re: The Calamity Howler
Further to the article in The Economist, and Michael Ignatieff's comments -
there are three actions that are not going to happen, if the United States
and Americans overseas want to feel more secure:
- Americans are not going to impeach George Bush
- Americans are not going to force the U.S. military to get out of Iraq and
other countries where
they are not welcome
- American corporations are not going to stop "raping" the natural
resources of other countries
around the world. "Would you work for an hourly wage that provides a
monthly income equal to
the retail price of one pair of Michael Jordan's basketball boots ?"
j.
From: Albert Krebs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (by way of Keith Addison)
Reply-To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Subject: [Biofuel] THE CALAMITY HOWLER #60
Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 04:30:13 +0900
THE
CALAMITY HOWLER
July 1, 2005 Issue #60
"Sometimes an intended epithet can be turned to good advantage.
In the sole surviving issue of the Decatur, Texas TIMES, one finds
the way Populists not only accepted the label `calamity howler'
but insisted that they had ample reason to howl and would continue
to howl until their objectives had been attained."
- THE POPULIST MIND, edited by Norman Pollack
EDITOR\PUBLISHER; A.V. Krebs
E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
TO RECEIVE: Send name and address
WHO'S SPREADING WHAT ???
BUSH'S DEMOCRATIC HOAX IN IRAQ
ROGER BURBACH AND PAUL CANTOR
June 29, 2005
President George Bush told the nation on Tuesday night that we are in Iraq
to fight terrorism and spread democracy. Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitlers
minister of propaganda said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep
repeating it people will eventually come to believe it."
Goebbels had it right. Bush didnt invade Iraq to fight terrorism and
promote democracy. He invaded Iraq to establish a military stronghold in
the oil rich Middle East. But he has repeated that lie often enough that
more and more people have come to accept it as the truth.
Recently, for example, Michael Ignatieff, the President of Harvard
Universitys Carr Center of Human Rights bought what has become the Bush
administrations latest line on why we are in Iraq hook, line and sinker.
In a convoluted article that appeared in the New York Times Magazine on
June 26, Ignatieff makes the argument that Bush is the first President to
link fighting terrorism to promoting democracy in the rest of the world and
suggests that liberals and others on the left should be applauding him for
it. After all, says Ignatieff, if Bush succeeds he "will be remembered as a
plain- speaking visionary."
Nonsense.
The rhetorical title of Ignatieffs article is: "Who are Americans to Think
that Freedom is Theirs to Spread?" Well Thomas Jefferson was one, suggests
Ignatieff, and Bush is simply picking up the Jeffersonian mantle. That is
why he went to Iraq: To promote the exercise of reason, the rule of law,
human rights and democracy. More nonsense.
Well, some might say, even if that wasnt the original intention if that is
the likely outcome whats the difference? The answer is that it is not the
likely outcome. We already know the outcome: a hundred thousand Iraqis
killed, a country split into warring factions, and a rising tide of hatred
for our occupying army.
Still we shouldnt be surprised that Bush continues to lie about our
mission in Iraq. In order to inspire soldiers to fight you must convince
them that they are fighting for a cause they believe in. Bush often sounded
like a military recruiter on Tuesday night, hoping to overcome the dramatic
decline in enlistees for the army. It is not easy to get soldiers to put
their lives on the line for the Halliburton corporation.
So you tell them that they are fighting to spread freedom to the citizens
of Iraq and convince them that when they win the battle they can visit the
Empire State building because no Iraqis will be piloting planes into
skyscrapers in the United States. Then perhaps they can be sent back to the
Gulf to fight against the democratically elected government of Iran.
Ignatieff, to give him credit, does point out in his article that President
Bush heads an administration that has demonstrated "the least care for
consistency between what it says and does of any administration in modern
times." But then he makes no effort to explore why that is true. Had he
done so he might have come to understand that the Bush administration
represents the interests of wealthy plutocrats, reactionary
fundamentalists, and corporate executives. In attempting to further those
interests democracy and the rule of law are violated left and right.
The examples are by now legion:
The invasion of Iraq despite United Nations opposition; the torture of
prisoners in Iraq, Guantanamo, and Afghanistan; the promotion of key
officials connected with torture; the use of doctors to assist in that
torture; the holding of prisoners indefinitely without charges; the
rendition program that whisks alleged terrorists off the streets in
countries like Italy to sends them to Egypt to be tortured; the refusal to
recognize the International Criminal Court; the attempt to justify
violating the Geneva accords; and the promotion at home of legislation such
as the Patriot Act that undermines the Bill of Rights and helps stifle
dissent.
All this is done in the name of fighting terrorism and promoting democracy.
But as the June 25th edition of the conservative weekly The Economist
points out, "it cannot help the war on terror that so many people regard
America as an unprincipled bully." And as many others have pointed out,
what the Bush administration is seeking in Iraq is not a democratic regime
but a regime that will do its bidding.
Nevertheless, Ignatieff maintains that by not supporting the Bush
administrations nearly unilateral occupation of Iraq, his critics have
abandoned the Jeffersonian ideal of promoting democracy and the rule of law
around the world. Hence after reading his article one is left to wonder
whether the author himself hasnt lost something as highly prized as
democracy by Jefferson and other Enlightenment
thinkers --- i.e. the capacity to reason. Goebbels must be smiling.
Paul Cantor is a professor of economics at Norwalk Community College in
Connecticut and a human rights activist.
Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas
(CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Studies,
University of California, Berkeley. For his most recent books see:
http;//www.globalalternatives.org
DANGEROUS INCOMPETENCE
BOB HERBERT
New York Times
June 30, 2005
The president who displayed his contempt for Iraqi militants two years ago
with the taunt "bring 'em on" had to go on television Tuesday night to urge
Americans not to abandon support for the war that he foolishly started but
can't figure out how to win.
The Bush crowd bristles at the use of the "Q-word" --- quagmire --- to
describe American involvement in Iraq. But with our soldiers fighting and
dying with no end in sight, who can deny that Mr. Bush has gotten us into
"a situation from which extrication is very difficult," which is a standard
definition of quagmire?
More than 1,730 American troops have already died in Iraq. Some were little
more than children when they signed up for the armed forces, like Ramona
Valdez, who grew up in the Bronx and was just 17 when she joined the
Marines. She was one of six service members, including four women, who were
killed when a suicide bomber struck their convoy in Falluja last week.
Corporal Valdez wasn't even old enough to legally drink in New York. She
died four days shy of her 21st birthday.
On July 2, 2003, with evidence mounting that U.S. troop strength in Iraq
was inadequate, Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House, "There are some
who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My
answer is, Bring 'em on."
It was an immature display of street-corner machismo that appalled people
familiar with the agonizing ordeals of combat. Senator Frank Lautenberg, a
New Jersey Democrat, was quoted in The Washington Post as saying: "I am
shaking my head in disbelief. When I served in the Army in Europe during
World War II, I never heard any military commander --- let alone the
commander in chief --- invite enemies to attack U.S. troops."
The American death toll in Iraq at that point was about 200, but it was
clear that a vicious opposition was developing. Mr. Bush had no coherent
strategy for defeating the insurgency then, and now --- more than 1,500
additional deaths later --- he still doesn't.
The incompetence at the highest levels of government in Washington has
undermined the U.S. troops who have fought honorably and bravely in Iraq,
which is why the troops are now stuck in a murderous quagmire. If a
Democratic administration had conducted a war this incompetently, the
Republicans in Congress would be dusting off their impeachment manuals.
The administration seems to have learned nothing in the past two years.
Dick Cheney, who told us the troops would be "greeted as liberators," now
assures us that the insurgency is in its last throes. And the president,
who never listened to warnings that he was going to war with too few
troops, still refuses to acknowledge that there are not enough U.S. forces
deployed to pacify Iraq.
The Times's Richard A. Oppel Jr. wrote an article recently about a
tragically common occurrence in Iraq: U.S. forces fight to free cities and
towns from the grip of insurgents, and then leave. With insufficient forces
left behind to secure the liberated areas, the insurgents return.
"We have a finite number of troops," said Maj. Chris Kennedy of the Third
Armored Cavalry Regiment. "But if you pull out of an area and don't leave
security forces in it, all you're going to do is leave the door open for
them to come back. This is what our lack of combat power has done to us
throughout the country."
The latest fantasy out of Washington is that American-trained Iraqi forces
will ultimately be able to do what the American forces have not: defeat the
insurgency and pacify Iraq.
"We've learned that Iraqis are courageous and that they need additional
skills," said Mr. Bush in his television address. "And that is why a major
part of our mission is to train them so they can do the fighting, and then
our troops can come home."
Don't hold your breath. This is another example of the administration's
inability to distinguish between a strategy and a wish.
Whether one agreed with the launch of this war or not --- and I did not ---
the troops doing the fighting deserve to be guided by leaders in Washington
who are at least minimally competent at waging war. That has not been the
case, which is why we can expect to remain stuck in this tragic quagmire
for the foreseeable future.
WHY NO APPLAUSE
FROM THE TROOPS
FOR BUSH'S SPEECH ???
DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times
June 30, 2005
So what happened to the applause?
When President Bush visits military bases, he invariably receives a
foot-stomping, loud ovation at every applause line. At bases like Fort
Bragg --- the backdrop for his Tuesday night speech on Iraq --- the
clapping is often interspersed with calls of "Hoo-ah," the military's
all-purpose, spirited response to, well, almost anything.
So the silence during his speech was more than a little noticeable, both on
television and in the hall.
Yesterday, as Bush's repeated use of the imagery of the September 11
attacks drew bitter criticism from congressional Democrats, there was a
parallel debate under way about whether the troops sat on their hands
because they were not impressed, or because they thought that was their
order.
Capt. Tom Earnhardt, a public affairs officer at Fort Bragg who
participated in the planning for the president's trip, said that from the
first meetings with White House officials there was agreement that a hall
full of wildly cheering troops would not create the right atmosphere for a
speech devoted to policy and strategy.
"The guy from White House advance, during the initial meetings, said, 'Be
careful not to let this become a pep rally,'" Earnhardt recalled in an
interview. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, confirmed that
account.
As the message drifted down to commanders, it appears that it may have
gained an interpretation beyond what the administration's image-makers had
in mind. "This is a very disciplined environment," said Earnhardt, "and
some guys may have taken it a bit far," leaving the troops hesitant to
applaud.
After two presidential campaigns, Bush has finely tuned his sense of timing
for cueing applause. But when the crowd did not respond on Tuesday, he
seemed to speed up his delivery a bit. Then, toward the end of the
28-minute speech, there was an outbreak of clapping when Bush said, "We
will stay in the fight until the fight is done."
Terry Moran, an ABC White House correspondent, said on the air on Tuesday
night that the first to clap appeared to be a woman who works for the White
House, arranging events. Some other reporters had the same account, but
Earnhardt and others in the back of the room say the applause was started
by a group of officers.
While the White House tried to explain the silence, Democrats were critical
of Bush's use of the September 11 attacks --- comparing it to the
administration's argument, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that Saddam
Hussein had links to al-Qaida.
The independent commission that investigated the September 11 attacks found
no evidence of "a collaborative operational relationship" between Iraq and
Osama bin Laden's organization.
Sen. John Kerry, Dem.-Massachusetts, Bush's opponent in the 2004 election,
was among a chorus of Democrats who criticized Bush.
"What we need is a policy to get it right in Iraq," Kerry said on the NBC
morning program "Today." "The way you honor the troops is not to bring up
the memory of 9/11. It's to give the troops leadership that's equal to the
sacrifice."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Dem.-California, said Bush "is willing
to exploit the sacred ground of September 11, knowing that there is no
connection between September 11 and the war in Iraq."
On CBS' "Early Show," Sen. John McCain, Rep.-Arizona, challenged Bush on
troop strength.
"I'd send more troops over there, but I'd have to also take into
consideration that our Army, Guard and Reserve are very badly
overstressed," he said. "But I would have had more troops over there for a
long time."
There are now about 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
This report contains information from Cox News Service.
DEMOCRATS URGE
INQUIRY ON BUSH, IRAQ
PETE YOST
Associated Press
June 17, 2005
Amid new questions about President Bush's drive to topple Saddam Hussein,
several House Democrats urged lawmakers on Thursday to conduct an official
inquiry to determine whether the president intentionally misled Congress.
At a public forum where the word "impeachment" loomed large, Exhibit A was
the so-called Downing Street memo, a prewar document leaked from inside the
British government to The Sunday Times of London a month and a half ago.
Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary
Committee, organized the event.
Recounting a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair's national security team,
the memo says the Bush administration believed that war was inevitable and
was determined to use intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to
justify the ouster of Saddam.
"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," one of the
participants was quoted as saying at the meeting, which took place just
after British officials returned from Washington.
The president "may have deliberately deceived the United States to get us
into a war," Jerrold Nadler, Dem.-New York., said. "Was the president of
the United States a fool or a knave?"
The Democratic congressmen were relegated to a tiny room in the bottom of
the Capitol and the Republicans who run the House scheduled 11 major votes
to coincide with the afternoon event.
"We have not been told the truth," Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was
killed in Baghdad a year ago, told the Democrats. "If this administration
doesn't have anything to hide, they should be down here testifying."
The White House refuses to respond to a May 5 letter from 122 congressional
Democrats about whether there was a coordinated effort to "fix" the
intelligence and facts around the policy, as the Downing Street memo says.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan says Conyers "is simply trying to
rehash old debates."
Conyers and a half-dozen other members of Congress were stopped at the
White House gate later Thursday when they hand-delivered petitions signed
by 560,000 Americans who want Bush to provide a detailed response to the
Downing Street memo. When Conyers couldn't get in, an anti-war demonstrator
shouted, "Send Bush out!" Eventually, White House aides retrieved the
petitions at the gate and took them into the West Wing.
"Quite frankly, evidence that appears to be building up points to whether
or not the president has deliberately misled Congress to make the most
important decision a president has to make, going to war," Rep. Charles
Rangel of New York, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee,
said earlier at the event on Capitol Hill.
Misleading Congress is an impeachable offense, a point that Rangel
underscored by saying he's already been through two impeachments. He
referred to the impeachment of President Clinton for an affair with a White
House intern and of President Nixon for Watergate, even though Nixon
resigned to avoid impeachment.
Conyers pointed to statements by Bush in the run-up to invasion that war
would be a last resort. "The veracity of those statements has - to put it
mildly - come into question," he said.
Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson said, "We are having this discussion today
because we failed to have it three years ago when we went to war."
"It used to be said that democracies were difficult to mobilize for war
precisely because of the debate required," Wilson said, going on to say the
lack of debate in this case allowed the war to happen.
Wilson wrote a 2003 newspaper opinion piece criticizing the Bush
administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. After the
piece appeared someone in the Bush administration leaked the identity of
Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, exposing her cover.
Wilson has said he believes the leak was retaliation for his critical
comments. The Justice Department is investigating.
John Bonifaz, a lawyer and co-founder of a new group called
AfterDowningStreet.org, said the lack of interest by congressional
Republicans in the Downing Street memo is like Congress during Nixon's
presidency saying "we don't want" the Watergate tapes.
WAR AND WEAKNESS
RICHARD A. CLARKE
New York Times
June 19, 2005
In Washington, people in government often communicate with one another and
with the public in guarded, even coded statements. The mass media seldom
detect, note or explain these messages. Lately one of those messages has
been coming from senior American military officials, both on and off the
record. Their message, decrypted, is that things in Iraq are not going well
and may not do so for a while. Their corollary charge is that the American
military has been seriously damaged.
The top man in the military is about to retire. Perhaps sensing the freedom
of speech that comes with retirement, Gen. Richard B. Myers has let slip
two interesting observations. First, he noted that the insurgency is about
as strong now as it was a year ago. At a second appearance, he noted that
insurgencies like the one in Iraq have lasted seven to 12 years. It's not
hard to see the message that we may well be fighting in Iraq in 2012, at
the end of the next president's first term.
Although official administration spokesmen have for some time been saying
things like ''We have turned a corner in Iraq'' or ''We have broken the
back of the insurgency'' or ''The insurgents are in a last-gasp campaign,''
the truth seems to be otherwise. A brief quiet followed the Iraqi election,
but it has been broken by a sustained round of insurgent attacks.
Iraqi civilian casualties in May were up by 33% over April, while Iraqi
police deaths were up 75% over the same period. American military dead in
Iraq more than doubled last month over the lull in March. Because the need
for large numbers of troops there has remained much longer than originally
planned (some reports suggest that Pentagon civilian planners anticipated a
force of only 30,000 by 2004; we now have more than four times that number
in Iraq), many of the active-duty Army units in Iraq are on their second
deployments.
In addition to the thousands of American and Iraqi casualties, one victim
of this slow bleeding in Iraq is the American military as an institution.
Across America, the National Guard, designed to assist civil authorities in
domestic crises (like the pandemic of a lethal avian flu that some
public-health planners fear), is in tatters.
Re-enlistments are down, training for domestic support missions is spotty
at best, equipment is battered and many units are either in Iraq or on
their way to or from it. Now the rot is beginning to spread into the
regular Army. Recruiters are coming up dry, and some, under pressure to
produce new troops, have reportedly been complicit in suspect applications.
The implications for the all-volunteer military are significant. With
almost every unit in the Army on the conveyor belt into and out of Iraq,
few units are really combat-ready for other missions. If the North Korean
regime that is often called crazy were to roll its huge army the few
kilometers into South Korea, significant American reinforcements would be a
long time coming.
This raises the possibility that the United States may have to resort to
nuclear
weapons to stop the North Koreans, as has been contemplated with increasing
seriousness since the last Nuclear Posture Review in 2002.
The Army is already the smallest it has been since the Second World War. If
the current trend in volunteering for the Army continues for long, the
Pentagon may have to consider disbanding units or requesting the
reinstatement of the draft. Most military experts consider either option to
be a disaster for the Army as an institution, reducing its currently
limited capabilities.
By the end of President Bush's term, the war in Iraq could end up costing
$600 billion, more than six times what some administration officials had
projected. Now the many other costs are also beginning to become clearer.
Maybe it is time to at least begin a public dialogue about ''staying the
course.'' Opponents of an ''early'' departure of American forces say it
would result in chaos in Iraq. Yet we already have chaos, and how sure can
we be that sectarian fighting will not follow our departure whenever we
leave? Is it unpatriotic to ask if the major reason for the fighting in
Iraq is that we are still there?
Richard A. Clarke, an author and security consultant, was a senior adviser
to the last three presidents.
"DOWNING STREET MEMO"
HAS LINGERING EFFECT
CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Wall Street Journal
June 28, 2005
A series of three-year-old British documents seized upon by those who think
the Bush administration manipulated intelligence before the war with Iraq
has demonstrated unusual staying power. That is due in part to declining
public support for the conflict --- but it also has much to do with an
Internet campaign by war critics prodding journalists to talk about them.
Documents detailing the run-up to the Iraq war have been splashed across
London newspapers since they surfaced in the fall and hit a crescendo on
May 1 with the publication of the so-called Downing Street memo.
After a slow start in the U.S., a half-dozen liberal activists are having
some success in making the documents fodder for Capitol Hill rhetoric and
White House news briefings.
Their campaign comes at a dicey point for President Bush, who has seen
support for his Iraq policy erode amid the insurgent violence that has
followed January elections in that country. A spate of recent bombings in
Iraq has taken a heavy toll on Iraqi security forces and has produced fresh
anxiety in the U.S. about how long American troops will have to remain in
Iraq. Facing criticism from Democrats and some fellow Republicans, Mr. Bush
will deliver a nationally televised speech from Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
tonight in an attempt to regain the high ground in public opinion.
The documents, summarizing meetings between U.S. and British officials in
the spring and summer of 2002, appear to lend support to what
administration critics have long alleged: That the White House was
determined to invade Iraq nearly a year before it did and that it "fixed"
intelligence to justify the invasion. In many ways, though, the documents
don't reflect much new; at the time they were produced, U.S. news outlets
were speculating that Mr. Bush might be heading toward conflict in Iraq,
which is why they garnered little attention here when reported earlier.
Still, the memos have galvanized left-leaning activists in the U.S., with
some even saying the matter justifies impeachment proceedings against Mr.
Bush for lying to Congress.
Though congressional Republicans so far have declined to hold hearings,
minority Democrats have held their own mock hearing on the matter.
Meanwhile, the activists believe that a grass-roots Internet campaign to
prod the U.S. media into covering them is yielding fruit. At a joint White
House appearance recently, Mr. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
both denied they had fixed anything and said they preferred alternatives to
war. "There's nothing farther from the truth," Mr. Bush said. "Nobody wants
to commit military into combat. It's the last option."
The current Internet pressure from the left is reminiscent of a publicity
battle waged by conservatives during Mr. Bush's re-election run that
questioned Democrat John Kerry's service as a Swift Boat commander in
Vietnam and his antiwar activity that followed. Though Swift Boat Veterans
for Truth used some traditional media to get its message out, the group
mounted a potent cyberspace campaign that helped keep the issue at the fore
of the public debate.
"The coverage seems to be getting more intelligent," after reporters
initially gave the memos short shrift, says Jim Manley, a spokesman for
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Mr. Reid himself has begun
citing the documents in public remarks, ad libbing a reference to them in a
recent Senate floor speech.
The most politically provocative document summarized a July 2002 meeting
between Mr. Blair and other British officials. Though U.S. newspapers at
the time were swirling with leaked Pentagon war plans, Mr. Bush maintained
he was dedicated to finding a peaceful solution. The Downing Street memo
recounts a meeting between a British official referred to as "C" and his
U.S. counterpart. Media outlets in Britain and the U.S. have identified "C"
as a senior British intelligence official.
In the document, the senior British intelligence official reported "a
perceptible shift in attitude" about Iraq in Washington months before the
war. "Military action was now seen as inevitable," the document says, and
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the
conjunction of terrorism" and weapons of mass destruction. "But the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
In mid-May, three regular readers of Daily Kos, a liberal blog, published
their own Web site to publicize the documents. According to its operators,
Downingstreetmemo.com was created by a Silicon Valley Web-page designer, a
Chicago college student and a Canadian citizen certain they had stumbled
onto the smoking gun that could drag the Bush administration down.
They were joined later by three other Daily Kos readers, including Bob
Fesmire, husband of the Silicon Valley Web designer. Mr. Fesmire, a
marketing executive for an engineering business, said he returned from a
business trip to find his wife, Gina, obsessed with the leaked British
documents, so he read them. "I said, 'This is it -- this is what's going to
crack this whole thing open,' " Mr. Fesmire recalled. He was equally struck
by the lack of interest in the documents, even among liberals.
The idea to target news operations came from Michael Clark, a Pennsylvania
professor of ancient history and occasional poster to Daily Kos who didn't
know the Fesmires before joining the effort. Mr. Clark said he knew nothing
about running such a campaign but decided to contact three media outlets a
day, including the likes of C-Span, the Associated Press and The Wall
Street Journal.
On June 3, the group directed messages to NBC. On June 6, MSNBC did a
segment on the Downing Street memo. On June 9, Brian Williams, anchor and
managing editor of NBC's evening newscast, posted a request for a truce on
his Internet blog:
"One more note to those of you who are part of the mass email project on
the so-called Downing Street Memo: That's enough, we get it...it's an
important story...and all you're doing now is taking up computer space.
We're well aware of the story, we've covered it, and likely will again."
Mr. Clark broadened his efforts to include smaller newspaper chains and
newspapers, searching for email addresses of specific editors.
Downingstreetmemo isn't the only Internet-based group calling attention to
the British documents. Overall, the efforts appear to be working.
A search of U.S. publications and television news-program transcripts shows
that in the two weeks after the London Times broke its story, the Downing
Street memo was mentioned fewer than 100 times. The phrase has appeared
nearly 800 times since Mr. Clark's efforts began, although it isn't clear
the extent to which this is the result of his campaign.
Mr. Clark plans to turn his campaign on Congress this summer and has told
supporters to email Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of
Kansas. "I've been so busy with this that I haven't been out to spray my
orchard," Mr. Clark said. "I'm going to lose my crop this year." A
spokeswoman says the Republican senator has received about 40 emails but
doesn't plan to hold hearings.
Mr. Fesmire, the group's spokesman, said he is often asked who is really
behind Downingstreetmemo.com and what kind of support it is receiving from
national liberal groups. The truth, he said, is hard for some people to
swallow.
"It really is just six people, and I don't even know the name[s] of two of
them," he said. "People find it hard to believe it when I tell them that
for a $20 Web-hosting fee, you too can get something like this going."
1950'S REDUX:
ROVE REVIVES MCCARTHYISM
E.J. DIONNE JR.
Washington Post Writers Group
June 28, 2005
In the 1950s, the right wing attacked liberals for being communists. In
2005, Karl Rove has attacked liberals for being therapists. Thus is born a
kinder and gentler form of McCarthyism.
Named after the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, who never let the facts get in the
way of his lust to charge liberals with sedition, McCarthyism has come to
mean "guilt by association."
What gave McCarthyism its power was that the senator from Wisconsin did not
invent the danger posed to the United States by Soviet communism. The
Soviet Union was a real threat and there were real communist spies working
in America.
What made McCarthy and his allies so insidious was their eagerness to level
the "soft on communism" charge against even staunchly anti-communist
liberals. One of them was Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an architect of
Harry Truman's tough policy of containing Soviet power. In the 1952
presidential campaign, Richard Nixon pounded Democratic nominee Adlai
Stevenson for earning a "Ph.D from Dean Acheson's College of Cowardly
Communist Containment."
The McCarthyites' real enemies were not communists but the New Deal
liberals who had dominated American politics for 20 years. The McCarthy
crowd was willing to divide the nation at a time of grave international
peril if that's what it took to beat the liberals.
Rove's instantly famous speech last week to the New York state Conservative
Party should be read in light of this history and not be written off as a
cheap, one-time partisan attack. On the contrary, the address by Rove,
President Bush's most important adviser, provides the outlines of a
sophisticated strategy aimed at making liberals and Democrats all look soft
on terrorism.
Here are the key passages: "Conservatives saw the savagery of September 11
and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the
September 11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy
and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of September 11,
conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the
United States military against the Taliban; in the wake of September 11,
liberals believed it was time to submit a petition. ... Conservatives saw
what happened to us on September 11 and said: We will defeat our enemies.
Liberals saw what happened to us and said: We must understand our enemies."
Liberals and Democrats were enraged by Rove because virtually every
office-holding liberal and Democrat closed ranks behind President Bush on
September 11. They endorsed the use of force against the terrorists and,
when the time came, strongly backed the war in Afghanistan.
But Rove knows how to play this game. The only evidence he adduces for his
therapy charge is a petition in which the current executive director of
MoveOn.org called for "moderation and restraint" in the wake of September
11. Rove then slides smoothly from the attack on MoveOn to attacks on
Michael Moore and Howard Dean. Finally, Rove tosses in an assault on Sen.
Richard Durbin, Dem.-Illinois, for his statement that an FBI report on the
treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay might remind Americans of the
practices of Nazi and communist dictatorships.
In the ensuing controversy, Rove's defenders cleverly sought to pretend
that there was nothing partisan about Rove's speech. "Karl didn't say 'the
Democratic Party,' '' insisted Ken Mehlman, the Republican national
chairman. "He said 'liberals.' " It must have been purely accidental that
one of the "liberals" mentioned was the Democratic national chairman and
another was the Senate Democratic whip. It must also have been accidental
that both of them, like most other liberals, supported the war in
Afghanistan, not therapy. At the time, Durbin called the war "essential."
On Friday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan narrowed the Rove attack
even more. McClellan found it "puzzling" that Democrats were "coming to the
defense of liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and people like Michael
Moore, " when, in fact, Democrats were coming to their own defense.
McClellan also ignored what Mehlman had conceded the day before --- and
what the text of Rove's remarks plainly shows: That Rove was attacking
liberals generally, not just these two targets.
That's how guilt-by-association works. Make a charge and then --- once your
attack is out there --- pretend that your words have been misinterpreted.
Split your opponents. Put them on the defensive. Force them to say things
like: "No, we're not soft on terrorism," or, "I'm not that kind of
liberal." Once this happens, the attacker has already won.
Respectable opinion treats Rove's speech as just another partisan flap.
It's much more. It's the reincarnation of a style of politics that turns
political opponents into traitors or dupes who are soft on the nation's
enemies. Welcome back to the '50s.
...
A.V. Krebs contributes a regular column "Calamity Howler" to the bi-monthly
The
Progressive Populist. Sample copies of the paper and subscriptions can be
obtained at P.O. Box 487, Storm Lake, Iowa 50588 or at
<http://www.populist.com>http://www.populist.com
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