Common Dreams April 27, 2024: Unlike most governments that support a two-state solution, the United States only recognizes Israel, not Palestine. [source]
Category: Common Dreams
Common Dreams
There Is Zero Actual Evidence Iran Is Responsible for Killing Hundreds of Americans
TheProgressive.org, January 7, 2020 & Republished by:
CommonDreams.org, RadioFree.org and GVWire.com (Fresno).
Impeach Away! Thoughts on a Possible President Pence
August 22, 2018 in The Progressive, and Common Dreams: While many express concern that Vice-President Mike Pence, a Christian supremacist with more consistently hard right wing views than Trump, could replace him, Zunes argues Trump will likely be forced from office and this would be a positive development…
My Support for Ralph Nader, Ten Years Later: Lessons Learned
Truthout October 29, 2010; also from Tikkun.org, OpEdNews.com & Common Dreams
Like many people who campaigned and voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, the upcoming tenth anniversary of that disastrous election and awareness of the tragic results continues to haunt me. While it was perhaps the most serious political misjudgment I have ever made, it is important to recognize why at the time it seemed to be quite rational. It is also important to recognize what both the Democratic Party, as well as, progressives who are tempted to support left alternatives to the Democrats can learn from it. It should be emphasized… Nader did not cause George W. Bush to be elected president. Bush was not elected president. The election was stolen…
The Iranian Uprising is Home Grown, and Must Stay That Way
The growing nonviolent insurrection in Iran against the efforts by the ruling clerics to return the ultra-conservative and increasingly autocratic incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinjead to power is growing. Whatever the outcome, it represents an exciting and massive outpouring of Iranian civil society for a more open and pluralistic society.
Ironically, defenders of Ahmadinejad’s repression are trying to blame everyone from the U.S. government to nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp to various small NGOs engaged in educational efforts on strategic nonviolent action as somehow being responsible for the popular uprising in Iran. It appears to be based upon the rather bizarre assumption that millions of Iranians would somehow be willing to pour out onto the streets in the face of violent repression by state security forces only because they have been directed to do so by people from an imperialist power which overthrew their last democratic government and subsequently propped up the tyrannical regime they installed in its place for the next quarter century.
Even putting aside the bizarre spectacle of self-proclaimed “leftists” coming to the defense of a right-wing fundamentalist autocratic like Ahmadinejad, this claim ignores several key factors:
1) Neo-conservatives and other American hawks were hoping for a victory by the hard-line incumbent to justify their opposition to President Barack Obama’s tentative steps at rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.
2) Opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and the vast majority of his supporters are strongly nationalist, anti-American, anti-imperialist, and would neither desire nor accept U.S. support.
3) There has been a longstanding Iranian tradition of such largely nonviolent civil insurrections against imperialist powers and autocratic rulers and no outside power is needed to convince the Iranian people to rebel.
The Neo-Cons Supported Ahmadinejad
The only people happier than the Iranian elites over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apparently stolen election win Friday, were the neoconservatives and other hawks eager to block any efforts by the Obama administration to moderate U.S. policy toward the Islamic republic.
Since he was elected president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has filled a certain niche in the American psyche formerly filled by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi as the Middle Eastern leader we most love to hate. It gives us a sense of righteous superiority to compare ourselves favorably to these seemingly irrational and fanatical foreign despots.
Better yet, if these despots can be inflated into far greater threats than they actually are, these supposed threats can be used to justify the enormous financial and human costs of maintaining American armed forces in that volatile region to protect ourselves and our allies, and even to make war against far-off nations in “self-defense.”
The neocons have not been subtle about their desire for Ahmadinejad to continue playing this important role. For example, right-wing pundit Daniel Pipes, at a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation just before the election, said that he would vote for Ahmadinejad if he could, because he prefers “an enemy who is forthright, blatant, obvious.”
Last week, just two days before the Iranian election, Congressional Republicans — in an apparent effort to provoke a nationalist reaction which would enhance the chances of Iranian hard liners – tried to push through a floor vote to strengthen U.S. sanctions against Iran.
It is interesting how some of the very foreign policy hawks who just last week were dismissing Mir Hossein Mousavi’s expected victory as irrelevant since, in their view, there was essentially no meaningful difference between him and Ahmadinejad, are now among the most self-righteous in denouncing the apparent fraud and the most outspoken in their pseudo-outrage at the results.
Their worst-case scenario for these American hawks would be a nonviolent insurrection that would topple Ahmadinejad and allied hard-line clerics and the development of a more pluralistic and representative Islamic Republic in Iran. . Neither the neocons nor Iran’s reactionary leadership want to see that oil-rich regional power under a popular and legitimate government. Indeed, the neocons and Iranian hard-liners need each other.
The Nationalist Nature of the Opposition
Mousavi – despite his disagreements with Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the years — has been very much part of the establishment. Indeed, Mousavi would not have even been allowed to run for president otherwise, since the Council of Guardians routinely forbids anyone who is seen to not sufficiently support the country’s theocratic system to participate.
Yet, Mousavi attracted a large and enthusiastic following during the course of the campaign which may have led the ruling clerics to fear that the momentum of his incipient victory could result not just in limited reforms, like those attempted under former president Mohammed Khatami, but revolutionary change. The size and intensity of Mousavi’s final campaign rally, in which he referred to Ahmadinejad as a “dictator” — which, by extension, implied an indictment of the system as a whole — may have tilted the clerics into believing they could not take the risk of allowing the anticipated results to be verified. Despite his candidacy displaying a personality and style closer to Michael Dukakis than Barack Obama, Mousavi came to represent the change so many Iranians, especially young people, desperately desired and appeared determined to make happen.
Even among Iranians dedicated to the principles of the Islamic Republic, many now see their country essentially as a police state, recognizing that Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics are little more than corrupt self-interested politicians who have manipulated their people’s religious faith for the sake of their own power.
However strong their opposition to the current regime, the democratic and reformist opposition simply does not trust the United States, which overthrew Iran’s last democratic government in 1953, armed and trained the Shah’s brutal security apparatus, backed Saddam Hussein in his bloody war against their country, imposed strict economic sanctions on their country, and has hypocritically obsessed about their civilian nuclear program while supporting such neighboring states as Israel, Pakistan and India despite their developing nuclear arsenals.
While Congress in recent years has approved millions of dollars in funding to support various Iranian opposition groups to promote “regime change,” most of these groups are led by exiles who have virtually no following within Iran or any experience with the kinds of grassroots mobilization necessary to build a popular movement that could threaten the regime’s survival. By contrast, most of the credible opposition within Iran has renounced this U.S. initiative and has asserted that it has simply made it easier for the regime to claim that all pro-democracy groups and activists are paid agents of the United States.
Feeling pressure from Iranian democrats and major Iranian-American groups regarding such counter-productive efforts, Obama and the Democrats have since ended this controversial program. Ironically, Republicans are now attacking the administration for having somehow abandoned Iran’s pro-democracy struggle while Ahmadinejad and his supporters are citing the now-discarded effort as proof of U.S. complicity in the current uprising.
Generations of Struggle
Most Iranians – who have traditionally been very proud of their political, social and cultural history – would find it rather bizarre to learn that some Western bloggers, ignorant of that very history, are insisting that the recent protests are a result not of their own anger at an apparent stolen election and continued autocratic rule, but simply because some Americans have told them to.
In reality, uprisings like the one witnessed in recent days have occurred with some regularity in Iran since the late 1800s. Indeed, the idea of Americans having to teach Iranians about massive nonviolent resistance is like Americans teaching Iranians to cook fesenjan.
In 1890, unpopular concessions on tobacco and other products to the British led leading Shia clerics to call for nationalist protests and a nationwide tobacco strike, which succeeded in forcing the Shah to cancel the concession in early 1892.
In 1905, in opposition to widespread corruption by the Qajar dynasty and allied regional nobles and a series of other concessions to Russian and other foreign interests, an uprising initially led by merchants and clergy ensued which would continue for the next six years. In what became known as the Constitutional Revolution, many thousands of Iranians engaged in peaceful protests, boycotts and mass sit-ins, along with occasional riots and scattered armed engagements. The result was significant political and social reforms, including the establishment of an elected parliament to share power with the Shah and anti-corruption measures.
A CIA-sponsored coup in 1953 ousted the elected nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh and his nationalist supporters and returned the exiled Shah to power as an absolute monarch. Through mass arms transfers from the United States, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi built one of the most powerful armed forces ever seen in the Middle East. His American-trained secret police, the SAVAK, had been thought to have successfully terrorized the population into submission during the next two decades through widespread killings, torture and mass detentions. By the mid-1970s, most of the leftist, liberal, nationalist, and other secular opposition leadership had been successfully repressed through murder, imprisonment or exile, and most of their organizations banned. It was impossible to suppress the Islamist opposition as thoroughly, however, so it was out of mosques and among the mullahs that much of the organized leadership of the movement against the Shah’s dictatorship emerged.
Open resistance began in 1977, when exiled opposition leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for strikes, boycotts, tax refusal and other forms of noncooperation with the Shahs regime. Such activism was met with brutal repression by the government. The pace of the resistance accelerated as massacres of civilians were answered by larger demonstrations following the Islamic 40-day mourning period. In the months that followed, Iranians employed many of the methods that would be used in the unarmed insurrections that toppled dictatorships in the Philippines, Latin America, Eastern Europe and elsewhere in subsequent years: mass demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, contestation of public space, and the establishment of parallel institutions.
Despite the bloody image of the revolution and the authoritarianism and militarism of the Islamic Republic that followed, there was a clear commitment to keeping the actual insurrection largely nonviolent. Protestors were told by the leadership of the resistance to try to win over the troops rather than attack them; indeed, thousands of troops deserted, some in the middle of confrontations with crowds. Clandestinely smuggled audio cassette tapes of Ayatollah Khomeini speaking about the revolution played a key role in the movement’s mass mobilization, and led Abolhassan Sadegh, an official with the Ministry of National Guidance, to note that “tape cassettes are stronger than fighter planes.” Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches, circulated through such covert methods, emphasized the power of unarmed resistance and noncooperation. In one speech, he said, “The clenched fists of freedom fighters can crush the tanks and guns of the oppressors.” There were few of the violent activities normally associated with armed revolutions such as shooting soldiers, setting fires to government buildings or looting. Such incidents that did occur were unorganized and spontaneous and did not appear to have the support of the leadership of the movement.
In October and November of 1978, a series of strikes by civil servants and workers in government industries crippled the country. The crisis deepened when oil workers struck at the end of October and demanded the release of political prisoners, costing the government $60 million a day. An ensuing general strike on November 6 paralyzed the country. Even as some workers returned to their jobs, disruption of fuel oil supplies and freight transit, combined with shortages of raw materials resulting from a customs strike, largely kept economic life in the country at a standstill.
Despite providing rhetorical support for an improvement in the human rights situation in Iran, the Carter administration continued military and economic support for the Shah’s increasingly repressive regime, even providing fuel for the armed forces and other security services facing shortages due to the strikes.
Under enormous pressure, the oil workers returned to work but continued to stage slowdowns. Later in November, the Shah’s nightly speeches were interrupted when workers cut off the electricity at precisely the time of his scheduled addresses. Massive protests filled the streets in major cities in December as oil workers walked out again and an ongoing general strike closed the refineries and the central bank. Despite thousands of unarmed protesters being killed by the Shah’s forces, the protesters’ numbers increased, with as many as nine million Iranians taking to the streets in of cities across the country in largely nonviolent protests. The Shah fled on January 16, 1979, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile two weeks later. He appointed Mehdi Bazargan prime minister, thus establishing a parallel government to challenge the Shah’s appointed prime minister Shapur Bahktiar. With the loyalty of the vast majority clearly with the new Islamic government, Bahktiar resigned February 11.
One element that contributed to people’s willingness to mobilize under harsh repression was the value of martyrdom in Shia Islam. The movement’s emphasis was to “save Islam by our blood.” Indeed, there are interesting parallels between the legacy of martyrdom inspired by early Shia leader Imam Hossein with the Gandhian tradition of self-sacrifice. As demonstrated by their subsequent rule, the Iranian revolution’s leadership – unlike Mohandas Gandhi – clearly did not support nonviolence as a principle, but recognized its utilitarian advantages against the well-armed security apparatus of the Shah’s regime.
While the revolution had the support of a broad cross-section of society (including Islamists, secularists, nationalists, laborers, and ethnic minorities), Khomeini and other leading Shia clerics strengthened by a pre-existing network of social service and other parallel institutions consolidated their hold and established an Islamic theocracy. The regime shifted far to the right by the spring of 1981, purging moderate Islamists including the elected president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr and imposing a totalitarian system.
A New Revolution?
Now, a new generation of Iranians is rising up in the tradition of previous generations using largely nonviolent tactics to challenge their oppression. Those out on the streets in Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, and other cities are not just middle class intellectuals but also represent a broad cross-section of the poor and working class and include both the majority Persians as well as other ethnicities.
It is not clear whether the opposition can successfully organize a “people power” revolution of the kind which have succeeded in ousting autocrats who attempted to steal elections in such countries as the Philippines in 1986, Serbia in 2000, or Ukraine in 2005 or whether – as in Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Mexico – the regime will remain in power.
In any case, it is clearly a home-grown indigenous struggle. Any effort by the United States (which has allowed one –and possible two–stolen elections to stand in recent years) to intervene will only hurt the pro-democracy movement. Given the history of U.S. interventionism in Iran, Obama’s cautious approach will do more to help those in the current popular struggle than anything more explicit, despite Republican demands to the contrary.
The future of Iran belongs in the hands of the Iranians and the best thing the United States can do to support a more open and pluralistic society in that country is to stay the hell out of the way.
Echoes of Solidarity 20 Years after Tiananmen
Twenty years ago today, I was at Camp Thoreau in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Though I had already become a full-time academic, I was still involved in the topical folk music circles in which I had hung out for much of the previous decade and had come down from Ithaca to join this annual gathering of politically-conscious folk musicians for a weekend of workshops, jam sessions and performances.
As we were clearing our dishes from dinner, I came upon the kitchen volunteers huddled around the radio listening to incoming reports of the massacre then unfolding in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Serving as the emcee for the concert that evening, I broke the news to the 300 or so singers, songwriters, and musicians assembled. I looked out upon an audience composed of amazing performing artists – Fred Small, Betsy Rose, Charlie King, Matt Jones, Pat Humphries, and many others – who had spent their lives singing songs about such struggles for freedom and justice. The shock, anger and despair was overwhelming. .
I reminded them that, despite efforts by the corporate media to portray the student movement in China as some kind of campaign against socialism, it was in fact a campaign against the tyranny and injustice of Communist Party rule and for a more just and democratic society, a society where workers and peasants had power in reality, not only in name. Indeed, I informed them, the song most frequently sung by the student protesters during the seven weeks they had occupied the heart of China’s capital was none other than “The Internationale.”
I then asked Pete Seeger and Sis Cunningham to join me on stage. Unlike these two veteran radicals – who had sung with Woody Guthrie in the Almanac Singers back in the 1940s – few of my generation knew the words to this international socialist anthem, so I had written them up on butcher paper which I held up for the audience to see. With Pete (accompanying himself on his banjo), Sis, and I leading the chorus of mostly professional singers, nearly 300 voices came together in harmony singing
Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation:
A better world’s in birth!
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us,
Arise you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations:
We have been nought, we shall be all!
As this diverse group of left-wing musicians sang out together, many of us through our tears, we were making a powerful witness in song, not just in protest of the tragedy then unfolding in Beijing, but at the betrayal of 20th century socialism by all those who, in its name, had become a new class of oppressors and exploiters.
Despite the calamity which took place in China that day, the student martyrs had given the world a glimmer of hope. While the nonviolent movement that had emerged that spring in Beijing and in towns and cities throughout China was brutally crushed, other largely nonviolent movements would emerge elsewhere in the coming years that would bring down scores autocratic regimes, ranging from monarchies to Communist dictatorships to right-wing military juntas. By the end of that year, such unarmed insurrections would usher in democratic governance in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Chile, and Kenya. During the 1990s, nonviolent movements brought down dictatorships in Mongolia, Mali, Thailand, Madagascar, Indonesia, Nigeria, and elsewhere. This decade has seen strategic nonviolent action play the pivotal role in overcoming corrupt and autocratic rule in such countries as Serbia, Nepal, Georgia, Ukraine and the Maldives.
Liberal democracy does not automatically bring social justice, but it is a necessary first step. Dictatorial rule, even in the name of “socialism,” cannot. The form democracy takes will vary based upon a given society’s history, culture and social conditions, but those in leadership must be accountable to their actions, individual freedom must be respected, and sovereignty must ultimately rest in the people.
We want no condescending saviors
To rule us from their judgment hall,
We workers ask not for their favors
Let us consult for all:
To make the thief disgorge his booty
To free the spirit from its cell,
We must ourselves decide our duty,
We must decide, and do it well.
Indeed, it is up to those in China and elsewhere still suffering under oppressive rule to lead their own struggles for liberation from tyranny. We cannot trust that the U.S. government or any other government can legitimately engage in “democracy promotion.” However, global civil society can offer the kind of international solidarity — in opposing arms transfers to human rights abusers, in providing workshops on strategic nonviolent conflict, and in raising global awareness of these struggles — that is so important for those struggling for freedom and justice.
It is a solidarity that is based not upon whether the oppressive regime being challenged is an ally or an adversary of the United States or what kind of economic system it claims to adhere to. It is a solidarity based upon nothing less than a universal respect for fundamental civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
Hillary Clinton’s Hawkish Record
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has already assumed front-runner status for the Democratic Party nomination for president despite a foreign policy agenda that closely parallels that of the Bush administration.
Since most of the public criticism of the former first lady has been based on false and exaggerated charges from the right wing, often with a fair dose of sexism, many Democrats have become defensive and reluctant to criticize her. Some liberals end up believing conservative charges that she is on the left wing of the Democratic Party when in reality her foreign policy positions are far closer to Ronald Reagan than George McGovern.
For example, she opposes the international treaty to ban land mines. She voted against the Feinstein-Leahy amendment last September restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas. She opposes restrictions on U.S. arms transfers and police training to governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses, such as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Israel, Pakistan, Cameroon and Chad, to name only a few. She insists upon continuing unconditional funding for the Iraq war and has called for dramatic increases in Bush’s already bloated military budget. She has challenged the credibility of Amnesty International and other human rights groups that criticize policies of the United States and its allies.
Mrs. Clinton has been one of the Senate’s most outspoken critics of the United Nations, even serving as the featured speaker at rallies outside U.N. headquarters in July 2004 and last summer to denounce the world body. She voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq despite its being a clear violation of the U.N. Charter and in July 2004 falsely accused the United Nations of not taking a stand against terrorism when it has opposed U.S. policy. She was one of the most prominent critics of the International Court of Justice for its landmark 2004 advisory ruling that the Fourth Geneva Conventions on the Laws of War is legally binding on all signatory nations. She condemned the United Nations’ judicial arm for challenging the legality of Israel’s separation barrier in the occupied West Bank and sponsored a Senate resolution “urging no further action by the United Nations to delay or prevent the construction of the security fence.”
Mrs. Clinton has shown little regard for the danger from proliferation of nuclear weapons, not only opposing the enforcement of U.N. Security Council resolutions challenging Pakistan, Israel and India’s nuclear weapons programs but supporting the delivery of nuclear-capable missiles and jet fighters to these countries. This past fall she voted to suspend important restrictions on U.S. nuclear cooperation with countries that violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
At the same time, she insists that the prospect of Iran’s developing nuclear weapons “must be unacceptable to the entire world,” since challenging the nuclear monopoly of the United States and its allies in the region would somehow “shake the foundation of global security to its very core.” Last year, she accused the Bush administration of not taking the threat of a nuclear Iran seriously enough, criticized the administration for allowing European nations to take the lead in pursuing a diplomatic solution and insisted that the United States should make it clear that military options were still being actively considered.
Meanwhile, she insists that the United States should maintain the right to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries.
Mrs. Clinton was an outspoken supporter of Israel’s massive military assault on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip last summer, which took the lives of over 1,000 civilians. She justified it by claiming it would “send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians [and] to the Iranians” because they opposed the United States and Israel’s commitment to “life and freedom.”
There are questions regarding her integrity. Long after credible, well-documented published reports by American and Israeli newspapers and research institutes had refuted it, Sen. Clinton continued to cite a right-wing group’s 1999 report claiming the Palestinian Authority was publishing anti-Semitic textbooks. Like President Bush, she is more prone to believe ideologically driven propaganda than independent investigative reporting or scholarly research.
Similarly, ignoring substantial evidence that Iraq had already rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons and no longer had a nuclear program, Mrs. Clinton justified her calls for a U.S. invasion of Iraq on the grounds that “if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.” Even after it was discovered that Iraq no longer had “weapons of mass destruction,” Mrs. Clinton acknowledged last year that she would have voted to authorize the invasion anyway.
Should Hillary Clinton become the Democratic presidential nominee, we can expect to find little differences between her and her Republican rival. Except for long shots Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Sen. Mike Gravel, none of the Democratic candidates have taken consistent positions supporting peace, human rights and international law. But with the possible exception of Sen. Joe Biden, Mrs. Clinton is the most hawkish Democrat in the presidential race.
The View From San Quentin Village
It was kind of surreal: a couple of thousand people jammed onto a normally quiet residential street of pricey bungalows along San Francisco Bay. The crowd and the floodlights made it impossible to see the imposing walls of San Quentin Prison or even the entrance gates just a few yards away. The sound system on the makeshift stage was poor, but the diverse mix of Christians, leftists, community activists, urban youth and other death penalty opponents made a powerful witness late Monday night to the state-sanctioned murder of Stanley “Tookie” Williams.
It was not the eloquent words of Jesse Jackson or Angela Davis or the beautiful singing of Joan Baez that I will most remember. Far more moving than what these or other celebrities had to offer were the words of former street gang members, some still in their teens, whose lives had been turned around by Williams’ anti-gang writings and activism. From behind prison walls, Williams was able to reach those involved or susceptible to involvement in gang activities in ways that none of the under-funded government or private volunteer programs had ever been able to do. These youths, who looked rather uncomfortable behind the microphone facing the glare of lights, asked those listening to consider how many more lives could Williams have saved had he been allowed to live?
I have always opposed the death penalty. Yet there was something about this particular execution that has moved me like no other. Part of it, or course, had to do with the strong possibility that Williams was in fact not guilty of the murders for which the jury — which failed to include any African-Americans — convicted him. For me, however, I was most struck as to how this case spoke of the immorality of the government’s ( and, according to public opinion polls, the majority of the American people’s ) refusal to recognize the possibility of personal redemption. Ironically, the United States boasts the highest number of people in the industrialized world, both overall and proportionately, who practice Christianity, a faith tradition rooted in that very principle.
Despite Americans’ longstanding distrust for “big government,” there remains strong support for the ultimate form of government power – the authority to take away human life. We have remained a free people in large part because we have maintained a healthy skepticism of governmental authority whether it is from the executive, legislative or judicial branches. To support the death penalty is to believe in the infallibility of governmental institutions, and that is the first step towards fascism.
The death penalty has already been eliminated in virtually every Western democracy. Abolition of capital punishment has been one of the very first acts upon the ouster of dictatorial regimes by the nonviolent people power movements of recent years which have swept the globe from the Philippines to Eastern Europe and beyond. Even armed revolutionary movements, such as SWAPO in Namibia and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, eliminated the death penalty as soon as they came to power.
Today, 97% of all executions worldwide take place in just four countries: China, Vietnam, Iran and the United States. Indeed, much about capital punishment can be said simply by the company we keep.
Christian opponents of the death penalty like to point out the response of Jesus to capital punishment, then carried out primarily by public stoning: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Indeed, whatever one’s religious inclination, executing convicted murderers does raise questions about hypocrisy: The very government which advocates that death is the appropriate response to the wanton taking on innocent human life has in recent years demonstrated its willingness to kill thousands of civilians through its air and missile strikes against population centers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Where does one stop if the death penalty is applied to those convicted of first-degree murder? The Vietnam veteran who admits to having killed civilians? The industrial polluter who causes deaths from cancer or respiratory diseases? The legislator who cuts funds for badly-needed social programs which result in deaths from exposure, malnutrition, and preventable diseases? The administration officials and members of Congress responsible for the U.S. invasion of Iraq?
On the eve of his scheduled execution in 2003 for the fatal shooting ten years earlier of an abortion doctor in Pensacola, Florida, Paul Hill petitioned Governor Jeb Bush to commute his death sentence. Bush, who strongly opposes abortion, nevertheless argued that even though you may believe that someone is a murderer, it does not give you the right to take away that person’s life, and insisted that Hill’s execution should therefore be carried out. Surprisingly few commentators even noticed the irony.
There is always a level of arbitrariness in any legal system, particularly in a country where the wealthy and powerful carry such a disproportionate degree of political power. Indeed, no rich person has ever been executed in modern U.S. history. Yet the sentence of death raises the stakes of this inequality to such a degree that the only way to insure fairness is in the outright abolition of capital punishment.
Perhaps this is why the government wanted Tookie Williams to die: the power of his message was not just in preaching against gangs and gang violence, but his recognition that the temptation for poor young people in this country to become involved in street gangs was not as much a reflection of personal moral failure as it was the failure of the whole political and economic system to provide them with better alternatives or the hope for a better future. Indeed, there may have been those who thought it better that these alienated youths focus upon killing each other and terrorizing their communities than organizing together to work for justice.
The Democrats and Iraqi WMDs: Bush is Right, Sort of…
Now that some Democrats are finally speaking out against the administration’s phony claims about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” conservative talk show hosts, columnists and bloggers have been dredging up scores of pre-invasion quotes by Democratic leaders citing non-existent Iraqi WMDs.
These defenders of the administration keep asking the question, “If President Bush lied, does that mean that the Democrats lied too?” The answer, unfortunately, is a qualified “yes.” Based on my conversations with Democratic members of Congress and their staffs in the weeks and months leading up to the invasion, there is reason to believe that at least some in the leadership of the Democratic Party is also guilty of having misled the American public regarding the supposed threat emanating from Iraq. At minimum, it could be considered criminal negligence.
As a result, though the Republicans have undoubtedly been hurt by their false statements on the subject, the Democrats are not likely to reap much benefit.
It did not have to be that way. Indeed, given the number of academics, former arms inspectors, strategic analysts, and others (me included) who had warned these Capitol Hill Democrats well prior to the October 2002 vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration’s WMD claims were not to be taken seriously, they have no one to blame but themselves. As a result of the Democrats choosing to disingenuously repeat these false claims of a supposed Iraqi threat in order to justify their vote to give President George W. Bush unprecedented war powers, Republicans are now able to portray the administration’s lies simply as honest mistakes.
It is certainly true that the Bush administration pressured members of the intelligence community to come up with data that would support their claims that Iraq was somehow a military threat to the United States and that they presented highly-selective and exaggerated “evidence” to Democratic lawmakers. It is also true that Republicans in Congress have blocked demands by some Democrats that a serious investigation be undertaken regarding the manipulation of intelligence regarding Iraq’s military capability.
However, there was enough counter-evidence published in reputable journals, United Nations reports, policy briefs from independent think tanks, and even from within the State Department and CIA that should have made it possible for the Democrats to have seen through the Bush administration’s lies if they wanted to. And there is some evidence to suggest that they didn’t want to: for example, Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate International Relations Committee, teamed up with his Republican counterparts to prevent those challenging Bush administration WMD claims prior to the invasion from testifying.
It should also be remembered that it was the Clinton administration, not the current administration, which first insisted-despite the lack of evidence-that Iraq had successfully concealed or re-launched its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. Clinton’s fear-mongering around Iraqi WMDs began in 1997, several years after they had been successfully destroyed or rendered inoperable. Based upon the alleged Iraqi threat, Clinton ordered a massive four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, forcing the evacuation of inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA.) As many of us had warned just prior to the bombing, this gave Saddam Hussein the opportunity to refuse to allow the inspectors to return. It also provided a “lesson” that unilateral military action, not nonviolent law-based processes through inter-governmental organizations, was the means to respond to the threat of WMD proliferation.
Clinton was egged on to take such unilateral military action by leading Senate Democratic leaders — including then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Carl Levin, and others who signed a letter in October 1998 — urging the president “to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspected Iraqi sites, to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” Meanwhile, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was repeatedly making false statements regarding Iraq’s supposed possession of WMDs, even justifying the enormous humanitarian toll from the U.S.-led economic sanctions on Iraq on the grounds that “Saddam Hussein has . . . chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction.”
Congressional Democrats continued their efforts to scare the American people into believing the Iraq was a threat to U.S. national security after President Bush came to office. Connecticut senator Joseph Leiberman sent a letter to President Bush in December 2001 declaring that “There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs” and that Iraq’s “biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status.” Eight months later, in order to frighten the American people into supporting a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich land, the 2000 Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee even claimed “Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States.”
Even after the International Atomic Energy Agency declared, after more than one thousand unannounced inspections throughout Iraq during the 1990s, that Iraq no longer had a nuclear program and despite the 2001 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that confirmed there was no evidence that such work had resumed, Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller declared “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.” President Bush has since used the irresponsible rhetoric of the junior senator from West Virginia — now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee — to discredit Congressional opponents of the war, citing this quote in his recent speech at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.
During the fall of 2002, in an effort to counter the efforts of those of us questioning the Bush administration’s WMD claims, congressional Democrats redoubled their efforts to depict Saddam Hussein as a threat to America’s national security. Democrats controlled the Senate at that point and could have blocked President Bush’s request for the authority to invade Iraq. However, in October, the majority of Democratic senators, led by Majority Leader Daschle and assistant Majority leader Harry Reid, voted to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing on the grounds that Iraq “poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States by among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, [and] actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.”
In a Senate speech defending his vote to authorize Bush to launch an invasion, Senator Kerry categorically declared, despite the lack of any credible evidence, that “Iraq has chemical and biological weapons” and even alleged that most elements of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs were “larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.” Furthermore, Kerry asserted that Iraq was “attempting to develop nuclear weapons,” backing up this accusation by falsely claiming that “all U.S. intelligence experts agree” with that assessment. The Massachusetts junior senator also alleged that “Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents [that] could threaten Iraq’s neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf.” Though it soon became evident that none of Kerry’s allegations were true, the Democratic Party still decided to reward him in 2004 with its nomination for president.
Kerry supporters claim he was not being dishonest in making these false claims but that he had been fooled by “bad intelligence” passed on by the Bush administration. However, well before Kerry’s vote to authorize the invasion, former UN inspector Scott Ritter personally told the senator and his senior staff that claims about Iraq still having WMDs or WMD programs were not based on valid intelligence. According to Ritter, “Kerry knew that there was a verifiable case to be made to debunk the president’s statements regarding the threat posed by Iraq’s WMDs, but he chose not to act on it.”
Joining Kerry in voting to authorize the invasion was North Carolina Senator John Edwards, who-in the face of growing public skepticism of the Bush administration’s WMD claims-rushed to the president’s defense in an op-ed article published in the Washington Post. In his commentary, Edwards claimed that Iraq was “a grave and growing threat” and that Congress should therefore “endorse the use of all necessary means to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.” The Bush administration was so impressed with Edwards’ arguments that they posted the article on the State Department website. Again, despite the fact that Edwards’ claims were completely groundless, the Democratic Party rewarded him less than two years later with its nomination for vice president.
By 2004, it was recognized that the administration’s WMD claims were bogus and the war was not going well. The incumbent president and vice president, who had misled the nation into a disastrous war through phony claims of an Iraqi military threat, were therefore quite vulnerable to losing the November election. But instead of nominating candidates who opposed the war and challenged these false WMD claims, the Democrats chose two men who had also misled the nation into war by frightening the American public into believing that a war-ravaged Third World country on the far side of the planet threatened our nation’s security and advocated continued prosecution of the bloody counter-insurgency campaign resulting from the U.S. invasion and occupation. Though enormous sums of money and volunteer hours which could have gone into anti-war organizing instead went into the campaigns of these pro-invasion senators, many anti-war activists refused on principle to support them. Not surprisingly, the Democrats lost.
Kerry’s failure to tell the truth continues to hurt the anti-war movement, as President Bush to this day quotes Kerry’s false statements about Iraq’s pre-invasion military capability as a means of covering up for the lies of his administration. For example, in his recent Veteran’s Day speech in Pennsylvania in which he attacked the anti-war movement, President Bush was able to say, “Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: ‘When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security’.”
Despite the consequences of putting forth nominees who failed to tell the truth about Iraq’s WMD capabilities, current polls show that New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also made false claims about the alleged Iraqi threat, is the front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2008. In defending her vote authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, Ms. Clinton claimed that “if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
In his Veteran’s Day speech, Bush was able to deny any wrongdoing by his administration by noting how “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senatewho had access to the same intelligencevoted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.” If the Democrats had instead decided to be honest and take a critical look at the phony intelligence being put forward by the administration, they would have said what so many of us were saying at the time: it was highly unlikely that Iraq still had such weapons. Instead, by also making false claims about Iraqi WMD capability, it not only resulted in their failure to re-take the House and Senate in the 2004 elections, but they have effectively shielded the Bush administration from the consequences of its actions.
Even some prominent congressional Democrats who did not vote to authorize the invasion were willing to defend the Bush administration’s WMD claims. When House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press in December 2002, she claimed: “Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There is no question about that.” Despite repeated requests for information, made by me and other San Francisco constituents, her staff has been unwilling to reveal what led the Democratic leader to make such a groundless claim with such certitude.
The consequence of these Democrats’ actions go well beyond their losses in the 2004 election. If the Democrats had been honest and acknowledged that there was no proof to support Bush administration claims of a reconstituted Iraqi WMD program, the Republicans would have been exposed as deliberately misleading the country into war, thereby making it far more difficult for them to get away with the kind of fear-mongering which threaten further U.S. military interventions in the region and increased waste of our nation’s resources into paying for bloated military budgets at the expense of pressing human needs at home. Instead, the prospects of a less militaristic foreign policy and the promises of a post-Cold War “peace dividend” may have been lost for the foreseeable future.
Some Democrats have defended their pre-invasion claims by citing the public summary of the 2002 NIE which appeared to confirm some of the Bush administration’s claims. However, there were a number of reasons to have been skeptical: this NIE was compiled in a much shorter time frame than is normally provided for such documents and the report expressed far more certainty regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities than all reports from the previous five years despite the lack of additional data to justify such a shift. When the report was released, there was much stronger dissent within the intelligence community than about any other NIE in history and the longer classified version, which was available to every member of Congress, included these dissenting voices from within the intelligence community
Others have defended the Democrats by saying that if they had insisted on hard evidence to support the administration’s WMD claims they would have been accused of being weak on national defense. This excuse has little merit, however, since Republicans accuse Democrats of being weak on defense whatever they do. For example, even though congressional Democrats voted nearly unanimously to grant President Bush extraordinary war powers immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks and strongly supported the bombing of Afghanistan, this did not prevent the White House from falsely accusing Democrats of calling for “moderation and restraint” towards the Al-Qaeda terrorists and offering “therapy and understanding for our attackers.” Similarly, even though 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Kerry defended America’s right to unilaterally invade foreign countries in violation of the United Nations Charter and basic international legal standards, President Bush still accused him of believing that “in order to defend ourselves, we’d have to get international approval.”
In reality, it appears that the Democrats were as enthusiastic about the United States invading and occupying Iraq as were the Republicans and that the WMD claims were largely a means of scaring the American public into accepting the right of the United States to effectively renounce 20th century international legal norms in favor of the right of conquest. Indeed, Senators Kerry, Edwards, and Clinton all subsequently stated that they would have voted to authorize the invasion even if they knew Iraq did not have WMDs (though, in response to popular pressure, they have begun to express some doubts in recent weeks.) Given their apparent eagerness for an excuse to go to war in order to take over that oil-rich nation, they seem to have been willing to believe virtually anything the Bush administration said and dismiss the concerns of independent strategic analysts who saw through the falsehoods.
This may help explain why congressional Democrats had been so reluctant, until faced with enormous pressure from their constituents following the Libby indictments, to push for a serious inquiry regarding the Bush administration misleading the American public on Iraqi WMDs: the Democrats are guilty as well. It may also explain why pro-Democratic newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post were so unwilling to publicize the Downing Street memos and so belittled efforts by the handful of conscientious Democrats, such as Michigan Representative John Conyers, to uncover WMD deceptions. Such failures have led both newspapers’ ombudsmen to issue rare rebukes.
Even after it has become apparent that the Bush administration had been dishonest regarding Iraq’s alleged threat, Democrats still seem unwilling to take a more skeptical view of administration claims regarding alleged WMD threats from overseas. For example, congressional Democrats have overwhelmingly voted in favor of legislation targeting Syria and Iran based primarily on dubious claims by the Bush administration of these countries’ military capabilities and alleged threats to American security interests. Given that the vast majority of Democrats who hyped false WMD claims regarding Iraq were re-elected in 2004 anyway, they apparently believe that they have little to lose by again reinforcing the administration’s alarmist claims of threats to U.S. national security.
Perhaps we need to prove them wrong. The United States will almost certainly find itself in another war based on phony claims that the targeted country possesses WMDs unless members of Congress know there will be political consequences to their actions. As a result, in order to advance the cause of peace and a responsible foreign policy, it may be necessary to target all members of Congress up for re-election next year who made false statements regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities – both Republican and Democrat – for defeat.
Iran: Threatening or Threatened?
Given the prospects of possible U.S. military action towards Iran, it is important to take a critical look at the major concerns the Bush administration and Congressional leaders of both parties have put forward regarding the Islamic Republic. Though there is much to say about the opportunism and double-standards in the Bush administration’s denunciations of the Iranian regime’s refusal to allow for a genuinely democratic opening (see my article “The United States and the Iranian Election,” CommonDreams, June 28), there is little debate regarding the repressive and anti-democratic nature of the Iranian regime. Americans are generally reluctant, however, to support U.S. military intervention on such grounds alone. As a result, the Bush administration has stressed the alleged threat that Iran poses to the United States as well as to its allies and security interests in the Middle East. How real is that threat? [CommonDreams.org, July 30, 2005; Download PDF]
The United States and the Iranian Election
[CommonDreams.org, June 28, 2005; Download PDF] The election of the hard-line Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over former president Hashemi Rafsanjani as the new president of Iran is undeniably a setback to those hoping to advance the cause of greater social and political freedom in that country.
It should not necessarily be seen as a turn to the right by the Iranian electorate, however. While Rafsanjani was portrayed as a more moderate conservative, the fact that this 70-year old cleric had become a millionaire while in government service and was widely seen as the penultimate wheeler dealer of the political establishment was apparently perceived by many Iranians as of greater importance than his modest reform agenda. By contrast, the victorious campaign of the young Tehran mayor focused upon the plight of the poor and cleaning up corruption. [CommonDreams.org, June 28, 2005; Download PDF]
A Critique of the Most Misleading Statements in the Foreign Policy Segments of President Bush’s 2005 State of the Union Address
The foreign policy segments of President George W. Bush’s state of the Union address spoke to values and concerns that resonate with the majority of Americans from across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, much of what was said during his speech was quite misleading.
Below are excerpts from the February 2 State of the Union address, followed by a short critical analysis.
“There are still regimes seeking weapons of mass destruction “ but no longer without attention and without consequences.”
The world has long paid attention to regimes that seek weapons of mass destruction. That is why the international community developed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxic Weapons, along with their enforcement bodies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Indeed, not only does there not seem to have been any more attention or additional threat of consequences to regimes seeking weapons of mass destruction as a result of the Bush administration”s actions, but the administration has tried repeatedly to discredit and undermine the authority of these enforcement bodies.
Iraq had eliminated its chemical weapons and its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs over ten years ago and had allowed unfettered inspections by United Nations officials to resume, yet the United States invaded anyway. By contrast, North Korea restarted its nuclear program and has continued to bar inspectors, but it has not been invaded. The message from U.S. policy makes appears to be that the most serious consequences will result if you stop seeking weapons of mass destruction and allow in UN inspectors.
“In Iraq, 28 countries have troops on the ground, the United Nations and the European Union provided technical assistance for the elections, and NATO is leading a mission to help train Iraqi officers.”
The vast majority of these “troops” are not combat troops and most of these contingents consist of well under fifty participants. The UN and EU role in the elections, along with the NATO training programs, has been somewhat more tangible, but nevertheless limited and have taken place primarily outside of Iraq. America”s “coalition” partners continue to dwindle. Iraq continues to be an overwhelmingly American operation, with only the British providing substantial assistance.
“In the long term, the peace we seek will only be achieved by eliminating the conditions that feed radicalism and ideologies of murder. If whole regions of the world remain in despair and grow in hatred, they will be the recruiting grounds for terror, and that terror will stalk America and other free nations for decades. The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom”. And we have declared our on intention: America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world”.
“Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free and independent nations, with governments that answer to their citizens, and reflect their own cultures. And because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace.”
President Bush is certainly correct regarding the correlation between autocratic governance and the rise of extremism. However, the United States has long been the primary backer of repressive governments in the Middle East and, under President Bush, military and security ties with these dictatorships has increased. It is important to note that sixteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, whose family dictatorship has received tens of billions of dollars worth of military hardware and security assistance from the United States since President Bush came to office. The man believed to be the lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Attah, is Egyptian, whose autocratic Mubarak regime receives more than two billion dollars worth of taxpayer-provided military and economic aid annually. None of the hijackers or any prominent Al-Qaeda leader has come from Iran, Syria, Palestine, Taliban Afghanistan or Saddam”s Iraq, the countries that President Bush most commonly cites as needing greater freedom in order to support American security interests.
If President Bush was serious about promoting freedom, he would call for an immediate cessation of arms transfers and any forms of security assistance to Middle Eastern governments which do not “respect their own people and their neighbors.” He has not done so, however.
To cite just one example, there have been few greater allies of freedom than Egypt”s Saad El-Din Ibrahim and his Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, and its journal Civil Society. Among the Center”s activities was monitoring elections and workshops and civic education. Unfortunately, in 2001, Egyptian authorities arrested Saladin and twenty-seven associates, shut down the Ibn Khaldun Center, and banned their journal. Despite this, U.S. aid has continued to flow to Mubarak”s corrupt dictatorship.
Finally, democracies do not necessarily respect their neighbors. Israel is an exemplary democracy (at least for its Jewish citizens), but it has maintained an oftentimes repressive occupation of its Palestinian neighbors since 1967, including widespread and ongoing violations of international humanitarian law.
“The beginnings of reform and democracy in the Palestinian territories are now showing the power of freedom to break old patterns of violence and failure. “Secretary of State Rice . . . will discuss with [Prime Minster Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] how we and our friends can help the Palestinian people end terror and build the institutions of a peaceful, independent democratic state.”
Pro-democracy activists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including the harshest critics of the corrupt and autocratic rule of the late Yasir Arafat, have long argued that the greatest obstacle to the creation of peaceful, independent and democratic Palestinian state is the Israeli occupation. President Bush has not demanded that Israel end its military occupation, which continues to deny the Palestinians their freedom and which has resulted in the terrorist backlash.
“To promote this democracy, I will ask Congress for $350 million to support Palestinian political, economic, and security reforms. The goal of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace, is within reach “ and America will help them achieve that goal.”
First of all, the $350 million figure hardly covers the damage inflicted upon Palestinian society and infrastructure by Israel in recent years, including the U.S.-backed military offensive during the spring of 2002. That figure is also less than one-tenth of what the administration sends annually to the far more prosperous government of Israel, much of which goes to support the occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which is the major impediment to peace.
While Bush is the first president to so explicitly call for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, there are serious questions as to what kind of “state” he has in mind. He has refused to endorse the Geneva Initiative, the model peace agreement signed in December 2003 by leading Israeli and Palestinian moderates which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces and colonists from lands seized in the 1967 (with minor and reciprocal border adjustments), a shared co-capital in Jerusalem, strict security guarantees for Israel, and no mass return of Palestinian refugees into Israel. Instead, President Bush has endorsed the Sharon Plan, which “ while calling for the withdrawal of Israel”s illegal settlements from the occupied Gaza Strip “ allows Israel to annex the vast majority of its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and surrounding Palestinian lands, leaving the Palestinians with only a series of small non-contiguous cantons surrounded by Israel. Israel would control the air space, water resources, and the movement of people and goods within the archipelago of Palestinian territory as well as between this Palestinian territory and neighboring Egypt and Jordan. In short, the “Palestinian state” that Bush envisions appears to bear a far closer resemblance to the infamous Bantustans of apartheid South Africa than a viable independent country.
“To promote peace and stability in the broader Middle East, we must confront regimes that continue to . . . pursue weapons of mass murder.”
The Bush administration has refused to confront Israel regarding its arsenal of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, even though Israel is required through UN Security Council resolution 487 to place its nuclear program under the trusteeship of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It has refused to confront Pakistan and India in their refusal to disarm as well, despite UN Security Council resolution 1172 requiring these nations to get rid of their nuclear weapons; in fact, the Bush administration dropped sanctions imposed under President Clinton against these two countries. The Bush administration has also failed to confront Egypt, despite its maintaining an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.
The Bush administration”s attitude appears to be that it is only willing to confront Middle Eastern countries which “pursue weapons of mass murder” if they are not strategic allies. Indeed, the Bush administration has rejected calls by such diverse countries as Jordan, Syria, Iran and Egypt for the establishment of a WMD-free zone for the entire Middle East, instead opting for a kind of WMD apartheid where the United States alone has the authority to say which countries can develop these dangerous weapons and which ones cannot. Even putting aside the legal and moral concerns of such double-standards, they simply will not work: any attempt to impose a regime of haves and have nots from the outside will only encourage the have nots to try even harder to become one of the haves.
“Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region. “ We expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom.”
Syria “ like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states “ indeed must open its door to freedom, both for its own people as well as for the people of Lebanon, over whose government Syria exercises considerable influence. However, the State Department has acknowledged that Syria has not directly engaged in terrorist operations for more than twenty years.
The Hizbullah movement in Lebanon, which has received limited Syrian support, is now a legal political party with representation in the Lebanese parliament. It appears that its armed wing has not engaged in any acts of international terrorism for more than a decade and it has restricted its attacks against Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon and disputed border regions of Syria. Some tiny leftist groups composed of radical Palestinian exiles remain in Syria, but they are largely defunct at this point and are no longer much of a threat. Hamas has a political office in Damascus, as it does in a number of Arab capitals, but its military operations have come almost exclusively from within the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. In short, Syria is at most a very minor actor in international terrorism and has been an active ally against Al-Qaeda.
In addition, for well over a decade, the Syrian government has pledged strict security guarantees and even full diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for Israel returning Syrian land conquered in the 1967 war. A series of UN Security Council resolutions have called on Israel to rescind its annexation of the Golan region, end its ongoing colonization and “ in return for security guarantees like those offered by the Damascus government “ return the territory to Syria. However, the U.S.-backed Sharon government of Israel has thus far refused to even consider living up to its international obligations. Syria has repeatedly called for a resumption of peace negotiations with Israel, which came tantalizingly close to a final settlement in early 2000 under the more moderate Labor government of Ehud Barak, but the hard-line Sharon has refused the offer.
While much positive can be said about Israel”s democratic institutions and traditions and much negative can be set about the autocratic Assad regime in Syria, the fact remains that it is Israel, not Syria, which is primarily responsible for the failure of the peace process between these two nations.
“Today, Iran [is] . . . pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing, and end its support for terror
“And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for you own liberty, America stands with you.”
Just as he did with Iraq, despite his inability to provide credible evident to support his assertion, President Bush is now insisting that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Though Iran”s potential to develop nuclear weapons is far greater than that of Iraq during the final decade of Saddam Hussein”s rule and certainly cannot be ruled out, the Islamic Republic”s nuclear program “ which began with U.S. support under the Shah”s regime “ appears to be restricted to the development of nuclear energy, which (despite its environmental risks and other concerns) is perfectly legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Unfortunately, the United States has not been working with the Europeans in their thus far successful efforts to prevent Iran from further developing its nuclear program. In fact, the Bush administration has been rather hostile to the efforts of both the Europeans and the International Atomic Energy Agency for its strategy of negotiations, insisting instead on strict sanctions and threatening possible military action.
The past year or so has seen serious setbacks in the gradual political opening Iran had been experiencing over the past decade. However, the Bush administration”s concerns for the Iranian people”s struggle for liberty should not be taken seriously. It is important to remember that Iran was once free and democratic back in the early 1950s. This bold democratic experiment was cut short, however, when the CIA overthrew the constitutional government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and replaced him with the tyrannical Shah who “ with active U.S. support of his brutal SAVAK secret police “ largely succeeded in subsequent years to wipe out the democratic opposition. Unable to get inside the mosques enough to eliminate the Islamist opposition, when a popular revolt finally ousted him in 1979, the country became dominated by hard-line clerics. The United States has never apologized for its illegal coup against Mossadegh and its quarter century of support for the Shah”s repression.
It should also be noted that leading Iranian democrats have defended their country”s nuclear program and have argued that support of their efforts by the Bush administration hurts their credibility and opens them up to further repression.
“Our generational commitment to the advance of freedom, especially in the Middle East, is now being tested and honored in Iraq. That county is a vital front in the war on terror, which is why the terrorists have chosen to make a stand there. Extremist Islamic groups have coalesced in Iraq today for the same reason they came together in Afghanistan during the 1980s: to support a popular resistance movement in a Muslim society that had been invaded and occupied by a foreign power which sought to impose its system upon them. Most Iraqis, like most Afghans, want to be free from the violence imposed upon them by both terrorists and foreign occupation policies and to determine their own future free from outside influence.
“Our men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in Iraq, so we do not have to face them here at home.” This is simply a retread of the rationalization so often given during the 1960s and early 1970s as to why U.S. forces could not leave Vietnam: “If we don”t fight them over there, we will have to fight them here.” Nearly thirty years after the communists completed their takeover of South Vietnam, however, the Vietnamese have yet to attack the United States. In fact, they are becoming increasingly valuable trading partners. Vietnamese stopped killing Americans when American forces got out of their country and stopped killing them. So, presumably, would the Iraqis.
“And the victory of freedom in Iraq will strengthen a new ally in the war on terror, inspire democratic reformers from Damascus to Tehran, bring more hope and progress to a troubled region, and thereby lift a terrible threat from the lives of our children and grandchildren.”
It is noteworthy that reformers in Syria and Iran have been quite critical of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, arguing that it has actually provoked the rise of extremist elements in the Middle East and strengthened the repressive regimes in Damascus and Tehran which rationalize for their tightening control due to security concerns along their border with Iraq. Research by leading think tanks “ as well as the Pentagon, State Department and the CIA “ indicate that U.S. intervention in Iraq has actually increased the risks from terrorism through heightened anti-American sentiment and has contributed to the instability of the region by strengthening the appeal of these extremist groups.
“We will succeed because the Iraqi people value their own liberty — as they showed the world last Sunday”.
“Americans recognize that spirit of liberty, because we share it. In any nation, casting your vote is an act of civic responsibility; for millions of Iraqis, it was also an act of personal courage, and they have earned the respect of us all”
“We will succeed in Iraq because Iraqis are determined to fight for their own freedom, and to write their own history.”
Despite the many problems and limitations of the January 30 Iraqi election, it was indeed a remarkable testament of the Iraqi people”s desire for self-determination and for accountable government.
However, little credit should be given to President Bush. It should be remembered that Bush administration, during most of the first year of the U.S. occupation, strongly opposed holding direct elections. Initially, the United States supported the installation of Ahmed Chalabi or some other compliant exile as leader of Iraq. Then, U.S. officials tried to keep their viceroy Paul Bremer in power indefinitely. Next, the Bush administration pushed for a caucus system where appointees of American appointees would choose the new government. It was only after Ayatollah Sistani brought hundreds of thousands of Shiites out onto the streets in January 2004 demanding direct elections did President Bush give in, but “ instead of going ahead with the poll in May as proposed “ he postponed it until the following January after the security situation had deteriorated so badly that most of the large and important Sunni Arab minority was unable or unwilling to participate. Furthermore, the insurgency has now reached the point where it appears that the new government will be largely dependent on the ongoing presence of American troops for their survival.
In addition, there are still serious questions as to whether the United States will even allow the Iraqi people to fully exercise their freedom and write their own history. Prior to his departure, Bremer established a series of Transitional Administrative Laws, which included the privatization of much of the country”s public assets, unrestricted foreign investment and repatriation of profits, and other controversial economic measures that are almost impossible for the new government to overturn. U.S. citizens in Iraq continue to enjoy extraterritorial rights, meaning they cannot be prosecuted in Iraq for any crime, no matter how serious. U.S. forces can move and attack at will anywhere in the country without the government”s assent. Americans have a major presence in virtually every Iraqi government ministry and largely control their budgets. U.S. appointees with terms lasting through 2009 are in charge of “control commissions” which oversee fiscal policy, the media, and other important regulatory areas. U.S. appointees also dominate the judiciary, which has the power to overturn government laws.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0205-27.htm
Iran Nuclear Program Creates a Furor Likely to Be Futile
[CommonDreams.org, February 24, 2005; Download PDF] Having already successfully fooled most of Congress and the American public into believing that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration is now claiming that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. If we decide to once again believe such claims, do we risk being drawn into another disastrous military confrontation based upon false allegations? Or, if we reject such claims, will we — like the villagers in the famous fable of the boy who cried, “Wolf!” — find out too late that the alarm this time was for real? [CommonDreams.org, February 24, 2005; Download PDF]
Concern Grows over Democratic House Leader Pelosi’s Support for Iraq War
On January 4, Congressional Democrats re-elected California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi as minority leader in the House of Representatives. This comes despite that, since assuming her current leadership position two years ago, Pelosi has not only disappointed her liberal San Francisco constituency, but the majority of Democrats nationally as well, through her support for President George W. Bush’s policies toward Iraq.
Back in December of 2002, as independent strategic analysts were arguing that the evidence strongly suggested that Iraq had rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons some years earlier, Pelosi categorically declared on NBC”s Meet the Press that “Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There”s no question about that.”
Had she simply said that the Iraqi dictator had, at that time, “may” or even “probably” possessed such weapons, it could be assumed that she was simply being na”ve or foolish for failing to recognize the transparently false and inflated intelligence then being put forward by the Bush administration regarding Iraq”s weapons capability. However, in expressing such certitude, she not only seriously compromised her integrity, but she seriously undercut the then-growing anti-war movement.
Furthermore, by giving bipartisan credence to the Bush administration”s unprincipled use of such scare tactics to gain support for the U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country, she negated a potential advantage the Democrats would have otherwise had in the 2004 campaign. After it became apparent that administration claims about Iraq’s alleged military threat were false, the Democrats were unable to attack the Republicans for misleading the American public since their Congressional leadership had also falsely claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
During the first twelve weeks of 2003, there were a series of large demonstrations here in her California district against the war, including one on February 16 which brought out an estimated half a million people. The day the war broke out in March, San Francisco”s downtown business district was shut down by thousands of anti-war protesters in a spontaneous act of massive civil disobedience. In response, Pelosi denounced the protesters and rushed to the defense of President George W. Bush, voting in favor of a resolution declaring the House of Representatives” “unequivocal support and appreciation to the president “for his firm leadership and decisive action.” She personally pressed a number of skeptical Democratic lawmakers to support the resolution as well.
In response to those who argued that Iraq was not a threat to the United States and that United Nations inspectors should have been allowed to complete their mission to confirm that Iraq had disarmed as required, Pelosi went on record claiming that “reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone” could not “adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.”
In the race for last year”s Democratic presidential nomination, Pelosi helped lead an effort to undermine the anti-war candidacy of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, claiming that his call for a more balanced approach by the U.S. government in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process somehow brought into question his commitment to Israel”s right to exist in peace and security. Instead, she endorsed the hawkish Missouri congressman Richard Gephardt, who cosponsored the House resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his choosing. When Gephardt dropped out of the race, Pelosi threw her support to Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, another supporter of Bush”s war.
As a counter to those who argued that the war was a diversion of critical personnel, money, intelligence, and other resources from the important battle against Al-Qaeda terrorists, Pelosi also went on record declaring that the Iraq invasion was actually “part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.” As recently as this past September, despite a CIA report that Islamist terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zaqarwi — who allegedly has ties to Al-Qaeda — had not received sanctuary or any other support from the former Iraqi regime, Pelosi also went on record claiming that, under Saddam Hussein, “the al-Zarqawi terror network used Baghdad as a base of operations to coordinate the movement of people, money, and supplies.”
Such assertions proved costly to the Democrats in this past November”s election: exit polls showed that 80% of those who believed that the war in Iraq was part of the war on terrorism voted for President Bush.
In response to the consensus of disarmament experts that the invasion has hurt the cause of nuclear nonproliferation, Pelosi voted in favor of a Republican-sponsored amendment which claimed that the elimination of Libya”s nuclear program “would not have been possible if not for . . . the liberation of Iraq by United States and Coalition Forces.” This comes despite reports to the contrary by U.S. negotiators who took part in British-initiated talks.
Despite growing evidence that the resistance to the U.S. occupation is a popular nationalist reaction to a foreign occupation, Pelosi has gone on record insisting that it is simply the work of “former regime elements, foreign and Iraqi terrorists, and other criminals.”
Defenders of Pelosi point out that, as assistant minority leader in October 2002, she was the only member of the Democratic leadership in either house of Congress to vote against authorizing the invasion. Furthermore, they note how she has since raised some concerns regarding how the Bush administration has handled the occupation, such as not adequately preparing for the aftermath of the invasion, failing to utilize enough troops, not providing adequate training or armor for U.S. forces and for backing such dubious exile figures as Ahmad Chalabi.
However, to this day, Pelosi has refused to acknowledge that the United States should have never invaded Iraq in the first place. Religious leaders from around the globe have observed it did not meet the criteria for a “just war.” It was also a direct violation of the United Nations Charter, which the United States — as a party to such binding international treaties — is legally required to uphold. Furthermore, there is a growing consensus among even mainstream strategic analysts that the invasion and occupation has actually made the Middle East and the United States less secure.
Historically, opposition leaders in Congress have helped expose the lies and counter-productive policies of the incumbent administration. Pelosi, however, to her party”s detriment, has decided instead to defend them.
On January 12, Bay Area Congressional Representatives Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Pete Stark, and Sam Farr joined Democratic colleagues from across the country in signing a letter to President Bush calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq; Congresswoman Pelosi was notably absent from the list of signatories.
Indeed, to this day, Pelosi continues to support the U.S. occupation of Iraq, rejecting calls — in the face of a growing death toll of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians — to end the fighting and bring American troops home. This comes despite the fact that even many prominent Republicans, such as James Baker and General Brent Scowcroft, are now calling for the withdrawal of American forces.
Less than fifteen years ago, Pelosi was an outspoken liberal critic of the senior Bush administration”s militaristic policy toward Iraq. Now, however, she finds herself to the right of former President George Bush’s Secretary of State and his National Security Advisor.
That Pelosi would continue to support the war in the face of this past November’s city-wide referendum — in which a resounding 63% of San Francisco voters approved a measure urging the United States government to withdraw all troops from Iraq — is demonstrative of how out of touch she is with her own constituents. Already there is talk that, should Pelosi continue her support for the Iraq war, anti-war Democrats could organize a serious electoral challenge against her in the 2006 Democratic primary. (Some are citing a precedent from 1970 where, in an adjacent Congressional district, Democratic Congressman Jeffrey Cohelan — a liberal incumbent who nevertheless supported the Vietnam War — was defeated in the Democratic primary by anti-war challenger Ron Dellums, who went on to represent the East Bay in Congress for the next eighteen years.)
Thanks to the failure of the San Francisco Congresswoman and other Democratic leaders to more forcefully challenge the Bush administration where it was most vulnerable politically, her party not only lost a presidential race they should have easily won, but lost seats in the House and Senate as well. As long as people like Nancy Pelosi remain in leadership, the Democrats are destined to remain in the minority.
Some Potentially Positive Developments from a Disastrous Election
No progressive should be happy with the results of the presidential election. However, it is hard to predict what the longer-term impact on American politics of a particular presidential election result might be. For example, it would have felt terrible at the time if ‘ despite Vietnam and Watergate ‘ Gerald Ford had managed to defeat Jimmy Carter in the close election of 1976. However, if Ford had stayed in office for another four years, the Republicans would have been blamed for the recession and the Iranian hostage crisis of subsequent years and the Democrats would have almost certainly won in 1980, thereby sparing the nation and the world the consequences of the eight years of the Reagan administration.
As a result, we should keep in mind that there are a number of ways that Bush’s re-election could conceivably prove more beneficial in the longer term than had Kerry been elected.
As Kerry made clear during his campaign, he did not support a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq any time soon. As a result, he would have been saddled with a bloody unwinnable counter-insurgency war that he had helped make possible through his October 2002 vote authorizing the invasion. Like President Lyndon Johnson, he would have found himself in the untenable position of being attacked from the left for not withdrawing and attacked from the right for not escalating. If Kerry was smart enough to pull out, any subsequent bad news from Iraq would have been blamed on the Democrats for having ‘lost’ that country. Any terrorist attack that might hit the United States subsequently would have been blamed on the Democrats for not showing sufficient resolve against the ‘terrorists’ in Iraq. Given that the situation in Iraq will almost certainly worsen over the next few years, it may be better that the Republicans get saddled with the tragedy that was largely of their making.
A related factor is that, given the reticence of members of Congress to criticize the president of their own party during wartime, Congressional Democrats will be far more likely to call for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq under a Bush administration than under a Kerry administration. (We must make sure that they actually do. Those representing the more liberal districts who continue to support Bush’s war will need to be challenged in the 2006 Democratic primaries and/or be challenged by a strong Green Party or other opponent in the general elections.)
Another potentially positive development is that the Europeans, Canadians, and others ‘ alienated by the Bush administration’s cowboy mentality ‘ will be far more likely to assert a more independent foreign policy under Bush than under Kerry, even though ‘ despite his calls for more multilateralism and alliance-building ‘ Kerry largely accepted the Bush Doctrine and American unilateralism.
In addition to voting to authorize the illegal, unnecessary and disastrous invasion of Iraq, Kerry supported increased military spending, denounced the International Court of Justice, supported the rightist Israeli government’s illegal colonization and creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank, and threatened Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. This is not to say that ‘Kerry would have been just as bad as Bush.’ However, the more erudite and diplomatic Kerry would have brought more respectability to such dangerous policies than the inarticulate and arrogant Bush and would have therefore made it more difficult for foreign leaders to openly challenge American policy.
Finally, it is important to recognize ‘ and to challenge those who suggest otherwise ‘ that Kerry lost because he was too far to the right, not because he was too far to the left. This gives the progressive wing of the Democratic Party the opportunity to take control.
It is pretty clear now that John Kerry lost the election slightly over two years ago, the day he voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Just prior to the early primaries and caucuses earlier this year, Kerry’s support for the war had resulted in him falling far behind in the polls. Thanks to his relentless attacks against Howard Dean and other Democratic war opponents, however, he was able to secure the nomination.
This created a fall election not unlike Humphrey-Nixon race of 1968, where ‘ despite a burgeoning anti-war movement ‘ both parties decided to nominate men who promised to continue prosecuting an illegal, immoral, and ultimately unwinnable war. Not surprisingly, the election had the identical result of a narrow Republican victory, made possible in part because many progressives who would have otherwise worked hard for a Democratic victory instead decided to not actively become involved in the campaign. The Kerry nomination also alienated many anti-war conservatives who would have voted Democratic if the party had nominated an anti-war candidate, but ‘ seeing little difference between the two regarding Iraq ‘ ended up sticking with the Republicans.
In Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack, which closely examines the inside of the Bush White House, he quotes political consultant Karl Rove saying last spring that ‘The good news for us is that Dean is not the nominee.’ He describes how Dean, who opposed the war from the beginning, could have resulted in a ‘potent face-off with Bush.’ However, Rove was quite pleased to note that not only had Kerry voted to authorize the invasion, the Democratic nominee ‘ like Bush ‘ had falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction that threatened American security.
Woodward describes Bush’s chief campaign strategist reading over a compilation of Kerry’s statements on Iraq:
Rove’s eyebrows were jumping up and down as he read. ‘My personal favorite,’ he said, quoting Kerry on March 19, 2003, the day the war started: ‘I think Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction are a threat, and that why I voted to hold him accountable and to make certain that we disarm him.’
‘Oh yeah!’ Rove shouted. And that had been on National Public Radio! He had it all on tape. So here is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee saying that Saddam had the stuff. And the Bush campaign would be as follows: ‘You’re looking at the same intelligence the president is and arriving at the same conclusion, and if you accuse him of misleading the American people, what were you doing? Are you saying, I was duped?’
Woodward further described how Rove tested a series of potential ads showing clips of Kerry’s earlier pro-war statements alongside Kerry’s later anti-war statements and how the reaction of the focus groups was ‘What a hypocrite!’
As Woodward described it, ‘Rove believed they had Kerry pretty cold on voting to give the president a green light for war and then backing off when he didn’t like the aftermath or saw a political opportunity.’ Furthermore, Woodward observed, ‘Rove sounded as if he believed they could inoculate the president on the Iraq War in a campaign with Kerry.’
This, of course, is exactly what happened. If the Democrats had given Dean or some other anti-war candidate the nomination, the focus of the fall’s campaign would have been on the lies that got the United States into Iraq and the debacle it had become. Bush would have found himself on the defensive. Instead, the Democrats chose to nominate someone who had supported the war when it was popular and began criticizing it only when it became less so, so the focus of the campaign became ‘flip-flopping’ and related issues of ‘character’ and ‘leadership.’
The Democrats lost because they seemed to have the idea that they could somehow immunize themselves from being attacked for being weak on national security if they nominated an opportunistic centrist rather than a principled progressive. Yet, despite Kerry’s embrace of the Bush Doctrine and his militaristic world view, he lost anyway. Kerry’s defeat should finally teach the Democrats the lesson that the only hope for their party is to move in a more progressive direction.
The Republicans have come to dominate the presidency and both houses of Congress because they were able to demonstrate vision and leadership by unapologetically advocating positions they believed in, even though they were out of the political mainstream. Hopefully, the Democrats will finally recognize that they too will become the majority party once again only if they reverse their center-right policies and instead articulate a bold progressive vision that can excite the American voter.
Despite the Lies about Iraq and the Resulting Disaster, Bush Still Maintains Strong Support
Even putting aside the many important legal and moral questions about the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq, it has been a disaster even on practical terms. Mainstream to conservative strategic analysts and retired generals ‘ along with the majority of career professionals in the State Department, Defense Department, and CIA ‘ recognize that the invasion and occupation has made America less secure rather than more secure.
Still, the Bush Administration continues to defend its actions and public opinion polls still show that a majority of Americans trust George W. Bush more than John Kerry to defend America. This is in large part because, throughout this fall’s campaign, President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have been making demonstrably false and misleading claims about what motivated administration decisions as well as the results of their actions.
Ironically, a number of these claims have been supported in a series of resolutions supported by a majority of Congressional Democrats ‘ including Senators John Kerry and John Edwards ‘ thereby giving the Bush campaign immunity from much of the scrutiny it deserves. In doing so, these Congressional Democrats have significantly increased the chances of a Bush victory next Tuesday. President Bush rarely fails to note in his stump speeches that Congressional Democrats, including Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, also saw Saddam Hussein as a threat and voted to authorize force. Indeed, not only have the Democrats missed a number of crucial opportunities to expose the disingenuous nature of Bush administration policy, they have at times repeated the lies themselves.
Below is a sampling of the claims being made by President Bush and Vice-President Cheney in recent weeks leading up to the election, followed by a critique:
‘ I went to the United Nations in the hopes that diplomacy would work. I hoped that Saddam Hussein would listen to the demands of the free world. The United Nations debated the issue. They voted 15 to nothing to say to Saddam Hussein: disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. I believe when an international body speaks, it must mean what it says, in order to keep this world peaceful. When you say something, you better mean it. But Saddam Hussein didn’t believe the United Nations. After all, he’d ignored 16 other resolutions. And so at this point in time, I realized diplomacy wasn’t working.’
–George W. Bush, October 1
Saddam Hussein did disclose, in the fall of 2002, detailed documentation regarding the destruction of his WMDs, WMD programs, and offensive delivery systems as required. In addition, the U.S. government now admits that he had in fact disarmed as much as a decade earlier. So, at the time of the invasion, the Iraqi government had already disclosed and disarmed, and was thereby in compliance with the major provisions of UN Security Council resolution 1441, to which Bush refers in this quote. Diplomacy had, in fact, worked.
Unfortunately, when Bush launched the invasion anyway, every Democrat in the Senate ‘ including Kerry and Edwards ‘ voted in support of a Republican-sponsored resolution endorsing the invasion based upon the claim that Iraq was still in violation of these Security Council resolutions. Similarly, that same week, the House of Representatives voted on a resolution, with only ten of the 205 Democrats dissenting, declaring that ‘reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.’ As a result, the Democrats lost an opportunity to challenge President Bush’s assertion that Iraq was still in violation of those resolutions and that force was the only alternative.
‘ The last option for the Commander-in-Chief is to commit troops, and so I went to the United Nations. See, I believe we ought to try diplomacy before we commit troops. When the U.N. sent inspectors in, he systematically deceived the inspectors. We gave Saddam Hussein a final chance to meet his responsibilities to the civilized world. And when he refused, I faced the kind of decision that comes only to the Oval Office, a decision no President would ask for, but must be prepared to make. Do I trust the word of a madman and forget the lessons of September the 11th, or take action to defend America? Given that choice, I will defend America every time.’
–George W. Bush, September 3
First of all, it is now well-known that President Bush had decided to go ahead with the invasion well prior to going before the United Nations.
Secondly, the UN was successful in the fall of 2002 in getting Iraq to allow inspectors to return and have unfettered and immediate access to anywhere they wanted to go. The Iraqi regime did, on numerous occasions, hide things from UN inspectors, but that was under UNSCOM in the 1990s. Under UNMOVIC, beginning in late 2002 until the United States forced them out in anticipation of the invasion, there were no reports of systematic deception by the Iraqis of UN inspectors.
Thirdly, no one was advocating trusting Saddam Hussein. That is why the United Nations demanded that the inspectors return.
Fourthly, while Saddam Hussein was certainly a brutal tyrant, there is no evidence that he was a ‘madman.’
Finally, having completely disarmed its WMD capabilities, Iraq was not any threat to the United States so there was no need to ‘defend America’ from Saddam Hussein.
Unfortunately, despite evidence to the contrary, both Kerry and Edwards also declared Saddam Hussein ‘a threat’ and thereby helped give Bush and Cheney the excuse they were looking for to take over that oil-rich country. Though Kerry promised, when he voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, that he could be ‘the first to speak out’ if President Bush did not first allow the United Nations to attempt to disarm Iraq through non-military means, when President Bush pressed forward with plans for the invasion while UN inspectors were on the verge of completing their mission and determining that no such weapons existed, Kerry remained silent. When Bush launched the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, Kerry joined his fellow Democrats in supporting a resolution declaring that the action was ‘lawful’ and that he ‘commends and supports the efforts and leadership of the President.’
‘Saddam Hussein had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction. And had the world turned its head, he would have made those weapons. He could have passed that capability or those weapons on to terrorists that hate us.’
–George W. Bush, October 1
Since eliminating his WMD programs, Saddam Hussein no longer had such capability. In addition, there was no indication that the world was about to ‘turn its head’ and allow such programs to be reconstituted. While the economic sanctions on Iraq were increasingly controversial, the international community was united in maintaining military sanctions, including a strict embargo on the technology and raw materials necessary to rebuild such a program. There is also no evidence to suggest that, even when Saddam Hussein had WMDs and WMD capability, that he had any inclination to pass them on to any terrorist groups.
Unfortunately, Kerry and Edwards were among the majority of Democratic Senators who ‘ in authorizing the invasion of Iraq and ignoring analyses of independent strategic analysts ‘ went on record saying that Iraq was ‘continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability . . . [and] actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, thereby continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States and international peace and security.’ The Democratic-supported resolution also emphasized the ‘gravity of the threat that Iraq will transfer weapons of mass destruction to international terrorist organizations.’
‘We knew Saddam Hussein’s record of aggression. We knew his support for terror. Remember, Saddam harbored Abu Nidal, the leader of a terrorist organization that carried out attacks in Europe and Asia.’
–George W. Bush, October 1
Everyone knew about Iraq’s record of aggression, but thanks to mandatory disarmament initiatives by the United Nations and a strict military embargo, Iraq no longer had a serious offensive military capability.
Secondly, the State Department’s own annual report on international terrorism had failed to note any act of international terrorism by the Iraqi regime since early 1993, a full decade before the U.S. invasion.
Thirdly, while Abu Nidal ‘ who had been in declining health for years ‘ was living in Baghdad, his terrorist group had been moribund for more than a decade prior to the U.S. invasion. Furthermore, Saddam Hussein had him executed in 2002, the year before the U.S. invasion.
Unfortunately, Kerry and Edwards supported a resolution ‘ along with the majority of their Democratic Senate colleagues ‘ declaring that ‘Iraq continues to aid and harbor . . . international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens.’
‘ Saddam Hussein subsidized the families of suicide bombers. And he invaded his neighbors; he was shooting missiles at our pilots. That guy was a threat.’
–George W. Bush, September 7
First of all, the money Saddam Hussein transferred to the Arab Liberation Front ‘ the tiny Palestinian faction that passed some funds on to families of suicide bombers ‘ was relatively insignificant: it went to only a small minority of the families, it was less than what they generally received from U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, and it didn’t come close to covering the costs of these families’ homes, which are routinely destroyed by Israeli occupation forces in retaliation.
Secondly, Iraq did invade neighboring countries, but that was back in 1980 (Iran) and 1990 (Kuwait) and Iraqi forces had long since returned to within their internationally-recognized borders (unlike some U.S. allies such as Morocco and Israel, which invaded their neighbors and still occupy them.) There was no realistic threat that Iraq would be able to do so again.
Thirdly, the only time Iraq shot at U.S. pilots was when U.S. military planes violated Iraqi airspace. Since there was no UN mandate for military enforcement of the Kurdish safe areas or the establishment of ‘No Fly Zones,’ the Iraqis had as much right to shoot at them as would any country when enemy warplanes infringe on their territory. Unfortunately, the vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq supported by Kerry and Edwards and a majority of their Democratic colleagues justified the invasion in part on the grounds that ‘the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States. . . by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.’
Iraq was a threat back in the 1980s when the U.S. was quietly supporting him, but certainly not in the years leading up to the invasion.
Unfortunately, Bush has been able to correctly point out that most Democrats in Congress ‘ including Senators Kerry and Edwards ‘ also claimed that Saddam Hussein was a threat, thereby giving such outrageous claims a degree of credibility they otherwise would not deserve.
‘ Zarqawi . . .fled to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where he received medical care and set up operations with some two dozen terrorist associates. He operated in Baghdad and worked with associates in northern Iraq, who ran camps to train terrorists, and conducted chemical and biological experiments, until coalition forces arrived and ended those operations. With nowhere to operate openly, Zarqawi has gone underground and is making a stand in Iraq. ‘ If Zarqawi and his associates were not busy fighting American forces in Iraq, . . .these killers would be plotting and acting to murder innocent civilians in free nations, including our own.’
–George W. Bush, October 18
First of all, investigations by the CIA and others have shown no evidence that Saddam’s regime ever supported the Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, since they saw this radical Islamist as a threat to the secular Iraqi regime. All indications are that his very brief visits to Baghdad were clandestine and that he did not have any major operations there prior to the U.S. invasion. Zarqawi’s camp in northern Iraq was in the Kurdish safe area well beyond the control of Saddam’s government. Journalists who visited the camp where U.S. officials claimed he was conducting ongoing ‘chemical and biological experiments’ prior to the U.S. invasion found nothing remotely resembling such activity, a fact confirmed by U.S. Special Forces which seized the area a few weeks later.
Unfortunately, despite all this evidence to the contrary, all but fifteen of the 210 House Democrats supported a resolution this September declaring that during Saddam Hussein’s rule, ‘the al-Zarqawi terror network used Baghdad as a base of operations to coordinate the movement of people, money, and supplies.’
Secondly, Zarqawi’s forces have grown dramatically only as a result of the U.S. occupation, with cells now operating throughout northern and central Iraq. All indications are that his goal is to rid Iraq of foreign occupation and establish his version of an Islamic state, just as like-minded jihadists did when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s. These jihadists came to power in Afghanistan only as a result of the Soviet invasion and occupation; they were not a threat beforehand. Similarly, jihadists were never a threat in Iraq until after the U.S. invasion and occupation. In any case, there is no evidence that Zarqawi and his followers have ever plotted or planned to attack the United States and, in any case, they do not have such a global reach in terms of operational capability.
‘ We’ll succeed in Iraq because we’ve got a plan. And here’s the plan: We’ll train Iraqis so they can do the hard work in defending themselves; 100,000 troops are trained today, 125,000 by the end of the year. We’ll continue to work with them, to give them the equipment, the training they need to defend themselves against the attacks of these terrorists.’
–George W. Bush, October 1
In reality, less than 40,000 Iraqi troops are trained and their ranks have been significantly infiltrated by insurgents. In addition, the bigger threat to the survival of the regime are not the terrorists, but the majority of insurgents who do not target civilians, but focus their guerrilla attacks on military and government installations. By claiming that the insurgency is simply composed of terrorists, outsiders and holdouts of the former regime, the administration is able to depict current operations in Iraq as part of the ‘war on terror’ rather than the bloody urban counter-insurgency war that it is, where the primary victims are civilians.
Unfortunately, the House of Representatives ‘ with only 56 of the 210 Democrats voting against it ‘ passed a resolution this past June claiming that the attacks against U.S. forces have come not from a popular nationalist insurgency against a foreign occupation, but ‘former regime elements, foreign and Iraqi terrorists, and other criminals who are attempting to undermine the interests of the Iraqi people and thwart their evident desire to live in peace,’ thereby giving credibility to the Bush Administration’s insistence that the U.S. military occupation of Iraq be maintained in order to fight terrorism.
‘ Because of President Bush’s determination in the war on terror, leaders around the world are getting the message. Just five days after Saddam Hussein was captured, Moammar Ghadafi in Libya agreed to abandon his nuclear weapons program and turn the materials over to the United States.’
–Vice-President Dick Cheney, September 1
Saddam Hussein’s capture had nothing to do with Ghadafi’s decision to abandon its nuclear weapons programs, which was the culmination of a two-year diplomatic effort led by Great Britain. Furthermore, having seen that Saddam eliminated his nuclear weapons program nearly a decade earlier and got invaded anyway, the U.S. invasion of Iraq could hardly be seen as a motivator for unilateral disarmament.
Unfortunately, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led a majority of her Democratic colleagues in voting in favor of a Republican-sponsored amendment which claimed that the elimination of Libya’s nuclear program ‘would not have been possible if not for . . . the liberation of Iraq by United States and Coalition Forces,’ thereby giving credence to this dubious Republican claim that they are now using to enhance Bush’s credibility.
In conclusion, the only reason this election is even close is that Bush and Cheney have gotten away with putting their misleading interpretations of events before, during and subsequent to the U.S. invasion of Iraq as fact, thereby avoiding the criticism their policies deserve. It is nothing short of scandalous that the Democrats ‘ who should be coasting towards a decisive victory at this point ‘ have made it so difficult for themselves by perpetuating the Bush administration’s lies.
If Kerry loses on Tuesday, the Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1029-31.htm
Why We Must Prevent the Re-election of Senators Who Supported the Invasion of Iraq
It has been just over two years since Congress took its fateful vote to authorize President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. This came despite the fact that such an invasion was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter, which, as a formal treaty signed and ratified by the United States, is — according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution — to be treated as supreme law.
Since that time, as of this writing, over 1100 Americans have been killed and 7500 wounded. Most estimates indicate that at least 20,000 Iraqis have been killed, more than two-thirds of them civilians, and more than 40,000 have been injured. The war has thus far cost the American taxpayer over $150 billion.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi insurgency is growing, with no end of the fighting in sight. Throughout the Islamic world, anti-Americanism and support for radical Islamist groups is also growing as a direct result of the U.S. invasion and occupation.
It is not just the Bush Administration which is at fault for this disaster. Blame must also be shared by the U.S. Congress, which made it possible for President Bush’s war plans to go forward.
It is important to look back at what the resolution passed by the House and Senate in October of 2002 actually said:
Among other things, the resolution claimed that ‘members of al-Qaida . . . are known to be in Iraq’ and that ‘the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations.’
In reality, as many of us argued at the time of the vote, there has been absolutely no credible evidence presented to suggest that Saddam Hussein allowed Al-Qaida to operate in Iraq or that his regime in any way aided the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Indeed, despite exhaustive searches of Iraqi government files and interrogations of Iraqi officials and captured Al-Qaida leaders, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have concluded that no such links ever existed.
The resolution also falsely accused Iraq of ‘continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability’ and of ‘actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.’
As a large number of arms control experts, former UN inspectors and others — myself included — argued at the time of the vote, the evidence strongly suggested that Iraq no longer had any chemical or biological weapons capability and that Iraq had similarly ceased its efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Indeed, no such weapons or weapons programs have been discovered and the U.S. government’s Iraq Survey Group, after months of exhaustive investigations, concluded in their report earlier this month that the weapons had apparently all been destroyed and the programs had been dismantled more than a decade earlier.
The resolution goes on to claim that ‘the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States . . . or provide them to international terrorists who would do so’ combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself.’
In other words, those members of the House and Senate who supported this resolution believed, or claimed to believe, that an impoverished Third World country, which had eliminated its stockpiles of banned weapons, destroyed its medium and long-range missiles, and eliminated its WMD programs more than a decade earlier, and had been suffering under the strictest international sanctions in world history for more than a dozen years, somehow threatened the national security of a superpower located more than 10,000 miles away. Furthermore, these members of Congress believed, or claimed to believe, that this supposed threat was so great that the United States had no choice but to launch an invasion of that country, overthrow its government, and place its people under military occupation in the name of self-defense.
It is important to remember that both John Kerry and John Edwards were among those who voted in support of this resolution. It boggles the mind that the Democratic Party would actually nominate, as their presidential and vice-presidential candidates, two senators who were either stupid enough to actually believe this or dishonest enough to claim it was true anyway.
As a result, whether it is a President Bush or a President Kerry who governs over the next four years, there is a real risk that he will try to convince Congress to authorize the invasion of additional countries under similarly false pretenses. Already, both presidential nominees have been making exaggerated claims regarding the supposed military threat emanating from Iran and from Syria due to these countries’ alleged links to terrorists and their supposed biological, chemical and nuclear capabilities. Bush and Kerry have also both threatened the use of military force.
Though we may not have much of a choice in the presidential race, we can still use our vote this November 2 to defeat those members of Congress seeking re-election who supported the resolution.
If the majority of those who supported the resolution are re-elected, it will show that the American people don’t mind being misled into an illegal and disastrous war. As a result, these members of Congress will think that they can get away with authorizing another such invasion. However, if most of them are defeated, it could provide an important deterrent against Congress authorizing such invasions in the future.
Of particular importance is preventing the re-election of the eighteen senators who will be facing voters for the first time since they cast their votes in favor of the resolution two years ago.
Some argue that, despite their vote, the pro-war Democrats should be re-elected anyway and that only pro-war Republicans should be targeted for defeat. However, deceiving the American public in order to prosecute an illegal and immoral war which has resulted in such devastating consequences must not be tolerated, regardless of political party affiliation.
The following is the list of senators who are seeking re-election this year who supported the resolution authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq:
Evan Bayh (Democrat Indiana) ?
Robert Bennett (Republican Utah) ?
Christopher Bond (Republican Missouri) ?
Sam Brownback (Republican Kansas) ?
Jim Bunning (Republican Kentucky) ?
Michael Crapo (Republican Idaho)
?Thomas Daschle (Democrat South Dakota) ?
Christopher Dodd (Democrat Connecticut) ?
Byron Dorgan (Democrat North Dakota)?
Chuck Grassley (Republican Iowa) ?
Judd Gregg (Republican New Hampshire)
?Blanche Lincoln (Democrat Arkansas)
?John McCain (Republican Arizona)?
Harry Reid (Democrat Nevada) ?
Charles Schumer (Democrat New York)?
Richard Shelby (Republican Alabama)?
Arlen Specter (Republican Pennsylvania)
?George Voinovich (Republican Ohio)
Let’s send a clear message that making such false claims and supporting the invasion of a far-away country that was no threat to us will not be tolerated.
The Most Misleading Foreign Policy Statements Made by the Candidates in the Vice-Presidential Debate
Listed below is what I consider to be the sixteen most misleading statements made by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards during the foreign policy segment of their debate of October 5, followed by my critiques. This is a non-partisan analysis: eleven of the misleading statements cited are from Cheney and five are from Edwards. The quotes are listed in the order in which they appear in the transcript:
Cheney: ‘Concern about Iraq specifically focused on the fact that Saddam Hussein had been, for years, listed on the state sponsor of terror, that they he had established relationships with Abu Nidal, who operated out of Baghdad; . . . and he had an established relationship with al Qaeda.’?At the height of Iraq’s support for Abu Nidal, during the mid-1980s, the Reagan Administration dropped Iraq from its list of states sponsoring terrorism in order to transfer arms and technology to Saddam Hussein’s regime that would have otherwise been illegal. Iraq was put back on the list immediately following its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, despite evidence that Iraq’s support for international terrorism had actually declined. Abu Nidal’s group had been largely moribund for more than a decade and when Saddam Hussein had him killed in his Baghdad apartment in 2002. Despite seemingly desperate efforts by the Bush Administration to find a working relationship between the secular Baathist government of Saddam Hussein and the Islamist Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, no credible links have been established. Indeed, recent reports from the 9/11 commission, the Central Intelligence Agency and other credible sources have gone on record denying that any evidence of such a relationship exists.
Edwards: ‘Saddam Hussein needed to be confronted. John Kerry and I have consistently said that. That’s why we voted for the resolution.’?Saddam Hussein’s regime was already being confronted through the United Nations Security Council, which had imposed strict sanctions upon the country and had overseen the disarmament of that country’s chemical weapons; its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs; and its offensive delivery systems. There was no need and no legal right for Kerry and Edwards to authorize President Bush to unilaterally take military action, since the dispute regarding the destruction of proscribed weapons and weapons systems and access for UN inspectors was not between Iraq and the United States but between Iraq and the United Nations. Earlier the same day that Kerry and Edwards voted to give President Bush such unprecedented authority to unilaterally invade a foreign country, they both voted against a similar resolution granting President Bush the power to use military force if it was authorized by the UN Security Council. This underscores the willingness of the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees to defy the United Nations Charter and to project American military power unilaterally regardless of international law.
Cheney: ‘We heard Senator Kerry say the other night that there ought to be some kind of global test before U.S. troops are deployed preemptively to protect the United States.’ ?In reality, during the first presidential debate ‘ as well as on many other occasions ‘ Kerry has made clear that he would not give any foreign government the right to block the United States from moving preemptively against a perceived threat. Kerry has emphasized, however, that he would make a far more serious effort than has the current administration to demonstrate to the international community that such use of force was for a legitimate reason.
Cheney: ‘In the mid-’80s, he [Kerry] ran on the basis of cutting most of our major defense programs.’ ?John Kerry’s 1984 race for the U.S. Senate was not based upon ‘cutting most of our major defense programs.’ He did support a bilateral verifiable treaty with the Soviet Union to freeze the testing, development and deployment of new nuclear weapons and delivery systems, a proposal which ‘ according to public opinion polls at that time ‘ was backed by a sizeable majority of Americans. Kerry also opposed some costly weapons programs which independent strategic analysts argued were unnecessary for America’s defense needs while he supported many other weapons programs. In any case, these issues were never the basis of his campaign.
Cheney: ‘We’re four days away from a democratic election, the first one in history in Afghanistan. We’ve got 10 million voters who have registered to vote, nearly half of them women. That election will put in place a democratically elected government that will take over next December. We’ve made enormous progress in Afghanistan, in exactly the right direction, in spite of what John Edwards said two and a half years ago. He just got it wrong.’ ?In Afghanistan, vote-buying, intimidation, and the enormously disproportionate resources allocated to pro-government candidates raise serious questions as to how democratic these upcoming elections will be. Currently, there are more Afghan males registered to vote than there are eligible Afghan male voters; duplicate voting cards are commonplace and can be sold on the open market. The regime, which lacks solid control of much of the country outside the capital of Kabul, was largely hand-picked by the United States. The ongoing violence and chaos in the country, along with extremely high rates of illiteracy, raise serious questions as to whether the Western-style election the United States is trying to set up will have any credibility among the Afghans themselves. Edwards’ concerns about the growing power of opium magnates and war lords’ casually dismissed by Cheney ‘ are actually quite valid.
Cheney: ‘Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. We had — guerrilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead, and we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress. The human drive for freedom, the determination of these people to vote, was unbelievable. And the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places; as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied the right to vote. And today El Salvador is a whale of a lot better because we held free elections.’ ?First of all, the United States was not supporting freedom in El Salvador twenty years ago. According to the United Nations Truth Commission and independent human rights organizations, the vast majority of those killed in El Salvador during this period were civilians murdered by the U.S.-backed junta and its allied paramilitary organizations Secondly, the Salvadoran elections Cheney observed in the 1980s were not free elections. The leading leftist and left-of-center politicians had been assassinated or driven underground and their newspapers and radio stations suppressed. The election was only between representatives of conservative and right-wing parties. Thirdly, despite threats from some of the more radical guerrilla factions, there were very few attacks on polling stations. Fourthly, people repeatedly lined up to vote because they were required to. Failure to get the requisite stamp that validated the fact that you had voted would likely get one labeled as a ‘subversive’ and therefore a potential target for assassination. Lastly, El Salvador finally did have free elections in 1994, only after Congress cut off aid to the Salvadoran government and the peace plan initiated by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias ‘ which was initially opposed by the Republican administrations then in office in Washington ‘ was finally implemented.
Cheney: ‘You voted for the war, and then you voted against supporting the troops when they needed the equipment, the fuel, the spare parts and the ammunition and the body armor.’ ?Edwards and Kerry have voted on successive administration requests to provide equipment, fuel, spare parts, and ammunition and body armor for U.S. occupation troops in Iraq, rejecting calls by opponents of the U.S. invasion and occupation to cut off funding so the troops can come home. They did vote against a particular funding bill by the administration based primarily on the administration’s insistence that it be funded by increasing the federal deficit. Kerry and Edwards instead voted for an identical measure ‘ which failed to win a majority ‘that allocated the same amount of money to the occupation but would have funded it by reducing recently-enacted tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
Edwards: ‘What we know is that the president and the vice president have not done the work to build the coalition that we need — dramatically different than the first Gulf War.’ ?The senior President Bush was indeed able to build a broader coalition than his son, but that was because the 1991 war against the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait was very different than the 2003 war to impose a U.S. occupation of Iraq. While strong arguments can be made against the 1991 Gulf War, the use of forces was legally sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, consistent with the UN Charter and the international legal consensus that supports such collective security against such clear acts of aggression as Iraq’s 1990 invasion, occupation, and annexation of Kuwait. By contrast, the 2003 war against Iraq was an unmitigated act of aggression in direct contravention of the United Nations Charter and basic international legal principles going back for nearly a century. The failure to build a broader coalition, then, was not based upon the Bush Administration’s lack of diplomatic acumen; even the more erudite Kerry could not have built such a coalition simply because the international community recognized that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was illegal and unjustified.
Cheney: ‘You made the comment that the Gulf War coalition in ’91 was far stronger than this. No. We had 34 countries then; we’ve got 30 today.’ ?The U.S.-led 1991Gulf War coalition included more than twice as many non-American troops, all of which were assembled prior to the launching of the war in January 1991. By contrast, troops from all but four members of the current coalition arrived after U.S. forces had marched on Baghdad, toppled the Iraqi regime and began the occupation. Their role is ostensibly that of peace keepers and the vast majority of these forces serve in non-combat roles.
Cheney: ‘Let’s look at what we know about Mr. Zarqawi… He set up shop in Baghdad, where he oversaw the poisons facility up at Khurmal, where the terrorists were developing ricin and other deadly substances to use.’ ?First of all, the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers were not based in Baghdad, but in the far northeastern corner of the country inside the Kurdish safe havens established by the United Nations in 1991, well beyond the control of the Saddam’s government. The only evidence the Bush Administration has been able to put forward linking the al-Zarqawi terror network to the Iraqi capital was a brief stay that al-Zarqawi had in a Baghdad hospital at the end of 2001, apparently having been smuggled by supporters into the country from Iran and smuggled out days later. Secondly, not only was the Khurmal area in Kurdish areas far outside of Saddam’s reach, but journalists who visited the supposed poisons factory within hours of it being identified by Bush Administration officials from satellite photos found nothing remotely resembling such a facility. U.S. Special Forces that seized control of the area weeks later can to a similar conclusion. Finally, Zarqawi and his followers established a presence in Baghdad only after U.S. forces overthrew the Iraqi government in March 2003.
Cheney: ‘One of the great by-products, for example, of what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan is that five days after we captured Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi in Libya came forward and announced that he was going to surrender all of his nuclear materials to the United States, which he has done.’ ?First of all, in 1998, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that Iraq’s nuclear program had been completely dismantled. When IAEA inspectors returned in the fall of 2002 as part of UN Security Council resolution 1441, they reported that no signs that the program had been revived. Despite this, the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew the Iraqi government. As a result, Qaddafi presumably recognized that unilaterally giving up his nuclear weapons program and allowing in international inspectors to verify it does not necessarily make you any less likely to be invaded by the United States. Secondly, the agreement had been in the works for a number of years, largely as a result of a British-led diplomatic effort. That the announcement came five days after Saddam Hussein was arrested was sheer coincidence.
Edwards: ‘The reality about Iran is that Iran has moved forward with their nuclear weapons program on their watch. They ceded responsibility to dealing with it to the Europeans.’ ?The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Iran nearly twenty-five years ago and, during the 1990s, unilaterally imposed sanctions on that country, openly called for the government’s overthrow and funded groups dedicated to that purpose. All of these initiatives took place under Democratic administrations. By contrast, the Europeans ‘ despite outspoken criticism of certain Iranian policies and restricting certain arms and technology transfers ‘ have maintained normal diplomatic and trade relations. It should not be surprising, then, that the Europeans have had to take the lead in resolving the current standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.
Edwards: ‘if Gaza’s being used as a platform for attacking the Israeli people, that has to be stopped. And Israel has a right to defend itself.’ ?While it is true that some militant Palestinian groups have used the Gaza Strip as a base for lobbing shells into civilian areas of Israel, the Israeli armed forces have similarly used Israel as a platform for attacking civilian areas of the Gaza Strip. Indeed, far more Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip have been killed by attacks launched from Israel than have Israeli civilians in Israel been killed from attacks launched from the Gaza Strip. Does this mean that Palestine therefore also ‘has a right to defend itself’ by launching a major military incursion into nearby Israeli population centers with widespread killings of unarmed civilians and massive destruction of civilian property as Israel has been doing? Apparently not, since Edwards and Kerry clearly have different standards regarding the use of force depending upon a particular government’s relations with the United States. Given that Secretary of State Powell that very afternoon criticized the disproportionate nature of the ongoing Israeli military response, Edwards is clearly placing the Democratic ticket to the right of the Bush Administration.
Edwards: ‘They don’t have a partner for peace right now. They certainly don’t have a partner in Arafat, and they need a legitimate partner for peace.’ ?Palestinian president Yasir Arafat has repeatedly called for a resumption of substantive peace negotiations, but the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has refused. Arafat has called for a peace settlement along the lines proposed by President Clinton in 2000, which culminated with the signing of the Geneva Initiative in December 2003 by leading Israelis and Palestinians. The agreement calls for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it conquered in the 1967 war (with minor and reciprocal border adjustments), a shared Jerusalem as the co-capital of Israel and Palestine, the resettlement of Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel in the new Palestinian state or other Arab countries, and strict security guarantees for Israel, including the disarming of Palestinian militias. Sharon, by contrast, has categorically rejected such an agreement. While Arafat’s rule has been corrupt and autocratic and he has been ineffective in stopping terrorism by radical Palestinian groups, his positions on the outstanding issues in the peace process is far more moderate than those of the Israeli government. Arafat certainly has blood on his hands, but no more than does Sharon, widely recognized as a war criminal for his role in major atrocities against Lebanese, Jordanian, and Palestinian civilians in previous years. In any case, Arafat is the elected leader of the Palestinians and Sharon is the elected leader of the Israelis. By refusing to include one of the two major parties in the peace process, Edwards and Kerry are effectively foreclosing any realistic prospects for a negotiated peace.
Cheney: ‘In respect to Israel and Palestine, the suicide bombers, in part, were generated by Saddam Hussein, who paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. I personally think one of the reasons that we don’t have as many suicide attacks today in Israel as we’ve had in the past is because Saddam is no longer in business.’ ?Saddam Hussein did provide money to a small Palestinian faction known as the Arab Liberation Front which passed it on to some families of terrorists killed in suicide bombings. Money was also given to families of other Palestinians killed in the fight against Israel, such as militiamen shot while defending Palestinian towns under Israeli siege and unarmed teenagers shot during demonstrations. The vast majority of the funding for Hamas and other radical Palestinian groups responsible for suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism in recent years has come from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, governments supported by the United States. In any case, the families of suicide bombers normally have their homes destroyed by Israeli occupation forces in retaliation for the terrorist attacks, and $25,000 does not come close to recouping their losses.
Cheney: ‘The president stepped forward and put in place a policy basically that said we will support the establishment of two states. First president ever to say we’ll establish and support a Palestinian state next door to Israelis.’ ?The Bush Administration has endorsed Sharon’s plan to annex up to half of the West Bank into Israel and leave the remaining Palestinian areas divided into a series of non-contiguous cantons surrounded by Israel. This would give the Palestinians barely 12% of historic Palestine. Furthermore, according to this plan, Israel would have control over all border crossings, the air space, and the water resources, with an unrestricted right to militarily intervene in Palestinian areas at any time. This would no more constitute a viable ‘state’ than did the infamous Bantustans of apartheid South Africa.
Is Kerry Really More Open than Bush to Alternative Foreign Policy Perspectives?
Some progressive supporters of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry have argued that, despite his support for the invasion of Iraq and other neoconservative-driven foreign policies of the Bush Administration, at least a President Kerry – unlike the incumbent president – would be more willing to listen to the views of those with more moderate perspectives than himself.
A President Kerry, so goes this argument, while likely to take a number of foreign policy positions more hawkish than most Democrats could support, would at least be more open to hearing a number of competing assessments and policy options before choosing military solutions to foreign policy problems.
Unfortunately, while a President Kerry would almost certainly be less ideological and impulsive than President George W. Bush in formulating his foreign policy, there are a number of areas in which the Massachusetts senator appears to be just as unwilling to listen to alternative viewpoints regarding foreign affairs as the incumbent president.
Take Senator Kerry’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for example:
Kerry shares the Bush administration’s support for the policies of the rightist Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. He has defended the Israeli re-occupation of much of the West Bank; Israel’s ongoing violation of a series of UN Security Council resolutions; Sharon’s refusal to even negotiate for a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinian leadership; Israel’s policy of assassinating suspected terrorists and other Palestinian leaders; Sharon’s proposed annexation of vast stretches of occupied Palestinian territory in order to incorporate illegal Jewish settlements into Israel; and, the Israeli government’s construction of an illegal separation wall deep inside occupied territory (in defiance of a recent near-unanimous ruling by the International Court of Justice, which led Kerry to strongly criticize the UN’s judicial body.)
As a result, the Kerry campaign has opened its door wide to right-wing Zionist groups that share his and Bush’s support for the illegal and repressive occupation policies of the current rightist Israeli government, with Kerry and his top foreign policy advisors meeting regularly with their representatives. By contrast, despite numerous efforts by moderate and liberal pro-Israel groups such as the Tikkun Community, Churches for Middle East Peace, Jewish Voice for Peace, and others to meet with the candidate or his leading staffers, the Kerry campaign has completely shut them out.
The sad reality appears to be that Kerry is not interested in even hearing the perspectives of the large and growing numbers of Israel’s American supporters – both Jewish and non-Jewish – who recognize that not only are Sharon’s policies toward the Palestinians illegal and immoral, they threaten Israel’s long-term security interests as well.
Even leading progressive Zionists like Rabbi Michael Lerner – one of America’s foremost intellectuals – have been systematically denied any access to Kerry or the leadership of the campaign.
By contrast, even the hawkish Bill Clinton was appreciative enough of Lerner’s counsel to have invited him personally to the White House on a number of occasions. The Clintons’ respect for Lerner’s 1996 book The Politics of Meaning and other writings was significant enough to lead the press to refer to the rabbi as President Clinton’s “spiritual advisor.”
(For more than six months, I have personally attempted, through both established channels and back channels, to secure a meeting between a group of anti-Sharon but pro-Israel intellectuals – including myself, Rabbi Lerner, Cornell West (the noted African-American studies professor at Princeton University), and Susannah Herschel (director of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College), among others – with either Senator Kerry or any influential Kerry staffer knowledgeable of foreign affairs. As with similar efforts by progressive Zionists and others, however, my appeals have been consistently ignored.)
In other words, Kerry and his foreign policy team apparently have no desire to even listen to those who may have an alternative perspective to the Democratic nominee’s strident support for the right-wing pro-Likud agenda.
And taking such neoconservative views does not help Kerry’s election chances: Public opinion polls show that the views of the majority of American Jews are far closer to Lerner’s than they are to Sharon’s.
Kerry, unfortunately, appears to be just as unwilling to consider alternative perspectives on Iraq as he does Israel-Palestine.
The Democratic presidential nominee refused to challenge, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Bush Administration’s claims in 2002 and early 2003 that Iraq was such a serious and growing threat to American national security that it required a pre-emptive U.S. invasion to overthrow the Iraqi government and replace it with one more to our liking.
In the lead-up to the October 2002 Congressional vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Kerry steadfastly refused to listen to numerous appeals by independent strategic analysts, former UN inspectors, independent arms control experts, former State Department officials, retired military officers, and others who insisted that Iraq was not a threat to the United States and that it was a bad idea to grant President Bush the authority to invade Iraq at whatever time and under whatever conditions he chose.
Kerry was also given documentation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as articles from well-respected arms control journals and other sources, demonstrating that Iraq’s nuclear program had been totally eliminated some years earlier and that – as a result of the strict sanctions regime then in place for the previous twelve years – it would have been virtually impossible for Iraq to reconstitute its program any time in the foreseeable future.
(I understand that a number of my analyses on Iraq published by the Foreign Policy in Focus Project in the spring and summer of 2002 were passed on to the senator and his foreign policy staff. In these non-technical briefs, I raised serious questions as to whether Iraq actually still had any remaining functional weapons of mass destruction, ongoing WMD programs, or workable delivery systems that could threaten its neighbors, let alone the United States.)
Despite this, Kerry stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate that October to defend President Bush’s wild assertions of an imminent Iraqi threat, not only claiming categorically that “Iraq has chemical and biological weapons” and that most of their programs were “larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War,” but that “all U.S. intelligence experts agree” that Iraq was “attempting to develop nuclear weapons.”
During that summer, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on Iraq’s alleged military threat for which only witnesses who would claim that Iraq was somehow a danger to U.S. national security were invited. Kerry – one of the senior Democrats on the committee – ignored thousands of phone calls and emails encouraging him to use his influence to invite experts who would challenge the neocons’ claims that Iraq had a dangerous and growing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated delivery systems.
It appears, then, that Senator Kerry, no less than President Bush, simply did not want dissenting views to be heard.
Similarly, scores of copies of my September 30 cover story in The Nation magazine “The Case against War with Iraq” were sent to Kerry’s office. A number of copies were personally placed in the hands of his foreign policy staff and even the senator himself. In that article, I predicted that “a US invasion could leave American forces effectively alone attempting to enforce a peace amid the chaos of a post-Saddam Iraq,” and that the United States could find itself stuck in a “bloody counterinsurgency war” against “ongoing guerrilla action by Saddam Hussein’s supporters” as well as by various Sunni and Shiite factions.
Still, just two weeks later, Kerry voted in favor of a resolution granting unprecedented war-making authority to a fraudulently-elected, right-wing, semi-literate, religious fundamentalist president in order for him to lead a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country.
Despite the denials of his supporters, Kerry either knew or refused ample opportunity to learn that Iraq no longer had any weapons of mass destruction, ongoing WMD programs, or delivery systems that seriously threatened other countries.
Similarly, Kerry either knew or refused ample opportunity to learn that a U.S. invasion of Iraq – particularly under the leadership of the Bush Administration – would likely lead U.S. forces into the heart of just the kind of violent chaotic mess they are now in.
Kerry appears to have not learned from his mistakes. One would think that after people like me, former chief UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter, and so many others tried to warn the senator and his staff that the Bush Administration’s case for war was incredibly misleading and the results of a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be disastrous we might now be welcomed by Kerry’s team to advise them on how to avoid making such tragic mistakes in the future.
We continue to be completely shut out, however.
Similarly, one would think that Senator Kerry – after noting the total absence of the WMDs, WMD programs and delivery systems that he and the White House insisted Iraq possessed in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion – might be more skeptical of claims by these same neoconservatives within the Bush Administration of alleged strategic threats by Middle Eastern adversaries.
Such an assumption would, unfortunately, be wrong as well:
For example, this past fall, Kerry was one of the Senate co-sponsors of the neoconservative-backed Syria Accountability Act. Among the formal findings in Kerry’s bill justifying its imposition of sanctions and implicit military threats against Syria were alarmist and grossly exaggerated estimates of Syria’s alleged military prowess made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton. These two leading Bush Administration officials made similarly alarmist and inaccurate estimates about Iraq’s alleged military threat in the lead-up to the war, which had been shown to have been inaccurate well before the final version of Kerry’s anti-Syria bill was introduced. Yet, by deciding to leave these claims in the text of the legislation, Kerry appears to continue to trust the analyses of these neo-conservative ideologues more than he does those of independent non-partisan strategic analysts.
As a result, his pledge during his nomination acceptance speech in Boston this July that he would “ask hard questions and demand hard evidence” on alleged security threats should probably not be trusted.
Similarly, as these examples illustrate, one must be skeptical of claims that Kerry will be more likely to listen to those with more moderate to progressive foreign policy views or even those who just raise skeptical questions about alleged outside threats.
In short, not only does the Democratic presidential nominee share President Bush’s penchant for unilateralism, the undermining of international legal institutions, the support of occupation armies, and the imposition of military solutions to complex political problems, Kerry appears to be decidedly reluctant to even consider reasoned and credible analyses that might challenge militaristic ideological assumptions that the way to defend America’s security interests is through the support of invasion, occupation and repression.
The way to respond to this rather pessimistic analysis, however, is rather straightforward:
We must force John Kerry to listen to other perspectives.
One way to do this would be for millions of Democrats who oppose Kerry’s refusal to hear challenges to right-wing wing foreign policy views to threaten to vote for independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Libertarian Party nominee Michael Badnarik, or the nominee of some small leftist party. The risks of losing enough such voters to give Bush a plurality and therefore all the electors in some key states might force Kerry to widen the base of foreign policy advisors and soften his hardline views.
The dangers of such a strategy, however, are obvious.
A second and perhaps more appropriate way would be to support Kerry’s election, but should he be elected in November immediately demand that he appoint to his foreign policy transition team, as well as to key positions in the State Department and the National Security Council, a more diverse group than just those who share his militaristic views regarding the Middle East, human rights, international law, and America’s role in the world. He must also know that any failure to do so will not only result in protests at least as large as those which have challenged the current administration, but an awareness that people of conscience throughout the county will not support his re-election in 2008 unless and until he changes these policies.
Those of us who support human rights and international law and who oppose reckless unilateral military intervention overseas cannot reasonably expect that Kerry will always take positions with which we agree. However, we do have a right to demand that he at least provide people like us the opportunity to share our perspectives and take them into consideration.
How Kerry’s Foreign Policies Leave Him Vulnerable to Republican Attacks
The only people who could possibly be swayed by the unfair and misleading attacks on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry put forward by speakers at the Republican National Convention (particularly Vice-President Dick Cheney and Georgia Senator Zell Miller) would be those with little understanding of contemporary strategic issues and modern diplomatic history.
Unfortunately, that probably includes the majority of eligible American voters.
Whether or not such disingenuous criticism will ultimately cost John Kerry and his running mate John Edwards the election remains to be seen. More immediately, however, it is indicative of the flawed assumption of the Democratic Party that nominating two hawks (whose support for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq put them at odds with 95% of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention) would somehow make them immune from Republican charges of weakness on defense.
Instead, by nominating two supporters of the Bush Doctrine and the neo-conservative agenda, the Democrats have ended up alienating their base without sparing themselves one iota from Republican attacks.
Let’s begin by a critical examination of charges that Senator Kerry is not adequately concerned about the national security of the United States or capable of defending the nation.
The Republican Accusations
Cheney: “Senator Kerry began his political career by saying he would like to see our troops deployed ‘only at the directive of the United Nations.'”
Miller: “Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.”
During Kerry’s unsuccessful bid for a seat in the House of Representatives in 1972, he made the quite reasonable proposal that (since the UN Charter provides for collective security and allows for unilateral actions only in the event of self-defense against armed attack) any foreign military intervention should be authorized by the UN Security Council. Contrary to the vice-president’s allegations, he did not object to the forward deployment of American forces as a deterrent, such as U.S. forces in Western Europe as part of NATO, nor of the use of military force for legitimate defense.
Kerry has since swung well to the right, however, effectively renouncing the UN Charter through his support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and for Israel’s colonization and creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank. Indeed, Kerry voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq without approval by the UN Security Council.
Miller: “As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.”
In his days as an anti-war veteran during the Vietnam War, Kerry never blamed the military for that tragedy, but focused his opposition on the civilian politicians who sent American troops to fight there.
Unfortunately, during his presidential campaign, Kerry has emphasized his participation in that unnecessary, criminal and misguided counter-insurgency war rather than his subsequent moral and pragmatic opposition. More saliently, he is an outspoken supporter of the current unnecessary, criminal and misguided counter-insurgency war and, as president, is likely to continue prosecuting that war years to come.
Cheney: “He talks about leading a ‘more sensitive war on terror,’ as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.
What Kerry actually said was that the United States needs to be more sensitive regarding the concerns of our Middle Eastern allies and the international community. President Bush had made a similar statement just a few months earlier.
Unfortunately, Kerry’s support for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Israel’s occupation policies in the West Bank has placed him in opposition to virtually every U.S. ally in the region, not to mention in Europe and the rest of the world as well.
Cheney: “During the 1980s, Senator Kerry opposed Ronald Reagan’s major defense initiatives that brought victory in the Cold War.”
Kerry, along with dozens of other senators from both parties, opposed some expensive weapons systems which most objective strategic analysts saw as unnecessary for America’s defense needs. The U.S. military buildup had nothing to do with the end of the Cold War, which resulted from the collapse of the unsustainable Communist systems of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies goaded on by nonviolent grassroots pro-democracy movements within these countries.
Kerry has since moved well to the right on this issue as well, becoming an outspoken supporter (despite record deficits and pressing domestic needs) of increased military spending, backing expensive and redundant weapons systems that have nothing to do with the struggle against Al-Qaeda.
Cheney: “In 1991, when Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and stood poised to dominate the Persian Gulf, Senator Kerry voted against Operation Desert Storm.”
This statement assumes that the only choices were either acquiescing to Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait or launching a devastating war, which was hardly the case. Kerry joined scores of senators from both parties in voting against the authorization of force, recognizing correctly that then-President George Bush was not serious about pursuing a non-military resolution to the crisis.
The Gulf War and ongoing U.S. military presence in the region that resulted was the major factor in the formation of Al-Qaeda, turning Osama bin Laden from a U.S. ally to its most notorious adversary. Had there not been a Gulf War, there would not have been a 9/11.
Unfortunately, rather than trumpet his wisdom in recognizing the importance of voting against an avoidable war which resulted in such disastrous consequences, Kerry now says he regrets his vote against the war and that President Bush was right all along.
Cheney: “Senator Kerry denounces American action when other countries don’t approve as if the whole object of our foreign policy were to please a few persistent critics. In fact, in the global war on terror, . . . President Bush has brought many allies to our side. But as the President has made very clear, there is a difference between leading a coalition of many, and submitting to the objections of a few. George W. Bush will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people.”
Miller: “Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending.”
Kerry has never claimed nor given any indication that he believes that “the whole object of our foreign policy were to please a few persistent critics.” The invasion of Iraq was a direct violation of the United Nations Charter, which (as a ratified treaty, according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution) is to be treated as supreme U.S. law. This act of aggression was opposed by the vast majority of the world’s nations, not just “a few persistent critics.”
Secondly, the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with “the global war on terror.” Iraq had no operational links with Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group that had targeted the United States.
Thirdly, the government of France has never demonstrated any desire to prevent the United States from defending itself. France did threaten to veto a UN Security Council resolution which would have authorized a U.S. invasion of Iraq, but so did Russia and China, also permanent members of the Security Council. Non-permanent members Chile, Mexico, Guinea, Angola, Syria, Colombia, Pakistan, and Germany did not support the resolution either, thereby denying the United States a majority even without the vetoes.
Fourthly, the Democratic Party platform explicitly states, “With John Kerry as commander-in-chief, we will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake.”
In any case, the fact that Kerry voted to authorize this illegal and unnecessary war and defends his vote to this day shows that he and the Democrats have as much contempt for international law and international opinion as does the Bush Administration and the Republicans.
Cheney: “Although he voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein, he then decided he was opposed to the war, and voted against funding for our men and women in the field. He voted against body armor, ammunition, fuel, spare parts, armored vehicles, extra pay for hardship duty, and support for military families.”
Miller: “As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.”
Unfortunately, not only did Kerry support the invasion of Iraq, he has continued to defend the war and occupation, he has supported using billions of our tax dollars to fund it, and he has repeatedly stated he will not withdraw U.S. forces if elected. Kerry did, on procedural grounds, vote against the administration’s bill allocating $87 billion to U.S. occupation forces. Kerry instead backed an amendment which would have sent just as much money to support the U.S. occupation and bloody counter-insurgency efforts (including protective armor), only the funds would be drawn from a reduction in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans rather than by simply increasing the federal budget deficit, as did the administration’s version.
Accepting Republican Assumptions Leaves Kerry Vulnerable
Kerry has become vulnerable to Republican attacks because he agrees with the Republicans on their basic foreign policy assumptions. This is particularly evident regarding his opposition to certain Pentagon boondoggles and other excessive military spending.
Senator Miller, in his speech at the Republican convention, attacked Kerry for opposing funding for the B-1 and B-2 bombers because of their key role in the U.S. assault on Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. This would be a valid criticism only if you believe that massive high-altitude bombing of an impoverished central Asian nation is the most effective means of dealing with a decentralized Saudi-led international network of underground terrorist cells. Kerry, unfortunately, has refused to challenge this assumption.
Miller’s criticism of Kerry’s opposition to the F-14A Tomcat program because of the jet fighter’s role in attacking Libyan planes in the Gulf of Sidra during the 1980s assumes that the Reagan Administration’s reckless military engagements with that North African country were necessary and unavoidable. Kerry has also refused to question that assumption.
Miller’s criticism of Kerry’s opposition to the Patriot Missile “that shot down Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles over Israel” not only ignores the fact that subsequent investigations revealed the Patriot worked less than 10% of the time, but the Iraqi strikes against Israel took place only because the United States had launched a war against Iraq. Again, if Kerry had maintained his opposition to the Gulf War or bothered to point out the technical failures of the Patriot system, such criticisms could not be taken seriously.
Miller’s criticism of Kerry’s opposition of the Apache helicopter, “that . . . took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War” not only fails to note that Saddam Hussein withdraw virtually all of his Republican Guard units from Kuwait prior to Operation Desert Storm, it assumes that the Gulf War was necessary, something that Kerry now refuses to question.
In short, the most successful way for the Democrats to defend attacks questioning their nominees’ commitment to the national security of the United States is to challenge the Republicans’ distorted notions of what national security entails. Kerry and Edwards, however, have failed to do so.
Implications
Indeed, Kerry is arguably the Democrats’ most right-wing militaristic presidential nominee since James K. Polk. Kerry’s vote authorizing the illegal, unnecessary and disastrous invasion of Iraq (which he defends to this day), his calls for increased military spending (despite the end of the Cold War), his denunciation of the International Court of Justice (for its July decision reiterating the obligation of UN member states to enforce international humanitarian law), and his strident support for the rightist Israeli government’s illegal colonization and creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank (despite the opposition of such policies by most Israelis and American Jews) has alienated millions of liberal, progressive and moderate voters who, as a result, may vote for independent candidate Ralph Nader or stay at home on Election Day.
In other words, despite nominating a decorated combat veteran who takes positions on human rights, international law, and presidential war-making authority far to the right of the vast majority of Democrats and independents, the Republicans will still question the Democratic nominee’s willingness to defend the country.
There is an important lesson here: those who argue that the Democrats cannot take more moderate positions on foreign and military policy without being subjected to Republican attacks are simply wrong. For despite Kerry’s enthusiastic embrace of the Bush Doctrine and his militaristic world view, he is being attacked anyway.
If the Democrats are going to win, they will have to redefine national security by boldly challenging the assumptions (currently embraced by Kerry and Edwards) that effectively renouncing the United Nations Charter, authorizing the invasion and occupation of foreign countries, backing international outlaws like Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, supporting dictatorships from Egypt to Uzbekistan, and spending more on the military than the entire rest of the world combined somehow makes us more secure.
For if the Democrats’ surrender these key assumptions, it would appear that the Republicans are right and Bush and Cheney should indeed be re-elected. However, if the Democrats are willing to publicly recognize how dangerous these assumptions are, then the importance of preventing a Republican victory in November would become obvious to the vast majority of Americans who care about our nation’s defense.