September 16, 2003
Even a liberal candidate of stirling
qualities would make little difference, but an "antiwar" war
criminal?
http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/moore.html
By Stephen Gowans
Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker, whose credits include Bowling
for Columbine, The Big One and Roger & Me, likes what he sees in former
General Wesley Clark. Clark is toying with the idea of seeking the Democratic
Party's presidential nomination, and if Moore has his druthers, Clark will
run.
So what does Moore, the antiwar liberal, see in Clark, the warrior? A
lot. According to Moore, the former general:
Opposes the Patriot Act and would fight the expansion of its
powers;
Is firmly pro-choice;
Filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the
University of Michigan's affirmative action case;
Would get rid of the Bush tax cut and make the rich pay their fair
share;
Respects the views of other countries and wants to work with them and
with the rest of the international community;
Is opposed to war.
That's enough for Moore to urge Clark to seek the Democratic Party
nomination. He says he's not endorsing Clark, but he likes what he
sees.
Moore admits there's something odd in his backing a general. But that's
not the half of it.
What the filmmaker forgot to point out in a letter to friends and
supporters urging them to contact Clark and ask him to run, is that the former
general -- the man Moore says opposes war -- led NATO's illegal 1999 war of
aggression on Yugoslavia, a war that compelled Human Rights Watch (renowned
for pulling its punches where the US is concerned) to condemn Clark's forces
for grave breaches of humanitarian law. Clark ordered NATO warplanes to bomb
civilian targets, bridges, roads, factories, power stations, petrochemical
plants, a radio-TV building -- all war crimes.
Curiously, Moore hasn't time for former Yugoslav president Slobodan
Milosevic, who faces war crimes charges (which, only the most credulous
wouldn't suspect of being trumped up), but has more than a little time -- and
kind words -- for Clark, the liberal "antiwar" war criminal, whose war crimes
are evident in the wrecked civilian infrastructure of the country whose
bombing he oversaw four years ago.
That should leave more than a few people scratching their heads, not
only over Moore, but over Clark's claiming he's opposed to war. Maybe Clark is
sincere (he says war should only be used as a last resort) but were the former
general president, would his self-described antiwar views make any difference?
They didn't when he was Supreme Commander of NATO. And if Clark could
reconcile his antiwar views as NATO chief, couldn't he do the same as
Commander in Chief?
It might be said that as NATO chief, Clark had to follow orders, even
those that conflicted with his liberal, war-as-the-last-resort values, if he
wanted to keep his job. But as Commander in Chief, he'd be boss. He'd have
free rein to run the country as he saw fit.
That's a standard liberal view, and perhaps one Moore shares. If so, it
would account for why his activism has always been aimed at people at the top
-- from GM Chairman Roger Smith (Roger & Me) to Nike Chairman Phillip
Knight (The Big One); people Moore seems to think shut down auto plants and
open Third World sweatshops because they're greedy and benighted, not because
they're pushed to by a global capitalist system. The flip side is that if you
happen upon an establishment figure who embraces liberal values -- even if his
track record is dodgy -- you back him for the top job.
In Moore's view, the top guys have free rein, and can choose to pay high
wages, keep money-losing plants open, and encourage unions to thrive, if they
want to. Elect the right people, with the right views, or sweep the boardrooms
of the nation clean, and replace them with liberals and people of conscience,
and auto plants will soon be reopened in Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan,
Third World sweatshops will be shut down (and production will shift to the US
where employees will be paid decent wages), and legislation will be passed
forbidding profitable firms from laying off employees. In other words, the
imperatives of a global economic system can be abolished by Moore's activism
and the good will of people at the top.
But that's not how it works. It doesn't really matter whether those in
charge are liberal paragons (as Moore thinks Clark is) or models of turpitude
(as he thinks Bush is.) What really matters is the coercive, external forces
that act upon them. CEOs who lay off employees feel no delight in their
actions, but say they do what they do, not because they want to, but because
they have to -- the firm's profit-interests are at stake. That's the coercive
external force. And if they don't do it, someone else will. In short, their
hands are tied. But Moore never sees the ropes. Or if he does, he thinks they
can be readily broken, by a supreme act of good will. Can good will abolish
the requirement of firms to seek a profit, and of governments to help them do
so?
As in business, so too in politics. Ask yourself this: Why is the US,
alone among Western industrialized countries, and not a few Third World ones,
including Cuba and Libya, without a universal public health care system?
Americans, who live in a much vaunted democracy, want one, there's no question
they need one, there's no doubt they can afford one, and a former president
(Clinton, who Moore backed) worked to get one. So why has the confluence of
democracy and the good will of the guy at the top, failed to deliver
one?
The answer is that the views of presidents -- and of a majority of
Americans -- don't matter half as much as the profit-interests of
private health care providers and the insurance industry. Appeal to the
president all you want. Invoke American democracy. It makes no difference.
Money talks, usually through presidents, and over them, if it has
to.
Another question? Who was one of the principal German figures backing
NATO's war of aggression on Yugoslavia? The answer is Joschka Fischer, the
Foreign Minister, and also leader of the German Greens, officially a pacifist
party. Fischer says he's opposed to war, which makes him, as much as Clark, a
liberal antiwar war criminal. You'd think that four years ago, with the
liberals Clinton and Blair at the helm, and antiwar liberals like Fischer and
Clark in key positions, that war on Yugoslavia could never have happened.
Still, it did. Maybe the views of those in charge don't matter as much as
Moore thinks. Maybe wars of conquest aren't the exclusive domain of Bush and
his coterie of hawkish advisors.
Fischer's coalition partner, Gerhard Shroeder, is the prime minister of
Germany, and a socialist. His views are unquestionably as liberal as Clark's,
if not more so. Still, he's rolling back public services, because the global
economic system -- which he and other progressives have no plan to
challenge -- demands it. Bush isn't the only world leader aggrandizing
corporations at the expense of employees and the public.
And elsewhere in the world, liberals, progressives, and social
democrats, from Lula to Chile's Ricardo Lagos, preside over governments that
have made peace with the global capitalist system and its imperatives. They
may be people of good will, who care about the environment and the poor and
jobs for all at decent wages, but it hardly matters. Greedy or altruistic,
liberal or fanatically right-wing, it's the rules of the game that keep
directing the players in the same direction -- tax cuts for the rich,
privatization, rolling back public services, wars of conquest, whatever it
takes to fatten bottom lines.
An executive I know, a thoughtful man, kind and charming, explains his
company's unkind, uncharming and inhumane downsizing, wage cuts and
union-busting, this way:
"Do I like it?" he asks. "Is it good for the people
affected?"
"No. Absolutely not! But that's capitalism."
The answer to this is, "Well, then capitalism must be
replaced."
As an alternative, we can listen to Moore and waste our time replacing
Bush with a liberal antiwar war criminal who will follow in the hoary
presidential tradition of pursuing wars of conquest, redistributing income
upwards, and mollycoddling the wealthy, not because he wants to (though he
might), but because he has to if he wants to keep his job.
More than 150 years ago, the same guy who pointed out that the "will,
either good or bad, of the individual capitalist" doesn't matter, what does is
"the immanent laws of capitalist production [that] confront the individual
capitalist as a coercive force external to him" described the state in
capitalist society as an executive committee for arranging the affairs of the
business class.
You can change the members of the committee, but if you don't change
their masters, you haven't changed a thing. That, Moore -- who sees merit in
replacing one war criminal (a conservative) with another (a liberal) -- hasn't
figured out yet.
What's
Left
