[Peace-discuss] News notes, for the AWARE meeting 2007-06-03

[C. G. Estabrook]

SUNDAY 3 JUNE 2007

[1] THE THEME OF THE WEEK IN US POLITICS IS FRAUDULENCE.  That's not 
surprising -- that's often the theme -- but the difference in the two 
official parties on the matter is.  The Republican program is not 
fraudulent, though expressed in obfuscating terms, while the Democratic 
program is.

[2] THE REPUBLICAN PROGRAM is the 'war on terrorism,' which many on the 
left have called a fraud, but in fact the description is accurate 
although euphemistic.  The Republican administration today is conducting 
real (not metaphorical) war against all who actively oppose American 
control of the governments of SW Asia and NE Africa, in order to control 
the region's energy resources, the key to the world economy.  Of course 
these opponents are called indifferently 'terrorists,' although their 
methods don't differ fundamentally from American methods, and thus we 
have a war on terrorism rather than a 'war on anti-imperialism.'

[3] Similarly, two generations ago in SE Asia, the American program was 
accurately described by the 'domino theory,' despite efforts of American 
liberals to describe the theory as false.  In those days our government 
killed millions of people in peasant societies in Indochina because they 
refused to accept the political and economic regimes that we had picked 
out for them.  We feared that successful defiance of US wishes would 
spread -- like falling dominoes knocking over others -- and so had to be 
prevented in Vietnam.  The CIA-directed massacre of a million opponents 
of what became our client government in Indonesia in 1965 was presented 
as mutually justifying and justified by the war in Vietnam, in terms of 
the domino theory.  Of course then the enemy was presented as communism, 
for which the Reagan administration had to substitute terrorism, owing 
to the desuetude of official Marxism-Leninism.

[4] THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM US warships shelled mountain 
villages in the jungle of northern Somalia.  They also apparently used 
cruise missiles, which (altho' we've almost forgotten) the Clinton 
administration used against Iraq and Sudan, resulting in the deaths of 
thousands in the latter country.  This week the semi-autonomous region 
of Puntland in Somalia apparently asked the US for help against a group 
of jihadis, perhaps refugees from the popular government of Somalia, the 
Islamic Courts Union, overthrown by Ethiopia at American direction. 
This attack was at least the third carried out by US military forces in 
the region since the US-backed invasion.

[5] The New York Times on Saturday carried an article that had to be 
read between the lines more than usual, but when that was done the 
article revealed the fraudulence of the Save Darfur Coalition, an 
Israeli lobby front group active in the US.  NGOs working in Darfur say 
that the moneys collected by the coalition go to demonizing an "Arab" 
government -- consistent with the US-Israeli propaganda campaign in the 
region -- rather than aiding refugees from the rebellion in the west of 
the country.  The US is engaged in a contest with China over African 
oil. The World Bank, under neocon direction and acting as a agent of 
American policy, is losing the battle for influence in Africa to the 
Chinese.  Only the US uses the term genocide in regard to Darfur, and 
the article draws a direct parallel with the use of the charge of 
genocide to justify the Clinton administration's attack on Kosovo. 
Former Clinton administration officials have been calling for US 
military action against Sudan on that model.

[6] IN IRAQ, the month of May saw the deaths of at least 127 Americans 
-- and 14 more dead American soldiers this weekend.  The US government 
this week casually admitted what has been generally known but not 
acknowledged in US politics: they have no intention of ever leaving 
Iraq, despite various talk of withdrawal.  The model, it was said, is 
Korea, where the US has 30,000 troops to this day, more than fifty years 
after establishing an acceptable government in the Korean civil war. 
Perhaps significantly, the US military in Iraq began using the term 
cease-fire this week.  Although personalities come and go and party 
control of the government seems to change, US policy remains remarkably 
consistent over time.

[7] THUS THE DEMOCRATIC PROGRAM is obviously fraudulent, especially 
among those Democratic candidates who announce themselves as anti-war or 
in favor of withdrawal.  Voted in last fall to end the war, the 
Democrats have labored through the winter to neutralize the anti-war 
sentiment of two-thirds of the American people.  Their efforts bore 
fruit in what is being called the 'Memorial Day Betrayal,' as a majority 
of Democrats in the Congress voted to give the administration all the 
money it wants to kill people in the Middle East.  The cynicism was 
particularly notable when -- once the Democrats pro-war majority was 
established in the Senate -- the presidential candidates Clinton and 
Obama were allowed to cast meaningless grandstanding votes against 
funding  -- which of course they had not worked to oppose.  As 
conservative war critic Prof. (and formerly Col.) Andrew Bacevich said 
after his son had died in Iraq last month, "What kind of democracy is 
this when the people do speak and the people's voice is unambiguous -- 
but nothing happens?"

[8] We should be clear that it wasn't just fecklessness from the 
Democrats -- they worked hard to see that nothing happened.  Some 
Democrats say clearly that by withdrawal they mean re-missioning, 
whereby the US retains control in Iraq from its billion-dollar embassy 
and permanent base while expanding the war in Afghanistan ("the real war 
on terror").  Some such as Obama continue with hysterical threats 
against Iran (aided by the press), far beyond the the more temperate 
comments of the head of the US Central Command, Admiral Fallon, and even 
the Secretary of State (who nevertheless tried to prevent the EU from 
actually talking to the Iranians this week).

[9] It was the fraudulence of the Democrats on the war, said Cindy 
Sheehan in a Memorial Day message, that prompted her to retire from the 
peace movement.  Now, in order to distract from their non-feasance on 
the war, the Democrats are hawking health care, which they think is a 
winning issue for them.  It's obviously a real concern for Americans, as 
it has been since the Democrats started hawking it sixty years ago.

[10] Senator Obama announced a plan this week, and it's a fraud.  He had 
the temerity to call it "universal heath care," but it's simply a plan 
like those of Clinton and Edwards, which at best would require people to 
have health insurance the way we're now required to have auto insurance. 
  Romney, the Republican candidate, actually instituted such a plan when 
he was governor of Massachusetts.  These plans should not be confused 
with the systems of government-paid health care in, say, Canada and 
France, where you're treated on the basis of how sick you are, not how 
well-off you are.  Obama's plan would simply guarantee that big 
insurance companies and HMOs would be paid, on the bipartisan principle 
that if you want to do anything in our increasingly unequal society, you 
have to pay the rich people first.  And it would be done largely though 
employers, who would therefore continue to have an even more effective 
control over their workers than wages (i.e., how can you strike for 
higher wages when you might lose your health insurance?)

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