expanding US influence in the region.  OK, so what happens if the Georgites unilaterally withdraw after the elections (other than, too late, Kerry being handed a really good response to the “flip-flop” charge, but just a little too late?)  Do they achieve the third of the above?  No.  How about the second?  Well, possibly, at least a few of those bases under construction in the Western Iraqi desert, easy to supply by air, hard for any Iraqi resistance forces to get to across that desert.  And the first?  Well, possibly, bingo!

Let’s say a Georgite “cut-and-run” isn’t quite just a “get out.”  Let’s say that it’s done under the cover of a UN-sponsored establishment of a Federal Republic, but really a tri-furcation. The major Iraqi oil reserves, both known and estimated to be there, are in the Kurdish portion and the southern Shiite portion (sorry Sunnis, none for you under trifurcation). And let’s say that the Kurdish Republic receives US guarantees for its existence, enforceable from Turkey.  Turkey?  How Turkey?  They’ve got their own Kurdish problem, don’t they? But suppose that the US is able to make a deal with the Iraqi Kurds that in return for a reasonable share of their oil revenues, with the oil being directly in the hands of US oil companies of course, the Kurds will stop their campaign for an enlarged, unified Kurdistan.  And since the oil would go out through Turkey, the US might even be able to entice them to be nicer to their own Kurds in return for a nice royalty on the trans-shipments.  I know, I know, there are also Iran and its Kurds, but it might be possible to make a deal there, too. As it does to Bush’s fundamentalist Christians, it can talk to fundamentalist Muslims as well.

And so, if the original number one objective of the invasion was indeed oil, this scenario produces a US win, and a big one.  Just like in Vietnam. If it really is the oil, the Georgites don't need the whole damn place, they just need Kurdistan.  And while we sit here thinking, “Aren't the Georgites dumb and totally irresponsible, letting things go up in smoke and death like this”, maybe what is happening now was the grand design after all.  To let Iraq disintegrate into three, then ask the UN to come in to provide a “Federal Republic” fig-leaf, while the US conveniently keeps control of the "peaceful" part in the North (with those huge unexplored potential reserves).

I believe that the US oilmen have been focusing on Kurdish oil all along, ever since the American virtual protectorate for that region was set up following the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

How might a Kerry Administration deal differently with the situation?  I happen to think that the only possible. even relatively peaceful, resolution (notice I did not say “solution”) to the Iraq tragedy is in fact the establishment of some sort of Federal Republic. Repeating something I put forward in “TPJ 20, On the Kerry Campaign, I” of July 8, 2004, first, Kerry could renounce any US interest in owning or controlling any fraction of the Iraqi oil reserves, regardless of what part of the country they lie in.  Second he could announce that all construction on permanent US bases would be stopped and the bases disbanded or turned over to the UN on an interim bases, for future transfer to the Iraqi government from the UN.  (Without much fanfare, the Senator has already done this.)  Third, he could announce that, to the extent possible, given contractual obligations, reconstruction projects would be turned over to Iraqi companies.  Fourth, he would renounce the infamous “Bremer Plan” that opened up the whole Iraqi economy for pillage by foreign (mainly US) companies.  Fifth, he could propose a realistic Federal structure for a future permanent Iraqi government, with UN guarantees.  The country we know as Iraq was an artificial British construct dating from the 1920s.  Realism could countenance going back to some form of the centuries-old provincial arrangement, as it existed under the Ottoman Empire. And sixth, he could announce that US policy would be for the oil reserves to be the property of the entire Iraqi people, with the Federal government retaining control over it, again under a UN guarantee.

Well, there’s something for openers, anyway, and far different from the imperial design of the Georgites.