[Peace-discuss] Kolko on the election

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The following is from Gabriel Kolko, described by Jeff St. Clair as 
"the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the 
classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, 
Another Century of War? and The Age of War. He has also written the best 
history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the 
Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is After Socialism."]

...Bush made the election a referendum on the war and was badly 
repudiated; his party suffered a disaster. Disorientation, depression, 
and defeat have left the president and his neoconservatives adrift. They 
have power, two more years of it, and we are at the mercy of people who 
are irresponsible and dangerous. Their rhetoric proved a recipe for 
disaster in Afghanistan and Iraq -- a surrealistic nightmare. The 
American public is largely antiwar (55 percent of those who voted 
disapproved of the war, most of them strongly); *they voted against the 
war and only tangentially for Democrats, most of who vaguely implied 
they would do something about the Iraq war but immediately after the 
election shamelessly reaffirmed their support for its essence* [emphasis 
added]. But people, and voters in particular, are such a nuisance 
everywhere. More quickly than in the past, they respond to reality, 
which means that traditional politicians must betray them very speedily. 
They create certain decisive parameters that ambitious politicians flout 
at greater risk than ever because the people have shown themselves ready 
to vote the rascals -- whether Democrats in 1952 and 1968 or Republicans 
last November -- out of office. The American public is more antiwar than 
ever, and no one can predict what the future holds, including some 
Republicans outflanking the Democrats from a sort of antiwar left so 
that they can remain, or gain, office...

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