[Peace-discuss] John Pilger's article on Kerry (2)

[Morton K.Brussel]

This is entertaining! See my random rejoinders, below:

On Mar 8, 2004, at 2:57 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> Mort--
>
> Some specifics. You object particularly to the following paragraph form
> Pilger's article:
>
>> "The truth is that Clinton was little different from Bush, a
>> crypto-fascist. During the Clinton years, the principal welfare safety
>> nets were taken away and poverty in America increased sharply; a
>> multibillion-dollar missile "defense" system known as Star Wars II was
>> instigated; the biggest war and arms budget in history was approved;
>> biological weapons verification was rejected, along with a
>> comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, the establishment of an
>> international criminal court and a worldwide ban on landmines.
>> Contrary to a myth that places the blame on Bush, the Clinton
>> administration in effect destroyed the movement to combat global
>> warming."
>
> [1] I'm unhappy with the term "crypto-fascist." It might be defended in
> terms of what Clinton, unprincipled as he was, would have done in more
> extreme circumstances, but that's conjecture.  Fascism refers at least 
> to
> a more authoritarian regime than the US has.  The methods of control 
> are
> different -- propaganda, rather than police repression of elites. (That
> often doesn't help non-elites: Clinton's America imprisoned more of 
> them
> per capita than any other country in the world.)

NC.
>
> [2] You "would not agree that Clinton was little different from Bush," 
> but
> surely the issue is how important those differences were.  Since they 
> both
> served the same masters, I think it's correct to assume, not much. 
> Hence
> "his destructive policies, foreign and domestic," as you say.

Too subjective to argue, but I would refer you to Chomsky's quote on 
the importance of such (small) differences when the issues are so 
important.
>
> [3] "Ashcroft and the justice department" -- cf. the burning of 
> dissidents
> at Waco (Ashcroft's just imprisoning them) and the "Effective Death
> Penalty Act" after the OKC bombing.  Had Clinton been in office after 
> 911,
> I have no doubt he'd have rushed through he Patriot Act too -- which,
> after all, was sitting on the shelf because it was a police wish-list
> prepared during the Clinton years...

Are you saying that Ashcroft is better than what's her name from 
Florida? I agree that the Death Penalty Act was a vicious law, leading 
to the execution of innocents, but it had nowhere near the sweep of 
what's occurred under Ashcroft and Patriot I and II.
>
> [4] "...court appointments -- guys like Pryor and Pickering wouldn't 
> have
> been nominated by Clinton."  I think far too much is made of this: 
> look at
> the Supreme Court appointments, back to Eisenhower.  The best have 
> often
> come from Republicans, the worst form Democrats.  Furthermore, liberals
> make a great error relying on the courts to save them.  The courts
> discover rights only when popular movements demand them -- witness
> minority civil rights, free speech.

Scalia, Thomas, Rundquist ??? How bad can you get?  Eisenhower may have 
been as "liberal" as Clinton,  but that comparison is irrelevant now, 
when the Repubs are now in the hands of fundamentalist ideologues.
I don't believe that Kerry would nominate people as right wing as would 
Bush.
>
> [5] "...women's and minority rights..." -- often code for a defense of
> sanctity of abortion, the defense of which allowed feminist groups to
> give Clinton a pass on real progressive issues from welfare to health
> care. As Alex Cockburn wrote after Clinton's first 100 days, "He's no
> friend of the unborn and unwanted, and that's enough to keep the 
> liberals
> happy ...  Bottom line: Clinton has been good on anything irrelevant to
> the stability of power and wealth."

I'm for a woman's right to choose, and I don't believe that a inchoate 
foetus
  is "a human being" . No brain, no independence, no articulated 
features,…. That gets one to the contentious question of what really is 
a human being, not just the potential to be one. That there is a 
continuous development to born baby from incipient fertilized ovum is 
undeniable, but the extremes are easy to distinguish. We know a lot 
about such things [conductor vs. insulator, for example] in physics, 
and it doesn't confuse us. In any case, women's rights are not 
exhausted by the issue of abortion, and minority rights are another 
issue altogether. Since I' don't believe in divinity, I like to avoid 
words as "sanctity".
>
> [6] "...environmental records and appointments (Clinton's was not
> exemplary, but was far better than Bush's)."  Far better?  I'd 
> recommend
> two books by the best environmental writer in he country, Jeff St. 
> Clair
> -- Al Gore: A User's Manual, and Been Brown So Long It Looked Like 
> Green
> to Me.

I've got the book! Useful, but withall, the Bush record is far worse: 
pollution, smoke stack emissions, wilderness, national forest 
management, etc.  Look who has been put in charge (Whitman resigned in 
disgust?) of the EPA and the Energy Department (Abraham).
>
> [7] "...general appointments to government agencies, even military
> programs."  In some cases certainly, but some pretty wretched ones, 
> too --
> e.g., see St. Clair on Babbitt.

OK. But I stand by what I said. Babbitt compared to whom?
>
> [8] "Star Wars ideas came on stage in the Reagan administration, not
> Clinton's; Clinton unfortunately did not suppress budgeting for them, 
> but
> took a middling, compromising, position, very different from what we 
> are
> now confronting."  Not only "did not suppress" but continued, and I 
> think
> you minimize what he did.  There's a great deal of continuity
> Reagan-Bush1-Clinton-Bush2 on this, and some of Clinton's moves were 
> quite
> shocking, e.g., "Clinton negotiators encouraged Russia to adopt
> Washington's launch-on-warning strategy to alleviate Russian concerns 
> over
> BMD and annulment of the ABM treaty..."!
> <www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2001-07/03chomsky.htm>.

I've followed this fairly closely, it being related to my professional 
interests.
Clinton was unsatisfactory, but not in the same league with the Bush 
junta with their ideas about the control of space. Clinton continually 
equivocated. Mostly, he was covering his right wing assaults from 
Congress. Bush is putting in place(!) an ABM system which is totally 
unrealistic and unproved.

>
> [9] "It is not true that 'the biggest war and arms budget in history 
> was
> approved' in the Clinton years ... it was higher in the Reagan and 
> Bush II
> years."  I think you're right about this.  But remember that the 
> Clinton
> years saw the end of the Cold War, the justification for US military
> spending -- and nothing happened.  There was no "peace dividend." Who 
> even
> remembers the phrase?  The Clinton administration showed that "defense"
> was never the issue.

The peace dividend was mostly scuttled by Bush I, but the military 
budget dropped by about a third from Reagan's peak to the Clinton years 
(constant dollars).
>
> [10] "Biological weapons verification, renunciation of the 
> international
> court of justice, the Kyoto global warming protocol, were not rejected 
> by
> Clinton, although he was not proactive in supporting these. There was a
> lot of opposition from the Congress here which he did not seek to 
> fight."
> Not exactly; see the following from August 1999
> <http://www.stimson.org/cbw/?sn=cb20020113265>:
>
> "A 14 July White House nonproliferation fact sheet points to a series 
> of
> accomplishments during President Bill Clinton's tenure that have 
> resulted
> in "unprecedented progress" in stemming the spread of nuclear, chemical
> and biological weapons. Although the document's positive focus is
> understandable, historians may not treat the Clinton Administration so
> kindly. Clinton's second term has been marked by missed opportunities 
> and
> backsliding on weapons of mass destruction, not by accomplishments.

"Backsliding", "missed opportunities" is a key word(s) describing 
Clinton. They would not apply to the aggressive policies of Bush.
>
> "For example, Clinton ignored the chance to secure swift passage of the
> Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in his first term. Credit for gaining
> Senate approval of this treaty in April 1997 goes not to the Clinton
> Administration, but to the U.S. chemical industry, esteemed military
> commanders, and Senate leaders who fought for the CWC's passage. Once 
> the
> CWC was activated, the Clinton Administration allowed the implementing
> legislation to languish, which embarrassingly put the United States in
> noncompliance with the accord for failing to submit required 
> declarations
> of U.S. industry activities. Furthermore, the White House approved
> damaging exemptions in the implementing legislation, which finally 
> passed
> last October, that would undercut the CWC's sampling and challenge
> inspection tools..."

This does not refute my statement. On the contrary.
>
> [11] "[Pilger writes] 'the Democratic party has left a larger trail of
> blood, theft and subjugation than the Republicans.' Pilger is not 
> serious,
> as the French say, in view now of events in Iraq, Afghanistan, and 
> what is
> to come."  A good bit of the rest of the article is devoted to
> illustrating that point, which may not be worth it. I think it can be
> sustained in the history of the 20th century, but there's not much to
> choose between the two parties on this issue -- that's what the 
> principle
> of "bi-partisan foreign policy" has meant -- "disputes stop at the 
> water's
> edge."

Again, it's not just a question of the two parties, but of the 
administrations. We have to decide which of projected administrations 
is likely to be worse to the world. Pilger implies that it doesn't make 
any difference. I strongly disagree.
>
> [12] "True, Vietnam can be ascribed to Kennedy, Johnson et al, but 
> carried
> on by Nixon and Kissinger, during whose reign, most of the deaths
> occurred." In fact almost two-thirds of the Americans who died in 
> Vietnam
> were dead by the time Nixon assumed office.  The Harris poll showed 
> that a
> substantial number of those who voted for Nixon in 1972 did so because
> they thought he would end the war sooner than McGovern.

I don't believe the last statement. On the question of casualties in 
Vietnam, I've looked up the numbers. Most military casualties occurred 
AFTER Nixon took office in 1968, as I stated [See, e.g.,  
www.grunt.com/vietnamwarcasualites.htm].   Civilian casualty numbers 
are less sure; the U.S. wasn't much interested in those. If one adds in 
the Cambodia bombing and its after effects, the casualty figures are 
even worse.  One can also discuss the Indonesia massacre under 
Kissinger. However, this is not a crucial point. The point is that 
Pilger just lays out his claim without justification.
>
> [13] "Although the left-right political spectra of Dems and Repubs do
> overlap considerably, there is no doubt that the centroids of the
> distributions are quite different. There were/are no equivalent Morses,
> Fullbrights, McCarthys, McGoverns, even Durbins, Wellstones, Kucinichs,
> Leahys, Black Caucus, in the Republican spectrum."  The Democratic
> liberals all voted for the Iraq invasion.  The only principled,
> anti-imperialist attacks on the neocon policy from within the major
> parties came from paleo-conservatives -- Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, the
> American Conservative, Chronicles, etc.

The Black caucus, and other Dems, didn't vote for the war; were they 
not principled?   How many Repubs voted against the war compared to 
Dems? The point is obvious. As for Pat Buchanan; I remember how much of 
a cold warrior he was. Also, he doesn't seem to identify with the 
Repubs much any more. I don't know where he's now coming from--maybe 
he's getting wiser. In any case, there is no comparison between the 
number of Dems against the war and the number of Repubs. The Dems win 
hands down I'm sure. the Repubs win hands down insofar as members 
belonging to the (fundamentalist) far right.
>
> As I said, I think the paramount concern is getting the Bush
> administration out of office, but it's hard to deny the force of Debs'
> remark, "It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to
> vote for what you don't want and get it."

I don't want Bush and company. I'll hold my nose and vote for Kerry. I 
can (only) hope that he will  be far less malign. Nader doesn't seem to 
be seriously in play. Hence, the last quote doesn't quite apply to our 
current situation.

I guess this is enough. Cheers, Mort