[Peace-discuss] Dean sells out the antiwar movement

[C. G. Estabrook]

	March 28, 2005
	Howard Dean Still Selling Out the Antiwar Movement
	by Joshua Frank


It was just over two years ago that I learned a little-known "antiwar"
Democrat from Vermont was planning to run for president. At a rally on the
eve of Bush's Iraq invasion, a fellow protester handed me a leaflet
touting the now infamous Howard Dean, hoping that the propaganda would
entice me to support his forthcoming candidacy.

Of course, I was intrigued. Few other Democrats were speaking out against
the imminent war on Iraq. Luckily, I ended up not taking the bait.
Nevertheless, many other activists unabashedly latched onto the Dean
campaign in hopes he would represent their interests in Washington.
Luckily for Howard, they all had credit cards and Internet access. But as
the story goes, Dean was embarrassingly sacked during the primaries and
his followers were told to traverse the pro-war Kerry trail instead.

Howard Dean isn't dead yet, however, as he has safely landed himself a
lofty position within the establishment as chair of the Democratic
National Committee. Unfortunately, Dean's nomination means little to the
peace movement, as his antiwar convictions have vanished.

The second anniversary of the Iraq war came and past, yet the most popular
"antiwar" Democrat remains speechless. Dean has said nothing about Bush's
potential forays in Iran and Syria. He has not muttered a single word
about ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Should we be surprised?

Nope. Howard Dean's "antiwar" convictions haven't vanished – they never
existed to begin with.

Looking back into the dirty Dean files, we find that the good doctor has
had a long pro-war history. He praised the first Gulf War, NATO's
intervention in Bosnia, Bill Clinton's bombing of Sudan and Iraq. He even
went so far as to write President Clinton a love letter praising his
foreign policy in 1995 as the U.S. waged a brutal air attack on Serbia,
bringing death and destruction upon civilians and the infrastructure that
provided their only life support.

As Dean told to President Clinton: "I think your policy up to this date
has been absolutely correcy. … Since it is clearly no longer possible to
take action in conjunction with NATO and the United Nations, I have
reluctantly concluded that we must take unilateral action." According to
most postwar accounts, U.S. air bombardment left the Serbian military
relatively unscathed, while ethnic cleansing and violence increased
drastically.

Nonetheless, Governor Dean supported Clinton's deadly policy without a
wince of shame.

Candidate Dean was no different. Despite voicing his opposition to Bush's
war when he entered the race for the White House, he never wholeheartedly
opposed overthrowing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. In September 2002,
Dean had announced that if Saddam failed to comply with the demands of the
United Nations, the U.S. reserved the right to "go into Iraq." Dean
claimed he would gladly endorse a multilateral effort to destroy Saddam's
regime. In fact, Dean wasn't even opposed to a unilateral effort lacking
the support of the UN, NATO, or the European Union (see Part Two
forthcoming).

On NBC's Meet the Press in July 2003, Dean told Tim Russert that the
United States must increase its pressure on Saudi Arabia and Iran. "We
have to be very, very careful of Iran" because President Bush "is too
beholden to the Saudis and the Iranians," he explained. But later in the
broadcast, he conceded, "I support the president's War on Terrorism." Dean
even went so far as to tell Russert: "I believe that we need a very
substantial increase in troops. They don't all have to be American troops.
My guess would be that we would need at least 30,000 and 40,000 additional
troops."

In a New York primary debate two months later, Dean elaborated: "We need
more troops. They're going to be foreign troops [in Iraq], not more
American troops, as they should have been in the first place. Ours need to
come home." Dean, it seems, would have had the disorder in Iraq go on at
all costs, though he wasn't quite sure whose soldiers should do the
occupying.

When Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich grilled Dean during that same debate
about Bush's $87 billion Iraq package, Dean claimed that he would support
it since "we have no choice … we have to support our troops."

So do we support our troops by bringing them home, or by financing the
occupation? The self-proclaimed antiwar candidate never clarified.

War Opposition a Political Move

On April 9, 2003, Howard Dean all but endorsed George W. Bush's preemptive
(preventive) war doctrine. Though Dean didn't join in the hawks'
celebration of Bush's "liberation of Iraq" that day, he stressed the
necessity of pressuring Iran and North Korea, saying he would not rule out
the use of military force to do so. As Glen Johnson of the Boston Globe
quoted Dean as saying on April 10, 2003, "Under no circumstances can we
permit North Korea to have a nuclear program. … Nor, under any
circumstances, can we allow Iran to have nuclear weapons."

By conceding that effective containment of such rogue states may
necessitate the use of force, Dean endorsed a preemptive creed that has
had the effect of isolating the United States from the international
community. It goes without saying that by embracing the doctrine, Dean's
foreign policy vision would not have reversed this trend.

Despite the similarities between Dean and Bush on preemption, many antiwar
liberals eagerly embraced Dean's nuanced position against the Iraq war. As
he told National Public Radio political correspondent Mara Liasson, "There
are two groups of people who support me because of the war. … One are
the people who always oppose every war, and in the end … I probably
won't get all of those people." The other group, Dean said, were
constituents who supported his Iraq position because he spoke out early
and "represented the facts."

But this so-called "representation of the facts" demands closer
examination, as it contradicts Dean's "antiwar" label.

According to Dean, had Bush produced accurate data proving that Saddam
harbored weapons of mass destruction, Dean would have supported the
unilateral invasion of Iraq. As Ron Brownstein reported in The Los Angeles
Times on Jan. 31, 2003, Dean said, "[I]f Bush presents what he considered
to be persuasive evidence that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction,
he would support military action, even without UN authorization." However,
Dean failed to note that the UN Charter forbids member countries from
attacking another country except in self-defense.

Just one month later, Dean alienated his antiwar base, admitting in a Feb.
20 Salon.com interview: "[I]f the UN in the end chooses not to enforce its
own resolutions, then the U.S. should give Saddam 30 to 60 days to disarm,
and if he doesn't, unilateral action is a regrettable, but unavoidable,
choice." Dean, had he taken a legitimate antiwar position, would have
argued that when the U.S. puts itself above international law, as it did
by disregarding the UN Charter, it further encourages other nations to do
the same.

As Dean initially articulated his muddled position on Iraq, Danny
Sebright, one of the premier architects of Bush's Afghanistan conflict,
played puppeteer behind the theatrical curtain. According to Sean Donahue,
the Project Director of the Corporations and Militarism Project of the
Massachusetts Anti-Corporate Clearinghouse, Sebright constructed and wrote
Dean's early statements on war. At that time, Sebright worked under Donald
Rumsfeld at the Pentagon as the director of the Executive Secretariat for
Enduring Freedom. As Donahue wrote in an Oct. 30, 2003 article on
CounterPunch:

"When Sebright left the Pentagon in February of 2002, he went to work for
his old boss, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, at the Cohen
Group, a Washington-based consulting company. The firm uses its political
connections to help companies obtain contracts with the Pentagon and with
foreign governments. While it is discreet about its clientele, the Cohen
Group does list some of its successes on its Web site – a list that
includes helping to negotiate arms sales to Latin American and Eastern
European countries, and Advis[ing] and assist[ing] [a] U.S. company in
working with U.S. government officials and the Coalition Provisional
Authority in securing major contracts related to Iraq reconstruction."

The fact that a close Dean advisor worked for a consulting firm involved
in pitching contracts for reconstruction projects in Iraq raises questions
about the true motives of Dean's support for the president's $87 billion
Iraqi reconstruction program.

Dean's choice of Sebright as an advisor shows how little difference there
actually was between Dean and the Bush administration on the issue of the
Iraq war.

Based on the statements made by Dean after announcing his campaign in the
summer of 2003, it appears that he only opposed the war in Iraq because he
didn't believe the Bush administration had proven that Iraq posed an
"imminent threat" to the United States.

Certainly, there are many reasons he should have raised opposition to the
Iraq war. However, by failing to do so, it became quite clear that Dean
was not an "antiwar" candidate. The fact is, Dean proved he was just
another politician from the Democratic mainstream whose position on Iraq
was not grounded on a philosophical aversion to war. On the contrary,
Howard Dean's opposition was political in nature.
 
 
 
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