Essentially Contested America

George W. Bush will soon be leaving the White House. Unfortunately, his pernicious legacy will plague us for decades. His gratuitous and catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq, his failure in Afghanistan, his failure to prevent the ruination of the American economy, and his corruption in awarding contracts in Iraq, the failure of the reconstruction of Iraq, and most recently his imposing “midnight” regulations, some of which the new president will have difficulty in overruling. Although there’s nothing particularly funny about the Bush administrations perfidy, watch the video below to see a portrayal of a morally impoverished individual who never should have been in a political leadership position, let alone president of the United States.

Concentrating on Mr. Bush might miss an important point. It’s those Americans who voted for him, especially those who voted for him in 2004 after they knew of how immoral, incompetent, and dangerous he is, that deserve special condemnation. What more do people need to know after learning that all the reasons the Bush administration gave for invading and occupying Iraq were a charade in order for them to condemn him and support anyone else running for president or refrain from voting entirely? What more did these people need to know before condemning a president whose legacy will certainly be that he is clearly the worst president in American history. So farewell Mr. President and shame on you and those Americans who made your presidency possible.

Have you ever wistfully longed for the days of the Cold War? If so, take heart. The Cold War might be making a come back. Here’s the reason: “The run-up to the current chaos in the Caucasus should look quite familiar:  Russia acted unilaterally rather than going through the U.N. Security Council. It used massive force against a small, weak adversary. It called for regime change in a country that had defied Moscow. It championed a separatist movement as a way of asserting dominance in a region it coveted.  . . . Indeed, despite George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s howls of outrage at Russian aggression in Georgia and the disputed province of South Ossetia, the Bush administration set a deep precedent for Moscow’s actions — with its own systematic assault on international law over the past seven years. Now, the administration’s condemnations of Russia ring hollow.  . . .  Bush said on Monday, responding to reports that Russia might attack the Georgian capital, ‘It now appears that an effort may be under way to depose [Georgia's] duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.’ By Wednesday, with more Russian troops on the move and a negotiated cease-fire quickly unraveling, Bush stepped up the rhetoric, announcing a sizable humanitarian-aid mission to Georgia and dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region.” To read further click here. This confrontation promises to be the next big challenge to world peace. Yes, the war on terror might be eclipsed and forced to take a back seat to a re-incarnated version of the Cold War. In any event, as the article shows clearly, the absence of moral compass in Bush’s foreign policy has now legitimized Russian intervention in Georgia and as well as its menacing threats to the Ukraine and other former nations absorbed by the Soviet Union.  Confrontations between the United States and Russia are likely as Putin adopts and implements the Bush doctrine. This constitutes an ironic and egregiously dangerous turn of events.

If John McCain wins the presidency will he use military force to attack Iran? Here’s one possible answer: “In the race for the White House, John McCain has trumpeted Iran as a paramount threat to the United States (and its close ally Israel), and has asserted that Iran will be the No. 1 foreign policy problem facing the next administration. McCain uses Iran as a prime example of what he depicts as his opponent Barack Obama’s naive and guileless approach to U.S. foreign policy. Just like the president hopes to succeed, McCain has sought to deploy Iran as a political weapon of mass destruction. . . . In an interview with the Atlantic in late May, McCain said that ‘Iran is hell-bent on the destruction of Israel, they’re hell-bent on driving us out of Iraq, they’re hell-bent on supporting terrorist organizations, and as serious as anything to American families, they’re sending explosive devices into Iraq that are killing American soldiers.’ In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee this month, McCain again mocked Obama’s willingness to enter into dialogue with the Iranians, saying, ‘The idea that they now seek nuclear weapons because we refused to engage in presidential-level talks is a serious misreading of history.’ . . . The problem with McCain’s alarmist rhetoric throughout the presidential primaries and now in the general campaign is that he’s got the Iran problem almost entirely wrong. Notwithstanding his deep resume on national security matters, his statements seem to reflect little understanding of the realities America faces in terms of dealing with Iran. Moreover, despite how highly he rates the problem, and his own foreign policy credentials, McCain seems to have no clear plan for actually dealing with Iran.” For more click here.

The past seven years have conclusively demonstrated that using war as a primary method of foreign policy is arrogant, myopic, and extraordinarily dangerous. Our constitutional democracy must reform itself to grant the people power to prevent unaccountable and unscrupulous individuals from dragging the nation into the purgatory, no the damnation, of war, especially when Congress acts as a rubber stamp to madness. Historians sometimes say great presidents are born in war. This means that these presidents had war thrust upon them. It doesn’t mean if you want to be a great president initiate unnecessary wars. The present administration refuses to see this distinction.

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“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
—John F. Kennedy

While clearly the worst foreign policy president in the nation’s history, Mr. Bush is unabashed in criticizing Senator Obama’s new politics of principled leadership ,including a commitment to negotiation and diplomacy: “President Bush used a speech to the Israeli Parliament on Thursday to denounce those who would negotiate with ‘terrorists and radicals’ a remark that was widely interpreted as a rebuke to Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, who has argued that the United States should talk directly with countries like Iran and Syria. . . . Mr. Bush did not mention Mr. Obama by name, and the White House said his remarks were not aimed at the senator. In a lengthy speech intended to promote the strong alliance between the United States and Israel, the president invoked the emotionally volatile imagery of World War II to make the case that talking to terrorists and radicals was no different than appeasing Hitler and the Nazis. . . . ‘Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,’ Mr. Bush said. ‘We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”‘ We have an obligation to call this what it is–the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.’ Continue reading here.
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Bush is the same person whose Middle-East policy has rendered Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy, the most powerful nation in the area except for Israel itself. With friends like Bush, Israel needs no for enemies. How can any sane person equate talking to an enemy with appeasement? Why wasn’t Nixon called an appeaser for meeting with Mao? Indeed, how come Reagan was applauded for meeting with Gorbachev? Mr. Bush’s speech while pandering to the thoughtless is just the sort of empty rhetoric that is anathema to resolving, however slightly, the problems of world peace. Senator Obama is asking us to shed our cynicism about the possibility of engaging the enemy diplomatically. He envisions a new kind of leadership both internationally and domestic. We can always pull back if our entreaties are spurned or if we are deceived by the enemy. So what’s lost by taking Obama’s route? Moreover, an unreflective dedication to conventional “wisdom” about the role of diplomacy, that is, don’t talk to you enemies until they’ve conceded, suggests we value, for some mysterious reason, keeping our enemies as enemies–in short, it suggests that we really do not seek peace, which must involve negotiation and diplomacy, but instead it suggests that our goal is to maintain a hostile status quo. Leadership, authentic leadership, is more than bullying other nations. It is instead a complex attitude including a host of methods of moral suasion. George W. Bush cannot understand this complexity. (Although members of his administration, for example, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates understand it.) Let’s hope that the electorate this fall can.Credit for Image

Beginning in earnest with the end of the current regime, historians will document just how duplicitous the Bush-Cheney administration has been regarding the war in Iraq. Here’s one littel-known item: “Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith’s recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. . . . Feith’s account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country’s top military leaders. . . . Feith’s book, ‘War and Decision’, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W. Bush on Sep. 30, 2001 calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing ‘new regimes’ in a series of states by ‘aiding local peoples to rid themselves of terrorists and to free themselves of regimes that support terrorism.’” Continue reading here. If you believe Watergate permanently damaged this nation, it pales in comparison to the past seven years.

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Dick Cheney’s repeated lies to the American people surely qualify him for the gold medal in mendacity. But the Vice-President’s successful scheming to keep the President out of the loop concerning his own administration’s decisions authorizing torture indicates the complete absence of even an elementary moral sense. Consider the following report: “Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned. . . . The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved. . . . A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue. . . . Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.” For the entire story click here and for more click here.

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While critical questions of republican democracy go unexamined, the American media are focused on the silly questions of whether John McCain had a sexual relationship with a lobbyist or whether Barack Obama was blessed with a sweetheart price to purchase his home. The vital questions concerning the hijacking of American democracy are successfully suppressed by the media. Virtually no major news organization, for instance, examines the relationship between the American military, the defense industry, the United States Congress, and the vast array of conservative “think tanks” that have become an entrenched force in American society. This stealth alliance between military-industrial-congressional–and intellectual players, or “MICI” for short, threatens the survival of American republican democracy.

MICI creates American foreign policy, defense policies, and has deleterious consequences for domestic spending. This conspiracy, though hiding in plain sight, controls vast American resources as well as the lives of many of our sons and daughters. Most ordinary American–indeed many sophisticated Americans–know nothing about how MICI controls our lives or the imminent danger it poses for American democracy. The story begins in earnest with President Eisenhower’s farewell address. Click here. There’s some repetition in the videos and some might be come unavailable on ECA. Sorry!

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Here are some of the fascinating issues you hear in the complete documentary. “Militaristic”! “Economic colonialism.” BLOWBACK! BLOWBACK! BLOWBACK! 25 military bases in 130 countries around the world? Whether true or not, why aren’t these questions being discussed during the current presidential campaign?

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“And the Halliburton thing is just an outrageous effort to associate the Vice-President with the activities of a company with which he has no connection. No connection at all!!!” —Richard Perle. In ECA’s view, no piece of information is more important than the Eugene Jarecki‘s documentary, “Why We Fight.” It is an absolute must-see for anyone who cares about the future of American democracy. In seven years George W. Bush was able to exploit MICI in order to create a soft American dictatorship, which now has a life of its own. MICI has now become integrated into the very fabric of American government and American society. The stakes could not be higher. The longer Americans tolerate MICI, the greater the gap becomes between precious American ideals and the reality of America’s soft dictatorship. This documentary should be viewed by all Americans. Credit for Image

As if the state of the economy is not sufficiently dispiriting, the Guardian reports that senior, international, military figures have prepared a manifesto for NATO for the use of “preemptive” nuclear attacks. Consider this report: “The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ‘imminent’ spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west’s most senior military officers and strategists. . . . Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a ‘grand strategy’ to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a ‘first strike’ nuclear option remains an ‘indispensable instrument’ since there is ‘simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world.’” To read on click here.

It’s difficult to appreciate the rationality of this strategy. Are these military strategists so insulated from the rest of society that collateral effects of using nuclear weapons to prevent others from obtaining nuclear weapons is viewed as essential? And even if attacking these nations is appropriate why use nuclear weapons? Moreover, not to be pedantic, but these military wizards are talking about “preventive” attacks, not “preemptive” ones. The former is attacking a country well before there’s the imminent threat of danger, while the latter is taking out a nation, when its planes on revving up on the runway, so to speak. Rather than begin the process of rendering Planet Earth a nuclear-free zone, the prospect of deploying nuclear weapons is discussed recklessly and with impunity. Until we recognize, as we finally did in the Cold War, that nuclear weapons put everyone in jeopardy, even ourselves, the existence of nuclear weapons in the present war on terror will continue to threaten human flourishing. Rather than pursuing the strategic and tactical uses of nuclear weapons in the so-called war on terror, we should immediately revive the process of nuclear disarmament with the ultimate aim of eliminating nuclear weapons entirely.
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Check out Chalmers Johnson’s critique of Charlie Wilson’s War: “I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy committee assignments in the House of Representatives–the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee–from which they could dole out large sums of public money with little or no input from their colleagues or constituents. . . . Both men flagrantly abused their positions–but with radically different consequences. Cunningham went to jail because he was too stupid to know how to game the system–retire and become a lobbyist–whereas Wilson received the Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Service’s first “honored colleague” award ever given to an outsider and went on to become a $360,000 per annum lobbyist for Pakistan. . . . In a secret ceremony at CIA headquarters on June 9, 1993, James Woolsey, Bill Clinton’s first Director of Central Intelligence and one of the agency’s least competent chiefs in its checkered history, said: “The defeat and breakup of the Soviet empire is one of the great events of world history. There were many heroes in this battle, but to Charlie Wilson must go a special recognition.” One important part of that recognition, studiously avoided by the CIA and most subsequent American writers on the subject, is that Wilson’s activities in Afghanistan led directly to a chain of blowback that culminated in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and led to the United States’ current status as the most hated nation on Earth.” Read the rest.

Republican Johnson’s argument is persuasive, extremely persuasive. Yet, recently on Sunday Morning expressed no regrets and gleefully preened when unveiling a weapon, a rocket-propelled grenade, I think, which was given to him by the Mujahideen–a.k.a. the Taliban and Al-Qaeda inter alia. These are the people Wilson supported and armed enabling them to use these arms to kill Americans in Afghanistan. These are the same people who Ronald Reagan called “freedom fighters” and Charlie Wilson chimed in adoringly depicting them as “heroic.” These same “heroic freedom fighters” parented the craven fanatics who wantonly killed thousands of Americans on 9-11. Yet, neither of these conservatives-one Democrat, the other a Republican–icons are in any way held accountable. Several years ago, Bill Bennett wrote a screed condemning the lack of outrage–blaming American citizens for being “enablers”–over Clinton’s “outrageous” conduct of lying about his sexual peccadilloes. Outrage toward perjury in a sexual infidelity case? That’s right! Where, pray tell, is the outrage now over Reagan and Wilson creation of fanatical terrorists who are intent on killing Americans? Americans have, indeed, lost a sense of outrage, and if Bennett is an example, we no longer even appreciate what type of conduct should be the object of outrage. No one connects the role Ronald Reagan and Charlie Wilson’s outrageous conduct played in bringing about our current difficulties in Afghanistan. Oh, yes, let’s not forget George W. Bush’s virtual abandonment of the pursuit of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in order to redirect American forces to fight the calamitous and unnecessary war in Iraq. We’ve traded genuine outrage for “outrage” over insignificance. That surely bespeaks the moral death of a nation.

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Today’s NY Times includes this important book “To be neoconservative is to bear almost daily witness to the resurrection of Adolf Hitler. ”Truly Hitlerian,’ the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer pronounced Saddam Hussein‘s saber-rattling before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Three days after the 9/11 attacks, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defense secretary, opined that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers ‘misread our system as one that’s weak, that can’t take casualties. … Hitler made that mistake’ Norman Podhoretz, the former editor of Commentary, said of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last spring, ‘like Hitler, he is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system.’ In the same month, the defense analyst Richard Perle mused on whether it had been ”a correct reading’ of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat ‘to believe that business could be done with him that would produce a result? I don’t think so. These are the difficult decisions. Diplomacy with Hitler. Chamberlain went to Munich, presumably on the theory that you talk to your enemies and not to your friends, and what did it produce?” For more on this disturbing, anti-democratic, and radical strain of American conservatism click here. The irony, of course, is that neoconservatism is perhaps the most genuine and insidious form of totalitarianism ever before known to American politics. If one were to engage in the same kind of dangerous hyperbole typical of neoconservatives–and thereby trivializing the death’s of Hitler’s victims–one could say that the members of this cabal are truly the ghosts of Hitler or as close to Hitler as any American can reasonably hope to get. For additional views on this movement click here and here inter alia.

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