DEMOCRATIC IDEAS, XIV: ATTACK ON DEFENSE REVISITED

Column No. 125 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - OCTOBER 12, 2006

Last month House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi traded barbs with Republican Rep. John Boehner.  She had criticized the Bush 9/11 speech as inappropriately political.  She called Boehner's criticism “cynical tactics.’”  (Kind of fits with his current tactics in dealing with the Foley Scandal.)  “Rather than try to defend their own failed record,” Pelosi said, “Republicans have resorted to the desperation politics of fear. . . . It is long past time for Republicans to be honest with the American people [sic] and stop questioning the patriotism of those who recognize that the president's Iraq policy has not worked, is making us less safe and must be changed."  Tough words for a Democratic leader.  Unfortunately, the Congressional Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, were totally cowed by the Republican “Defeatocrats” assault when it came to the passage of the US Enabling Act on Sept. 29, 2006.  (See my column on the latter subject that appeared on BuzzFlash on October 2, 2006.  I will be treating the same subject at more length in this space on October 26 and Nov. 2, 2006.)

However, while the Democrats are getting better, even with the disastrous retreat on The US Enabling Act, they are still working on the defensive side of the line.  The truly “muscular” Democratic position would be neither “we can do these people one better” nor “we are too patriots,” nor “how dare you?’  It would be to set our agenda, which means a) ignoring Rove’s and b) always attacking, never defending (a major part of which is indeed setting the agenda).  Here is a list of attack points, followed by a short list of positive proposals.  By the way, some of these will actually be considered “tough.”  (Oh, my!)  Yes, being truly tough would be unusual for Democrats, but when Republicans in the Congress make speeches saying the Democrats who do not support Bush’s open-ended Iraq policy are supporters of terrorists, well . . . .

Bush is in trouble, more of it than ever.  The list is well-known to readers of TPJ.  So now is absolutely the time to attack him where the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda keeps telling us that he is the strongest, but he really is the Emperor without clothes.  He ain’t strong.  He’s weak.  He’s a loser.  He is sacrificing our nation’s strength, its honor, and its Constitution for the benefit of the massive corporations that put him and his puppet-master Cheney in power.  Let’s go for it.

1.   Protecting the nation from terrorism?  9/11 happened on Bush’s watch, despite ample warnings.  Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Advisor warned Rice.  Richard Clarke tried to warn Bush.  There was the starkly worded August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing from the CIA.  There were the myriad FBI warnings about the flight “students” not caring about taking off or landing, only flying level.  There were the Air Defense mess-ups on 9/11 itself.  There was Ashcroft turning down an FBI request for $800 million in additional funds to fight terrorism --- on 9/10/06.

Former Senator Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9/11 Commission, speaking out (finally) recently, put it succinctly: You were warned by the CIA. You knew in July they were inside the United States. You were told again by briefing officers in August that it was a dire threat. Didn't do anything to harden our border security. Didn't do anything to harden airport security. Didn't do anything to engage local law enforcement. Didn't do anything to round up INS and the consular office, and say we have to shut this down, and didn't warn the American people. What did you do? Nothing so far as we can see “(Allen Roland, “The Great 9/11 Cover-up, 9/26/06).

Protecting the nation from terrorism?  Hah!  Why should we trust you with that task?

2.      In the two initiatives he took, Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush has proved to be a loser.  Both wars are going badly, and it appears that they can only get worse, both for us and for the peoples of those two nations.  In the 2000 Campaign, Bush said that he would not follow Clinton’s footsteps on “nation building.”  Boy, was he right.  He hasn’t.  Bush is a loser.

3.      If the Georgites did not mis-lead about the reasons for going into Iraq, as the recent report of the Senate Intelligence Committee showed, they were totally incompetent in handling the intelligence information about what the true situation was.

4.       As an increasing number of retired US generals are telling us, the Georgites have depleted and weakened our armed services in fighting two wars for which it is ill-equipped and not properly trained.

5.       They have turned the world against us (see Pew Research international poll from early summer 2006).

6.       According the recent National Intelligence Estimate, they have created large numbers of new terrorists, not reduced their ranks.

7.       They have done very little to strengthen homeland security and what they have done has been only grudgingly undertaken in response to repeated Congressional prodding.  (Yes, the Republican Congress does do the right thing, on very rare occasions.)

8.        They are totally incompetent in handling natural disasters.  They could be even worse in handling man-made ones.

9.         They have depleted the national treasury by going to war on borrowed money while making the nation’s rich even richer with their ever-expanding tax cuts.

10.        They love military solutions to problems that cannot be solved using the military.

11.        Safer now than five years ago?  That’s a laugh.  Just consider: rising troop deaths, declining military strength (except for nukes and very expensive, highly profitable weapons systems that are of absolutely no use against the kind of insurgency we face in Iraq.)  Moribund Constitutional  Democracy.  Wasn’t it once that “they hate because of our way of life, freedom and all that?”  Well destroying “freedom and all that right here at home is one to deal with terrorism, they might argue: remove the cause [ho, ho, ho] and the terrorists will just go away.)  And now all of that’s gone?  The growing, reborn Afghani insurgency, plus the largest heroin crops ever.   Osama’s still out there.  N. Korean nukes.  Iranian nukes.  A government built on lies, corruption, hypocrisy, cover-ups and incompetence (from Iraq to New Orleans)

12.        Finally, as Allen Roland has put it: (Allen Roland, “Staying the Course is Moral Suicide,” 9/30/06): “How can we stay the course on a path that was initiated from a place of lies, deception and moral pretentiousness? How can we stay the course of an illegal occupation where over 80% of Iraqis want us out and are actively supporting their freedom fighters ~ yes, freedom fighters. If the American military presence in the region lasts another four years, the total outlay for the war could stretch to more than $1.3 trillion, or $11,300 for every household in the United States.

The people are on our side.  Bush has got the Congress, is getting the Courts or getting them out of the way, and has O’RHannibaugh and the rest of his Privatized Ministry of Propaganda.  But we’ve got the 60% or more of the American people who believe, know, that Bush’s policies are wrong, dead wrong, for themselves and for the country.  Let’s have the Democrats respond to that fact, not PMOP’s incessant screaming, and the hysterical Coulterite charges of “traitor” coming the (s)elected Georgites.

Finally, some Democrats say, “oh but there is the sound bite problem.”  In a recent speech before the Reserve Officers Association, Bush shouted: "You don't increase terrorism by fighting terrorism.”

A friend commented:  “Good line.  Punchy.  A classic sound bite. Meaningless, also. The counter argument is, ‘You increase insurgency, discontent, and turmoil exponentially when you declare, erroneously, insurgents to be terrorists and then fight them ineptly.’  But that is not a good sound bite (the President's preferred way of thinking).  The strength of the statement in the para above is that it is rational and accurate.  The weakness of the statement, in terms of its having any impact on True Believers, is that it is rational and accurate.”

Well, some folks give up too easily.  Here are a few sound bites for you.

"This Administration has never fought terrorism.  It's about time we started."

"You don't fight terrorism be creating terrorists."

"You don't fight terrorists by destroying countries."

Then there's this one:  "Cut and run?"  How about "Stay and drown."

It's not the phrases that are tough.  It's deciding to attack instead of defend that's tough.

(This column is based in part on the aforementioned BuzzFlash column and in part on my June 29, 2006 TPJ column "Ideas for Democrats VI: Attack on Defense, II.”)

THE BUSHWAR ON IRAN, THE US CONSTITUTION, AND THE UN CHARTER

Column No. 124a By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - OCTOBER 8, 2006

Our European Editor Michael Carmichael recently web-circulated an article entitled  “The March to War.”  (By M.D. Nazemroaya, Global Research, 10/1/06, republished on Truthout * Issues, http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100406B.shtml, it is extensively referenced.  See also Time, “What the War With Iran would look like,” 9/25/06.)  The subject is “The White House prepares to launch Iran War for major oil reserves on the eve of US midterm elections.” The Global Research article presents a lengthy, detailed analysis of the plans for the BushWar on Iran.  Laid out is a very frightening scenario of what the Georgites (as I like to call them) are planning for the Iranian people, the people of the Middle East generally, the people of the US, possibly the people of Central Asia and Europe, and indeed even of the whole world. The Armageddon that the political core of the Georgites in the United States (as well as certain Jewish and Muslim extremists, as well as, possibly, Bush himself) may well be upon us. We may well be facing the Georgite solution to the looming disaster of global warming: the use nuclear weapons in Iran which could well lead to nuclear winter.

However, we aren’t there yet.  There are certain steps that the anti-Bush political forces in the United States could take to avert the war. Or at least they could publicly warn Bush and the Republicans of the very serious consequences for him and his Party that could well result if he were to undertake the invasion, whether he were to use nuclear weapons or not (assuming of course that civilization in general and the Untied states as sovereign country would survive such a catastrophe).  Mass eruptions there would certainly be in the US.  Anticipating them in the case of an Iran Attack (obviously well into preparation at this point) may be one reason why Bush pushed so hard for the passage of the US Enabling Act.  He could, and likely would, respond with mass round-ups of demonstrators, with indefinite imprisonment without recourse to any element of due process.  I discussed this Act in a column that appeared on BuzzFlash and The Moving Planet Blog.

Whether the Democratic Party, the few sane elected Republicans left, the increasing number of elements of the US power elite that are totally opposed to Bush, and other US political forces,  would be able to pull themselves together in a coalition to mount an effective political and legislative campaign against the Georgites is another matter.  However, the US Constitution gives them the tools to do so.  Under Article I, Section 8, the Congress has the exclusive power to declare war.  The Georgites and their Privatized Ministry of Propaganda would surely make the case that such an invasion is covered in the War Powers Act.  However, no matter what real or imagined or created-out-of whole-cloth “evidence” they would present, the present Iranian posture vis-à-vis uranium enrichment could not in any way be characterized as an “emergency” or an “immediate threat” of any kind.

The Georgites themselves are the best source of this: they claim only that Iran, in continuing with its refinement of nuclear fuels, is aiming towards building a bomb.  Should the President, facing this reality, send US forces into war on his own, that is clearly an impeachable offense.  Going to War in this manner is also a clear breach of Articles 33, 34, 37 and 51 of the United Nations Charter which, according to Article VI of the Constitution, constitute “the supreme law of the land.”  He could be impeached for that violation as well.  (If he does invade, it would be interesting to see which countries might try to invoke Articles 39 and 40 of the UN Charter against the United States in the Security Council.)

How could this be done in a practical matter, given a) that the Congress is in the hands of the Republicans, b) that the Congress is in recess until after the election, c) that Bush would most likely claim that under the US Enabling Act, which gives him the power to over-ride on his own authority most of the Articles of the Constitution and the key elements of the Bill of Rights?  Not easily.  He used a vague “Iraq is a danger and we have to do something about it” resolution to justify his full-scale invasion of that country.  He would likely say that since Congress granted him the authority to ignore broad swathes of the Constitution already, he could then ignore any others, like the power to declare war, he wanted to.

Although given an invasion of Iran, the first concern must be for the people of Iran and the second for our own safety given such an outlandish event, the third would be that we would have a full-blown Constitutional crisis on our hands.

And so, what would/should the opposition forces do?

A)                  Demand the emergency reconvening of Congress to a) call the Republicans’ bluff by introducing a Declaration of War resolution to the Senate (having determined in advance that at the worst a filibuster would prevent its passage), b) demand the immediate institution of impeachment proceedings in the House.

B)                  Facing the likelihood of a Republican refusal to reconvene, the Democrats, and any Republican allies they might be able to scrape up, especially if Bush does this horrendous thing before the election, would have to call a rump session of Congress, possibly outside of Washington, to do “A” above.

C)                  Mount a massive mass/news-media counter offensive against the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda.

D)                  Mobilize whatever military leadership they could find, especially among the active flag-officer class willing to risk their careers by coming out against the war, possibly even refusing to serve in it, on the basis that it would be un-Constitutionally declared.

E)                  Take their case to the UN, through the large number of member nations that would be opposed.

F)                  START NOW, RIGHT NOW!  The Georgites must be very publicly asked, in a variety of forums, about the Georgites intentions and exactly what the military preparations in the Arabian Sea mean.

Well, that’s it for now, my friends. I don’t pray, but those of you who do, please do.  As for me, I hope that wiser heads, with power, will prevail, either before or after the catastrophe we face were to occur.  For if they don’t it may well be that, for one reason or another, there will not be too many more of these columns following.

IRAN NUKES (Expanded Edition), REVISITED

Column No. 124 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - October 5, 2006

This column is a slightly edited revisit to a series of short pieces that were run in this space last spring, which were in turn based upon a series of “Dr. J.’s Short Shots” run on our European Editor Michael Carmichael’s “The Moving Planet (Ltd. UK) Blog” (http://www.planetarymovement.org/) for which I am privileged to be a Contributing Editor.  The topic will, I fear, be with us for quite some time and there are some new developments.  Thus, in my view it is worth this revisit, with some editing and additional commentary.

On Monday, November 29, 2004, in "Short Shot No. 27: Iranian Nukes," I wrote in part that, at that time, not a day seemed to pass without the Iranians changing their position on nuclear weapons development.  One day, they were accepting European proposals for an agreement to suspend it; the next day they seemed to be repudiating any agreement.  The U.S. and the Israelis were working hard to paint the scariest of scenarios that might arise were Iran to join the nuclear club, albeit with only a few bombs and fairly primitive delivery systems.  [Even back then] I happened to think that the scariest nation having nuclear weaponry at present is the United States under the Georgites [and still do].  It is well known that leading members of and top advisors to the Georgite regime have for some time openly talked about invading Iran.  Since the U.S. ground forces are having such a tough time against lightly armed guerillas in Iraq, with what is the U.S. going to invade Iran, one might ask?  The “nuclear option was obviously on the table.

Consider the history.  The U.S. is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons.  Since the time of the Eisenhower Administration (and to my knowledge only under successor Republican presidents), the U.S has actually considered using them again in one situation or another.  In the Iraq war, Georgite propagandists like Bill O’Reilly talked about "nuking" Fallujah.  In his national radio program on June 25, 2005, Paul Harvey, the 87 year-old Disney Corp. (ABC) commentator, questioned why “rifles” were used in Afghanistan instead of the “big one.”  The Georgite program to develop a whole new generation of "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons, designed to get at underground facilities of various kinds, receiving on-again, off-again, on-again consideration in the Republican Congress, with cost being apparently the only concern.  Most recently [that is as of the Fall of 2004], the Georgites have announced their interest in starting up a new program to develop enriched plutonium.  Such work had not been done in years.  One wonders just what the purpose of that program would be.

If I or you were in the Iranian leadership, liberal or conservative, given these facts and given that close-by Israel, presently under the Partition-rejectionist/Palestinians-ejectionist Sharonists, is estimated to have about 400 nuclear weapons, wouldn’t you and I want to have them, too?

Unless a deal is made, and since the Iranian nuclear industry is widely decentralized, only a complete takeover of the whole country by the US could prevent Iran from eventually acquiring nuclear weapons.  The deal that the Iranians may be on their way to making with the Europeans and the Russians may be indeed not to acquire nukes, in return for a solid guarantee of protection against the US.  Perhaps (I noted back then) this is what the on-again/off-again nature of the public Iranian position is all about, as the various forces maneuver behind closed doors to provide those guarantees to the Iranians.  Stranger alliances have occurred in history.

On December 04, 2004, I followed that commentary with "Short Shot No. 31: Further on Iranian Nukes."  In it I noted that a friend, a very sharp political analyst and a strong anti-Georgite on most issues, had sent me the following comment:

"Steve: If you're really, truly more afraid of George Bush than of the theocrats in Teheran, I'm afraid we don't have anything to say to each other on this topic.  If it's just rhetoric, I think it's ill-judged rhetoric."

I sent him the following response:

"Hi.  Yes, I am more afraid of George Bush and the theocrats/Neocons who are running him than I am of the theocrats in Teheran.  George Bush is rapidly turning our country into a fascist dictatorship.  This is beyond the power of the Iranians to do, nuclear-tipped or not.  The negative impacts of Georgite policy, not only for our country but also for the human species as we know it, are terrifying, in my view.  Whether or not Iran acquires nuclear weapons, I am indeed much more afraid that the Georgite theocratic/Armageddonists, as they become evermore entrenched in power, while evermore feeling that, on the international stage, their backs are against the wall, might use the US nukes than that the Iranians would use theirs."

I never did receive a response from my erstwhile correspondent.  He is obviously a man of his word, that if I stuck to my position, we had nothing further to talk about.

I returned to the subject on February 21, 2005 in "Short Shot No. 48: Going Nuclear in Iran?”  I noted that our Editor/Publisher Michael Carmichael had just published the next item below on The Iran War.  It began:

"Seymour Hersh and Scott Ritter have reported that the US planning for the Iran War is reaching a very advanced stage.  George Bush has already approved a June launch, when the bombing will target strategic sites inside Iran.”  And continuing: ". . . the Defense Department is now revising military plans for a maximum ground and air invasion of the oil-rich nation."  [Hersh and Ritter were off on their timing, obviously.  We must fervently hope that the increasing number of analysts/commentators who are predicting a Georgite invasion of Iran either before or just after the election are wrong as well.]

Right above the notice of Michael's item in my email in-box that day was the daily bulletin from The Washington Post, which contained this lead item: "Army Having Difficulty Meeting Recruiting Goals.  The active-duty Army is in danger of failing to meet its recruiting goals, and is beginning to suffer from manpower strains like those that have dropped the National Guard and Reserves below full strength, according to Army figures and interviews with senior officers.  (By Ann Scott Tyson, The Washington Post)."

The Georgite maxi-Imperialists must know this [and the situation is only getting worse].  The US will have nowhere near enough ground forces for any sort of conventional invasion of Iran.  It is having a hard time holding its own against guerrillas in Iraq, much less the large, well organized and well-equipped army it would be facing in Iran.  It could very well confront mass rebellion in the ranks of the Reserves and National Guard, and even the regular forces, including some high-ranking officers (many of whom opposed the Iraq invasion, at least at the planning level) were it to try to mount a conventional invasion of Iran.  Does this mean that the powers that be are planning to go nuclear?

Yes, folks.  That is what I wrote.  The end of civilization as we know it may be closer than most of us think.

Finally, on February 25, 2005, in "Short Shot No. 49: There He Goes Again," I noted that George Bush was in Europe, talking about Iran and nuclear weapons.  While there, Bush said that he strongly endorsed the European diplomatic option in pursuit of a settlement with the "Moolahs" on the matter of "nookyulahr" weapons (yes, he used those pronunciations in a sound bite heard on All Things Considered, 2/23/ 05).  "Most important," he said.  "Will continue," he said.  "Absolutely the first option," he said.  (He did not say, of course, that his own government would engage in direct diplomacy with Iran on matters of mutual concern, any more than his government did with Hussein's Iraq, or is doing with North Korea, which has repeatedly requested bilateral negotiations.)

Which brings us to the present [that is, July 28, 2005], and my present comment.

While the open military assault predicted by Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh has not yet taken place, according to Ritter the U.S. assault on Iran has already begun, covertly.  If true, this initiative has much in common with the pre-emptive air war that the US and the UK launched against Iraq well before they went to the UN with their “justifications” for “meeting the clear and present danger that Hussein’s Iraq presented to the world.”  Ritter states that the anti-Iranian government terrorist organization, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (known as the MEK or MKO in the West) is operating as a strike force under CIA direction, and that the United States is preparing to stage military attacks with U.S. troops from the neighboring Republic of Azerbaijan.

As for the Iranian President and the possibility of U.S.-Iranian negotiations, the process of demonization of the former, most likely to give the US an excuse not to negotiate with him, has already begun.  He has been identified as a hostage-taker, interrogator, and possible torturer during the Tehran US Embassy hostage crisis of 1979-80 by at least six former hostages.  Iranian authorities are going out of their way to deny this, but one wonders what difference that would make if the Georgites really wanted to negotiate.  Of course, the US does not negotiate with terrorists.  Except.  Except when its interest is to do so.

After all, Reagan may well have negotiated with the Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1980 elections, with Bush the First as a major go-between, to defer release of the hostages until after the US elections, which Khomeini did (see the book October Surprise by Gary Sick).  Reagan definitely negotiated with the Khomeini regime to arrange the Iran part of the Iran-Contra scheme to raise money to buy weapons for the Nicaragua contras.  Both sides of the conspiracy were illegal.  Iran was at the time officially designated as a "terrorist state” by the US, and US aid of any kind to the Contras was specifically prohibited by the Boland Amendment.  So Bush's ideological forbears, including directly his Dad, negotiated directly with the Iranian terrorists when it served their objectives. The Rumsfeld-lead mission under Reagan to line up with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War (which funnily enough occurred around the same time that Iran-Contra was underway) is well-known.  As for the present, the Georgites are apparently negotiating with the Iraqi insurgents/terrorists right now (what exactly about, one has to wonder).  But direct negotiations with the government of Iran would not serve their interests now, so the facts be damned.  Let the demonization begin.

History, consistency, and honesty are just inconveniences for the Georgites and their supporters.  On the much more important nuclear question, one still has to wonder, is the use of nuclear weapons already on the Georgite agenda for Iran?  Given their extraordinary track record for secrecy and conspiracy, we may know only when the first mushroom cloud appears over the Elburz, or perhaps the Tagros mountains of that historic land.

DEMOCRATIC IDEAS, XIII: CONTROLLING THE AGENDA

Column No. 123 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - SEPTEMBER 28, 2006

Here’s a multiple choice question for you.  The key to winning elections in the United States is: a) money, b) incumbency, c) issues, d) personality, e) control of the agenda, f) all of the above.

Yes, it is “all of the above.”  But in my view, so many Democratic candidates, indeed many too many Democratic candidates, lose sight of “e.”  For the contemporary Republican Party it is an absolutely essential arrow in their quiver.  Although the understanding of the importance of controlling the agenda began with Lee “Willie Horton” Atwater, the art has been developed to its highest level under his primary acolyte, Karl Rove.  He couldn’t do it without the Democrats falling into the trap every time, but he weren’t setting the traps, the Democrats couldn’t fall into them.

On the macro level consider 2000.  When the focus should have been on the vast differences a Bush Presidency would bring to our country, Rove was able to make it “Bush is not Clinton and Gore is.”  In 2002 the Bush Presidency is already failing on many fronts but the Iraq “menace” is “rolled out” (as Andrew Card so eloquently put it) and that was that.  In 2004 Bush is reeling from one failure to the next: in Iraq, in foreign policy in general, in the destruction of so many domestic functions of the Federal government that are mandated by the Preamble to the Constitution, in the fact that corruption is already apparent as well as rampant, in the fact that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the rest of us, and so one and so forth.  And so, with the cooperation of the Democrats, Rove manages to make homophobia, terror, and Kerry’s Vietnam War record the major agenda items.  For 2006, they haven’t fixed firmly on their desired agenda items yet, although “fighting terror” is certainly the item of the month, but they are focusing on doing so.

Once again, what is Rove’s number one tactic (other than outright electoral theft, of which, according to some, he is an expert practitioner)?  Taking control of the agenda.  So, Karl, what to do now?  It is not simply a matter of making up stories about Bush and his “greatness.”  After all, now we’ve got the Iraq cesspool, Katrina, the apparent failure of Israeli foreign policy, global warming caused by human activity as a reality accepted not only by virtually all scientists but by an increasing number of citizens, Afghanistan, Korea.  But the master of agenda control is on the job.

Let’s consider a recent master stroke on the micro level: the ABC 9/11 “docu” drama.  In an editorial on September 9, 2006, our sister publication BuzzFlash noted that: “Lost in the uproar over ABC subcontracting 9/11 over to right wing extremists is the smoking gun conclusion of a Republican/Democratic Senate report that says Saddam had no connection to al-Qaeda -- and that, indeed, he went to great lengths to keep them out of Iraq. That means Bush and Cheney are responsible for opening up Iraq to al-Qaeda -- and that they lied and lied again.”  On the same day, BuzzFlash also observed: “Who Does the Writer/Producer of the Infamous ABC ‘Path to 9/11’ Fiction Mini-Series Give His Major Interview to? Radical Wing nut David Horowitz's Publication, That's who. In it, the Writer/Director Heaps Praise on Bush, Scorns Clinton, Praises the Patriot Act, scurrilously attacks the film ‘Syriana,’ and so on.” (See also Eric Alterman’s “Lying About 9/11? Easy as ABC,” The Nation, Oct. 2, 2006 for details on the right-wing cabal behind the piece.)  Hmm.  Trouble for Bush, no?  Well, no.

Quite some time ago, possibly while he was cooling his heels in Patrick Fitzgerald’s office waiting to make the deal he surely made to stay off the hook until after the election Bush can pardon Libby and have done with that matter, Karl was saying to himself, “come Fall, old fellow, to what we should we change the agenda?  With 9/11 coming, let’s focus on Bush’s best moment, no?  Even though it was a great moment only in Bush-fiction, his devoted followers think it was real and right now, with his poll numbers in the pits, that’s all that counts.” (Note that Bush’s poll numbers were going up ion the third week of Sept.)  So the first thought would be “let’s do a re-run of Bush and 9/11 and all will be well in the land of the Georgites.”

But hold on.  There are problems there too.  The media are getting a bit frisky.  9/11 occurred on Bush’s watch.  Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Advisor, warned Condi Rice that al-Qaeda was the number one security threat faced by the United States.  Rice ignored him.  Richard Clarke tried to warn Bush of the al-Qaeda menace on his first day in office and Bush ignored him.  The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief, the myriad FBI warnings about students at flight schools interested only in flying, not in either how you get up in the air in a plane or back down on the ground with it in one piece, the Dept. of Defense mess-ups on 9/11, what the 9/11 Truth Movement continues to find out about what really happened in the run-up to the tragedy and on the day itself.  And so on and so forth.

Thus, for this Fifth Anniversary and on the day itself, another Bush posturing effort might just not do the trick.  The agenda of Bush-as-hero, Bush-in-command, Bush saving-the-nation, Bush-keeping-it-safe, the-war-on-Iraq-is-just-the-ticket, just might not work.  And so what to do?  One thing that might work, Rove likely thought some time ago, would be to shift the focus to the Clintons, and then count on them to come back with their traditional defensiveness rather than immediately going over on the offensive, which of course they never do.  By golly, that would be good for now and good for 2008 too.

And so Rove did it, timed perfectly for 9/11. Just think abut it for a moment.  What was so much of the uproar, on our side of the verbal battles as well as theirs, about?  Was it about Bush and the Georgites and what they did and did not do?  Was it about the mounting, horrible failure of Iraq, which Bush sold on the basis of 9/11?  Was it about that smoking gun of a (Republican mind you) Senate Intelligence Committee report? Was it about those Bush failures leading up to 9/11?  Was it about the subsequent failure of the Georgites to implement many of the key provisions of the 9/11 Commission Report?  Was it about the disaster that is the Department of Homeland Security that Bush set up in supposed response to 9/11?  Why no. None of the above.

It was about Clinton and the Clintonites and what they did and did not do. (That virtually all of the latter material was totally fictional was irrelevant.)  With the uproar about the Disney fiction about the role of the Clintonites being first on the list, the truth of the Georgite crimes just gets lost.  Another winner for Rove.  He changed the agenda once again, from Georgite incompetence-to-criminality to "let's blame it all on the Clintons."  And then with the Clintons’ collective “you’re- lying-we-did-we-didn’t” and etc. response the whole political argument gets away from the multiple disasters that have occurred on Bush's watch onto "yes-you-did, no-I-didn't, yes-you-did,” about the Clintonites.  The man is brilliant.

Just for fun, what might an effective Democratic response consist of?  I’ve gone over this before in this space and others, but it would include: “you ignored multiple warnings, 9/11 occurred on your watch no one else’s, you failed in Afghanistan, the principle outcomes of the War in Iraq you lied us into are: producing terrorists at an alarming rate, not eliminating them, turning much of the Muslim world against us, isolating us from our allies, gradually taking the hart out of what was once the world’s great military force.”  And so on and so forth.

Unless the wheels completely fall off the Georgite juggernaut due to the arrival of some deus ex machina or the discovery of an incontrovertible smoking Iraq-gun in the hands of Bush and the Georgites, if the Democrats don’t learn the lesson of agenda control, they will never win another election, including the upcoming one.

___________

Note:  This column is based in part on a column that was published on BuzzFlash.com on Sept. 11, 2006.

GEORGE BUSH’S AMERICA

Column No. 122 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - SEPTEMBER 21, 2006

Dr. Jonas’ article below was first published in TPJ on October 14, 2004, in the days immediately prior to the 2004 General Election.  Dr. Jonas accurately projected the consequences of a 2nd Bush administration – the continued centralization of power in an imperial President – President Bush.

TPJ is republishing Dr. Jonas’ article as a reminder to all Americans, but especially Democrats, of the consequences if Democrats do not capture majority control of the US House or US Senate in November.  Dr. Jonas’ article is a clarion call for Democrats to put their shoulders to the task at hand – every day.   – Junkie

________

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.

DEMOCRATIC IDEAS, XII: FOCUSING ON THE CONSTITUTION

Column No. 121 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - September 14, 2006

George Bush is the worst President the United States has ever had.  Notice that I did not use the word “arguably.”  He is simply is.  For one reason.  He is the first President ever to have as his primary goal the destruction of the Constitutional, Democratic, system under which he took power (notice that I did not say “elected”).  This is for him the absolutely primary goal.  For the nation as a whole it would obviously be an unmitigated disaster. It stands above even those of: further entrenching the power of the extractive industries and further securing their dominance over U.S. economic and environmental policy; reducing the functions of the government other than those of repression at home and military expansion abroad, to the barest minimums; and filling the pockets of his rich supporters at the expense of the public treasury.

There have been, to be sure, other bad Presidents.  Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan essentially stood by as the nation slid towards civil war.  Andrew Johnson established the basis for what became the South’s long-term victory in that Civil War in every element other than preserving the legal institution of slavery (see my column, “How the South Won the (1st US) Civil War,” Sunday, November 06, 2005, at http://www.planetarymovement.org/ [archive] ).

Some of those bad Presidencies shared major characteristics with that of the Second Bush.  Ulysses S. Grant (a predecessor who was drunk in office), Warren G. Harding, and Ronald Reagan presided over Administrations rife with corruption.  James Polk and Lyndon Johnson essentially lied our country into foreign wars aimed at, in the first case, gaining large swatches of the territory of another county, and in the second preventing the establishment, through the Democratic process, of a system of government in another country that ours did not approve of.  Herbert Hoover was incompetent when it came to dealing with major economic and natural disasters, and had a strong predilection for favoring the rich.  Nixon was paranoid; Clinton was personally irresponsible, and so on and so forth.  But none of them set out to destroy US Constitutional Democracy and replace it with a Dictatorship (otherwise known as the “Unitary Executive”).

Let me make it clear that we are not talking about substantive, individual governmental policies here.  Bush’s differ in no essential ways from those of most of his Republican predecessors since Lincoln except in matters of degree.  He is the first Republican President in modern times to have a Republican Congress, and a very pliable as well as unified one at that, at his disposal.  Thus he has been able to implement polices that his two immediate Republican predecessors, Reagan and his father, could only dream of doing.

In terms of Bush’s Republican predecessors since the New Deal, one should note that Eisenhower might have trouble getting DLC support for the Democratic Presidential nomination because he was a firm believer in the New Deal, with certain modifications, and Nixon was a bundle of contradictions.  Yes, the old McCarthyite liked using government agencies to spy on his political enemies, kept the war on Vietnam going for a totally unnecessary additional four years, and introduced racism to the Republican Party.  But he also fully supported the development of our modern system of environmental regulation and protection that the Georgites are determined to dismantle, in the Spring of 1973 introduced a national health plan to the Congress that had much in common with the Clinton Health Plan of 1993, created the “opening to China,” and lead the “Second Détente” with the Soviet Union.

In terms of particular foreign and domestic policies, Bush has simply been following the line laid down by Goldwater, Reagan and his father, as noted above.  Except for one significant element, those policies are really nothing new in the Republican playbook. That one element is, of course, the prominence given by this Administration to the Christian Right and their policies in the social realm that it would like to implement.  For the top Republican policy-makers, in the current era led by Cheney and Rove, as is well known it is not that they like the Christian Fundamentalist content so much, but that their rock-solid voting base of support for the ultra-corporatist Republican line is to be found in the Christian Right.  Otherwise on policy and the differences now versus what Goldwater would have done if he had become President and what Reagan and Bush I did do to some extent, and would have done to a much greater extent except for the Congress, it is just that Bush is getting to implement them.

What is totally different, totally new, is the assault on Constitutional Democracy.  I have illustrated this assault, I have been writing about it in this space, from the last three columns on “Let’s Hear it For Strict Constructionism” all the way back to my second TPJ column ever, that appeared on March 4, 2004.  That one was “A Firebell in the Night,” my first effort in the discussion of the so-called “Gay Marriage Amendment” (a subject that I revisited this year on April 2 and 9, that is more accurately termed “The Homosexual Discrimination Amendment”).

And so under Bush we have, in brief, his declaration that we “at war” when under the Constitution only the Congress can declare war; the so-called “Signing Statements” under which Bush arrogates to himself  the supposed authority to ignore Congressional legislation at will; the claim that he can ignore international law to which the US has ascribed by treaty, when ratified treaties are, under the Constitution, part of it; that he can ignore provisions of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and 14th amendments at his pleasure.  And so on and so forth.

In understanding what is going on here, what I have termed a “coup d’etat in slow motion,” it is vital to note that so many major Georgite policy moves are taken not so much on the substance but in an attempt to establish a precedent unchallenged for establishing a dictatorship.  Do you think that Bush (well, maybe not Bush, even when he is sober which seems to be less and less frequently these days) and his policy-makers don’t know that the FISA requires warrants, that under it warrants were virtually never denied, and that the national security apparatus would function just fine, thank you very much, should they be complying with the law on wiretapping?  Of course they do.  It ain’t about warrantless wiretapping, folks.  It is about unfettered Presidential power to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it, without any interference or even comment from either of the other two branches of the government.  The “I will ignore the Fourth Amendment in relation to Guantanamo,” “I will ignore the anti-torture law,” the obvious policy of “if I decide [and after all, I am the Decider] to launch a war on Iran I will just go ahead and do it,” are all first and foremost about establishing the Georgite Dictatorship (oh sorry, “Unitary Executive”), than about the specific policy.

The lessons for the Democrats here?  First, to now focus on Constitutional Democracy, its preservation and promotion could very well be the “Big Idea” that they supposedly have been looking for, for the last thirty years.  (In fairness, the DLC isn’t looking for this one or any other Big Idea.  Their latest tack is to run against Wal-Mart rather than against Bush and the Republicans even though there is nothing the Constitution that says that a corporation, no matter how big it is, can run either for Congress or the Presidency.  But I am talking about and to Real Democrats, not Georgite Collaborationists.)  Properly formulated (“framed” is the current jargon), a fairly easy job to do beginning with slogans like “The New Patriotism,” organizing around the preservation of Constitutional Democracy as the primary political objective could quickly become a very powerful political weapon.  But even more important than that: if we don’t do it and don’t do it soon, we will not see another chance to do it until the task becomes, somewhere way down the Road of History, the Restoration rather than the Preservation, of Constitutional Democracy.  And so, the primary reason to take this up as the rallying cry and the battle of the Democratic Party is the salvation of the nation.

Are there other major issues?  Of course there are, the War on Iraq being the prime one.  Then there are the monstrous tax-giveaways in the form of the rapidly and monstrously increasing national debt, the foreign debt, the criminal energy policy, the unprecedented (and in the light of Grant, Harding, Reagan, et al that’s a pretty strong word) corruption, the evermore sophisticated tools, plans, and campaigns for stealing elections, and so on and so forth.  But they all have to be seen and presented, should be seen and presented, can easily be seen and presented in the context of the counter-assault that absolutely must be launched and launched soon against the Georgite assault on US Constitutional Democracy that has been underway since they took office on January 20, 2001.  Mark my words, folks.  There is not too much time left.  The Democratic Party simply must get moving, before it is too late.

As I noted at the end of my last column in this space: “As my good friend Jack Dalton said some time back: ‘ Was it not George W. Bush who stated 5 years ago, “…this would be much easier if this were a dictatorship, as long as I was the dictator?”  Was it not George W. Bush who was quoted recently [as] stating, “The Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper?“ ’ (Jack's Straight-Speak 1-2-06, http://jack-dalton.blogspot.com/).”