JUNKIE EDITOR MICHAEL CARMICHAEL
(“OUT OF THE CRUCIBLE”)
Junkie Editor Michael Carmichael focuses on the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the Middle East. He bases his comments on an article by David Hirst in The Guardian. – Guardian Junkies should read the article as a prelude to Carmichael’s comments which follow below:
The Americans have done badly - so badly that, in the view of Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of the pan-Arab newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, they risk provoking a "national awakening and war of attrition that make Vietnam seem like a picnic in comparison".
America's disastrous failures in Iraq leave the future of the middle east teetering on the edge of a new pan-Arabic intifada that will dwarf Vietnam - or, so says David Hirst, one of the west's most experienced journalists on the middle east. The continuation of bitter resistance in the peninsula campaign and the escalation of anti-American demonstrations in Iraq suggest that Hirst is not far wrong in his assessment of the precariousness of the middle-eastern situation. American colonial power is no guarantee that the forces of secular democracy in Iraq will triumph over the forces of liberation - and a liberation movement defined by the Iraqis themselves, as liberation from the neo-imperial American domination of their destiny. With Saddam Hussein still uncaptured, Iraq is poised to follow the path of liberation from foreign oppression chosen by Vietnam. This is the failure of Bush-Cheney's war policy, which was doomed before the bombing started to degenerate into a holocaust of intifadas, revenge and an Islamic theology of liberation from crusading Christian armies motivated by corporate greed.
GREGORY RECK, Non-Junkie
(“Choices”)
TPJ features another speech given to the Democrat District Conventions last month. This week, TPJ publishes excerpts from a presentation given by Reck to the 5th District Democrats. It is another example that the Democrats have talented, thoughtful people dedicated to the civic politic. Reck’s comments follow immediately below:
I stand before you today as a deeply concerned life-long registered Democrat. Yet, more importantly, I stand before you as a deeply concerned citizen of the United States and of the World.
At the beginning of the 21st century, we stand on the precipice of a Brave New World that equals, if not surpasses, any grave challenge that this nation and the world have faced before. We have a choice: we can succumb to the powerful winds of a neoconservatism that rejects the values of democracy, equality, freedom and justice that it pretends to defend and that the people of this country have held in highest esteem as a human work in progress OR we can mount a popular movement that reclaims the high points of the Democratic Party – the New Deal of the Great Depression years, the labor movement, the civil rights movement; a popular movement that reaffirms the values that many in this country have struggled and are still struggling to achieve – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; a popular movement that reclaims the symbols – the American flag and the concept of “patriotism” -- that have been so ruthlessly and hypocritically stolen from us.
Unless we have the strength, the will and the conviction to risk all for this struggle, we will have lost more than the next election. We will have lost the soul of our nation and the hope of people everywhere.
Nowhere is the neoconservative agenda that has seized on the fear, anger and sorrow of our nation since September 11 more evident than in the administration’s foreign policy. In justifying unprecedented military aggression, President Bush has explained that “September 11 changed everything,” providing the U.S. with the right to ignore international law, engage in preemptive invasion of another country, and flaunt unilateral war in the face of its most essential allies, spiral the country into deeper debt, and ignore the problems of working Americans, health care, social security and education.
In reality, what September 11 did was to provide the opportunity for a group of political pirates to highjack this country in the direction of policy that is doomed to failure, a policy that will bring unimaginable pain and suffering to people in this country and abroad, a policy that undermines the delicate work in progress that is a democratic nation and world. If you doubt this claim, I invite each and every one of you to go to the website of a think-tank called The Project for a New American Century (newamericancentury.org) and read the policy documents and the underlying political visions expressed there. The Project was officially formed in 1997 and among its founding members were the three key foreign policy players in the Bush administration – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Prominent players since 1997 have included Richard Perle and at least ten other key members of the Bush team.
Particularly significant are documents written prior to September 11, 2001. I’ll mention just two: (1) a 1998 letter to President Clinton from the Project, signed by 15 individuals, including Cheney and Rumsfeld and (2) a document entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses for the 21st Century” published in September 2000.
The relevant points of these documents are the following: (1) the objective of U.S. foreign policy is “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,” whether from “hostile powers” or any other “advanced industrial nation” and to guarantee U.S. political and economic pre-eminence in the world through military power; (2) U.S. dominance in the Middle East is a weak-link in this strategy; therefore, the “removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power” should be our immediate number one foreign policy goal since if Saddam were to remain in power “a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard;” (3) the U.S. has the right to take “military steps to protect these vital interests in the Gulf;” (4) the realization of this new foreign policy is absolutely dependent upon a re-structuring of U.S. military might, including the infusion of vast amounts of additional spending ($100 billion); and (5) that this transformation of U.S. military might and its accompanying foreign policy will be painfully gradual, unless “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor” occurs.
I won’t belabor the point. I’ll only say that September 11 provided the opportunity for those in positions of foreign policy power to cynically manipulate the authentic fear and sorrow of the American people to put into motion a foreign policy that is neither conservative nor liberal, but a foreign policy that is decidedly anti-American and dangerous. Using manipulative advertising techniques and outright lies, they have managed to sell the American people a useless sugar-pill that lines the pockets of the powerful and does nothing to attack the real causes of terror in the world.
Forty-two years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, a conservative, a General, warned of the rise of a military-industrial complex in the U.S. In his farewell speech to the nation, he said:
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United State had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well…now…this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government…we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications…In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
What we now see in the Bush administration is the epitome of what Eisenhower warned us about. Bush and Enron – Cheney and Halliburton – Schultz and Bechtel – Karzai and Unocal. The list goes one and on. When those in power speak of “national security” they really mean “secure corporate profits.” When those in power speak of “national interests” they really mean “interests of the few.” When they speak of “democracy” they really mean “as long as we are in power.”
We must not make the grave error of being too meek and timid to criticize the Bush foreign policy. We must not make the mistake of separating foreign policy from domestic policy as they are both part of the same neoconservative design. The billions spent to expand the machinery of war and the expansion of the American empire robs domestic programs that are essential for the security and well-being of our people. To the world at large, those same billions insure our embrace of the central dictum of the Roman Empire, “Let them hate us, but also let them fear us.”
We must reclaim the symbols of our country from those who have stolen them. We must reclaim true patriotism from the demagoguery of Republican rhetoric, remembering the words of Adlai Stevenson: “To strike freedom of the mind with the fist of patriotism is an old and ugly subtlety.” We must push for a foreign policy directed at alleviating all forms of terrorism in the world, from the terror of preemptive war to the terror of 35,000 humans who die each day due to starvation and malnutrition. We must realize that a dagger plunged in the name of freedom is a dagger plunged in the very heart of freedom. We must realize that a truly strong nation is a merciful and respected nation. We must realize that the greatest national security comes from making freedom ring at home; that the greatest national security comes from domestic policy that provides equitable education, health care, employment and human rights; that the greatest national security requires a foreign policy of global cooperation, justice for all and respect for all human life.
The Democratic Party can make the necessary changes. But before we can make a regime change in Washington, we must make revolutionary changes within the Party. We must find our soul; we must seek honesty; we must free ourselves from the insidious system of corporate control; we must stop playing electoral politics for its own sake; we must be brave and bold; we must reclaim the dream of democracy.