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archived: 2 - 8 Oct, 2005 Back Next SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt. Neoconservativism and its leading advocate, President George Bush, have been shot down in the flames of political wrath. Cindy Sheehan and the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast have exploded the mythological underpinnings of Bush’s bankrupt ideology. Tom DeLay supplied the coup de grace. Now, a vast majority of Americans oppose the policies of George Bush: his ill-conceived war against Iraq; his failed vision of homeland security and his cruel plan to destroy social security. The flames of public opinion are consuming George Bush and his neoconservative agenda. What is to be done? With more than three years left in his failed presidency, the only reasonable thing to do is to get rid of him. Bush’s policies are bankrupting America at a high rate of knots. We are now in deep hock to the Chinese, incredibly deep. We are spending far too much on weapons of mass destruction and our stupendously bloated military-industrial complex. Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex has become America’s most vivid and alarming prophecy. Ike was dead right. In a time of peace and prosperity, America has foundered into bankruptcy financed by her largest global competitor because of her extravagant and useless military expenditures. Over and above the folly of it all, the crimes of George Bush vastly outweigh those of Richard Nixon who was impeached by the Senate. We all know that Nixon resigned in disgrace on the morning when the final Senate vote on impeachment was about to take place. The impeachment of Richard Nixon had the commitment of an overwhelming majority of both parties. Nixon violated his presidential oath of office to protect and defend the constitution, and he suffered the excruciating pain of impeachment for his crime. George Bush has violated his presidential oath of office to protect and defend the constitution. He has ripped and shredded and trampled and put our democracy to the torch from the days before he assumed the presidency, and he is now twisting slowly and agonizingly in the increasingly violent winds and vortices of political change. Many Americans have opposed Bush and his policies from the outset of his belligerent presidency. Today, far more Americans oppose his policies than support them. None of Bush’s policies have been more unpopular than his war in Iraq. Bush told America that Iraq was bristling with weapons of mass destruction aimed at the heart of our nation. He lied. Bush told America that the war would be blindingly quick. He lied. Bush told America that the Iraqis would welcome our forces. He lied. Bush told America that the insurgents were foreign fighters. He lied. Bush told America that if we crushed the insurgents in Falluja with extreme brutality and malice aforethought, they would collapse. He lied. Bush told America that if the Iraqis elected their own government, they would have democracy. He lied. Bush told America that if the Iraqis wrote their own constitution, they would love America. He lied. Today, the referendum on the deeply divisive Iraqi constitution is less than two weeks away. To this date, no one in Iraq other than the members of the interim government and the American Ambassador have seen or read that momentous but controversial document. It gets worse. The Iraqis do not have the power to print and publish their own constitution, nor to distribute it to their own people. Those bureaucratic powers reside with the US Ambassador, one deeply suspicious character named, Zalmay Khalilzad, a radical Republican neoconservative and loyalist to Bush, Cheney and Ahmad Chalabi. Reports are now circulating on the internet that the Constitutional Referendum scheduled for the fifteenth of October will be a sham, because it will be yet another rigged election. I ask you, is this any way to build a constitutional democracy? For those of you who might be challenged by this last question, the correct answer is, “Certainly not.” Without any genuine constitution and a lengthening series of rigged elections, the political entity emerging in Iraq is neither constitutional nor a democracy. So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. In America, the Democratic Party is still enthralled by the neoconservative elements in control of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Sadly, in their latest burst of activity, the DLC have proposed a longterm US military occupation of Iraq. Some high-ranking and influential members of the DLC actually want to increase the number of US troops in Iraq. Bizarrely, the DLC’s deeply unpopular war policies have been adopted by several of the leaders of the Democratic Party including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. In her latest interview, Cindy Sheehan announced her disaffection with the Democratic Party and its current leadership. Cindy criticized Hillary, Kerry and Howard Dean for acquiescing to the DLC formula for the extenuated military and political occupation of Iraq. At the same time, Cindy pointed to two Republicans, Chuck Hagel and Walter Jones, as politicians who have broken away from the neoconservative insanity that is settling in as the predominant power in both the Republican and the Democratic parties. At this precise juncture in her history, America is literally leaderless. Our political class has failed to respond to the helm of its people. The Democratic Party is the opposition to the Republican government, but it is failing the people who are longing for a rapid and radical change in leadership. This situation cannot last. The credibility of America is imploding on a global scale. There is virtually no support for the neoconservative conquest of Iraq and Afghanistan, much less anywhere else on our planet. The “Coalition of the Willing” has fallen apart. The British are longing to pull out, and at least one group have drawn up a plan to remove all Brits by next May. The Italians and the Spanish have announced their departures, while the Poles, Danes and Japanese are doing little more than sitting in their barracks and urging their political commanders back home to order them to withdraw as promptly as possible. The UN withdrew its contingent after a bomb hit their headquarters, and there is certainly no detectable support urging the Secretary General to send them back in their blue helmets to rescue America from a foreign policy failure entirely of her own making. Last week, the British Labour Party held its annual conference. When Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, made his speech, he intoned the neoconservative mantra that we invaded Iraq to bring “democracy” to the Middle East. At that point, an eighty-two year old man named Walter Wolfgang was sitting in the back of the audience. Walter Wolfgang raised his voice and spoke one word, “Nonsense,” and the thugs in suits that pass for “security guards,” manhandled him in front of the television cameras. The ludicrous and forcible ejection of Walter Wolfgang has been the single biggest story emerging from the Labour Party conference. At the same conference, Tony Blair made the deeply unpopular announcement that he would not step down, and his wife, Cherie, told the press that momentous occasion was still a long, long way off in a future far, far away. That flash of ego left a deeply depressing memory of the Labour Party, a declining force that is now seen to be a political apparatus that abuses old age pensioners who tell the truth and ensconces neoconservative policies in the mantras of all its grandees. In America, the same aura of failure and distrust is descending over the Democratic Party. The DLC plan for Iraq contains not one line worthy of serious consideration. It is a fantasy erected on a neoconservative foundation of fallacy, falsehood and failure. The DLC have proposed that America maintain a huge military presence even to the point of embedding and integrating our forces within the Iraqi military and their regional militias. This atrocious policy is nonsensical and nothing more than a stupid formula that would Vietnamize the region indefinitely. The DLC’s political prescription – more US marketing activity amongst the ethnic minorities in Iraq - is worse for it would forever deny any central role for the Iraqi people or their government in coming to grips with the internal political problems that are afflicting and bedeviling them today. The third plank is a joke. The DLC is calling for an escalation in regional diplomacy. They should wake up smell the coffee and then read the daily news. Condoleezza Rice has been bleating and braying around the region with her begging bowl outstretched for the past seven months. The bottom line is that outside influences will exacerbate the problems of Iraq, not resolve them. The cumulative impact of the DLC plan would Vietnamize Iraq and Balkanize the region in perpetuity. The neoconservative policy in Iraq has accomplished one major diplomatic achievement. In fact, it could be said that what Nikita Khruschev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mao Tse Tsung, Deng Xioping, Jiang Zemin and Mikhail Gorbachev failed to do, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Ahmad Chalaby, John Negroponte, John Bolton and Zalmay Khalilzad have succeeded in doing. And what is this major diplomatic achievement? Clearly, the most significant diplomatic achievement of the Bush Era will be the political alignment and military alliances of Russia, China and Iran. Even as America flounders in Iraq, neoconservatives in Washington are designing a policy to reverse the political polarity in one fell swoop to return them to the adulation they feel they so richly deserve as they drive a now unwilling nation toward what they deem will be a shining, “new American century.” According to a growing stream of reports in major journals and on the internet, neoconservative Washington is now poised to attack Iran with a savage barrage of aerial bombardments including the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons. A fatally weakened presidency is no guarantee that a nuclear holocaust will not happen in the immediate future. For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. During the final phases of the Watergate Era, Richard Nixon became deeply and dangerously depressed. In his remorse and confusion, Nixon turned to drink and drugs to assuage his anger, guilt and broken conscience. At that point, while meeting with a group of Senators who had come to discuss the darkening ramifications of the Watergate investigation, Nixon said something that shocked them to their cores. Nixon ordered the Senators to abandon the Watergate investigation, then he uttered a terrible warning, “I am still the president, and I could walk into my office and pick up the phone and kill hundreds of millions of people.” Following that shocking encounter with the stricken Nixon, Congress held a secret meeting to discuss what could be done should the President go totally insane. The Secretary of Defense who was a Nixon appointee, James Schlesinger, swiftly ordered the military to ignore direct commands from their Commander-in-Chief. Clearly, with the reports of Bush back on the bottle that are swirling around Washington today, Donald Rumsfeld may have already issued a similar order. If he has done so, he will have done our nation the greatest service that he has ever done her in his entire life. The neoconservative nightmare has lost its grip on the mind of America, but it has not lost its grip on the levers of power in Washington. That is a frightening scenario. It is with both regret and trepidation that this writer reports to his readers that it is far too early to proclaim that we shall be safer and more secure now with the dwindling power of a deeply unpopular president. It is too early to tell. It is still too soon to know who else will be shot down in flames. Sources
DLC Idea of the Week: What
To Do Now In Iraq (Not, MC)
Cindy Sheehan, Our
Imploding President __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC, European Business News, NPR and many European television broadcasts examining American politics and culture. In addition to his column for The Political Junkies, he is a regular contributor to the Moving Planet weblog. See: www.planetarymovement.org and http://planetmove.blogspot.com/
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
