[Peace-discuss] Parties to the right of the people (II)

[C. G. Estabrook]

"To establish his national security bona fides, Obama reminds us that he is more 
hawkish than McCain on Afghanistan ... He is also no slouch when it comes to 
Pakistan..."

	Obama, McCain and the VFW

John McCain’s speech to the VFW convention and Barack Obama’s response 
encapsulate the differences between the two parties. The Republicans go for the 
jugular and the Democrats are only too happy to unbutton their shirt collar. 
This has been a feature of American presidential politics going back to the 
1970s and will probably continue into the future until the Democratic Party 
finally goes the way of the Whigs into the scrapheap of American electoral politics.

The most quoted section of McCain’s speech has raised all sorts of alarms in the 
liberal establishment:

"With less than three months to go before the election, a lot of people are 
still trying to square Senator Obama’s varying positions on the surge in Iraq. 
First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then 
he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge. Not 
content to merely predict failure in Iraq, my opponent tried to legislate 
failure. This was back when supporting America’s efforts in Iraq entailed 
serious political risk. It was a clarifying moment. It was a moment when 
political self-interest and the national interest parted ways. For my part, with 
so much in the balance, it was an easy call. As I said at the time, I would 
rather lose an election than lose a war.

"Thanks to the courage and sacrifice of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and 
Marines and to brave Iraqi fighters the surge has succeeded. And yet Senator 
Obama still cannot quite bring himself to admit his own failure in judgment. Nor 
has he been willing to heed the guidance of General Petraeus, or to listen to 
our troops on the ground when they say — as they have said to me on my trips to 
Iraq: “Let us win, just let us win.” Instead, Senator Obama commits the greater 
error of insisting that even in hindsight, he would oppose the surge. Even in 
retrospect, he would choose the path of retreat and failure for America over the 
path of success and victory. In short, both candidates in this election pledge 
to end this war and bring our troops home. The great difference is that I intend 
to win it first."

You’ll note that McCain gives no quarter. He says that Obama “tried to prevent 
funding”-in other words he wanted to send men and women into battle with nothing 
but butter knives and peashooters. This kind of traitor seeks to “legislate 
failure” and “lose a war”. He would “choose the path of retreat and failure for 
America.” If you want a precedent for this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, see 
the following:

"The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our 
only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather 
because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this 
Nation. It has not been the less fortunate, or members of minority groups who 
have been traitorous to this Nation, but rather those who have had all the 
benefits that the wealthiest Nation on earth has had to offer . . . the finest 
homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in government we can 
give." –-Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950

When you turn to Obama’s rebuttal, the first thing you notice is the air of 
deference to McCain even though the man’s spittle is dripping from his face: 
“Yesterday, Senator McCain came before you. He is a man who has served this 
nation honorably…” He also makes sure to blow a kiss to a couple of other 
war-makers: “Let me once again praise General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker - 
they are outstanding Americans.” Instead of demanding that McCain apologize for 
calling him a traitor, Obama says: “That is John McCain’s prerogative. He can 
run that kind of campaign, and - frankly - that’s how political campaigns have 
been run in recent years.”

To establish his national security bona fides, Obama reminds us that he is more 
hawkish than McCain on Afghanistan:

"For years, I have called for more resources and more troops to finish the fight 
in Afghanistan. With his overwhelming focus on Iraq, Senator McCain argued that 
we could just “muddle through” in Afghanistan, and only came around to 
supporting my call for more troops last month. Now, we need a policy of “more 
for more” - more from America and our NATO allies, and more from the Afghan 
government."

He is also no slouch when it comes to Pakistan:

"We must also recognize that we cannot succeed in Afghanistan or secure America 
as long as there is a terrorist safe-haven in northwest Pakistan. A year ago, I 
said that we must take action against bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have 
them in our sights and Pakistan cannot or will not act. Senator McCain 
criticized me and claimed that I was for “bombing our ally.” So for all of his 
talk about following Osama bin Laden to the Gates of Hell, Senator McCain 
refused to join my call to take out bin Laden across the Afghan border. Instead, 
he spent years backing a dictator in Pakistan who failed to serve the interests 
of his own people."

The last time I heard this kind of attempt of a Democrat to “out-hawk” a 
Republican was back when every Democrat nominee’s favorite president was running 
for office, as presidential historian Michael Beschloss wrote in the N.Y Times:

"No candidate risked more by shilling for votes than John F. Kennedy, who in 
1960 sowed the seeds of two of the gravest crises of his Presidency. Casting 
about for an issue that would break his dead heat against Richard Nixon, he 
demanded that the United States use ”fighters for freedom” to overthrow Fidel 
Castro. (He jocularly told an aide that there was no harm in castigating the 
Republicans for Cuba: ”They never told us how they would have saved China.”)"

When Kennedy won one of the closest races in history, he was helped by those who 
expected him to be tougher than Nixon on Castro. This added to the pressure on 
the newly elected President to approve the C.I.A.’s plans to invade Cuba at the 
Bay of Pigs, yielding the greatest failure and embarrassment of Kennedy’s career.

And just to make sure that everybody understands that he is no traitor, Obama 
concludes his toothless rebuttal by draping himself in the stars and stripes. It 
really gets nauseating at this point:

"Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country. I love 
America, so do you, and so does John McCain. When I look out at this audience, I 
see people of different political views. You are Democrats and Republicans and 
Independents. But you all served together, and fought together, and bled 
together under the same proud flag. You did not serve a Red America or a Blue 
America - you served the United States of America…

"I still remember the day that we laid my grandfather to rest. In a cemetery 
lined with the graves of Americans who have sacrificed for our country, we heard 
the solemn notes of Taps and the crack of guns fired in salute; we watched as a 
folded flag was handed to my grandmother and my grandfather was laid to rest. It 
was a nation’s final act of service and gratitude to Stanley Dunham - an America 
that stood by my grandfather when he took off the uniform, and never left his side.

"This is what we owe our troops and our veterans. Because in every note of Taps 
and in every folded flag, we hear and see an unwavering belief in the idea of 
America. The idea that no matter where you come from, or what you look like, or 
who your parents are, this is a place where anything is possible; where anyone 
can make it; where we look out for each other, and take care of each other; 
where we rise and fall as one nation - as one people. It’s an idea that’s worth 
fighting for - an idea for which so many Americans have given that last full 
measure of devotion. Now it falls to us to advance that idea just as so many 
generations have before."

The real question is why the Democrats refuse to go for the jugular in the same 
way that the Republicans do. Why do they fight with one hand tied behind their 
back or look like one of the patsy opponents of the Harlem Globetrotters, like 
the New Jersey Generals, etc.?

At the risk of sounding like an unrepentant Marxist, I think that the answer has 
a class dimension. McCain appeals to an electorate that has unified class 
interests. From the oil company barons to the small town, white and Christian 
Babbitt shopkeepers and insurance company executives, they know what they want 
and how to get it. The goal is to reduce taxes and government expenditures and 
any means must be adopted to secure it-including racism and traitor-baiting.

The Democrats are forced to satisfy competing class sectors. Obama must keep 
Wall Street happy as well as the working person who still votes Democrat because 
there is no alternative yet capable of winning office.

The day will come when the workers find that their class interests cannot be 
advanced by backing the Democrats and the consequences of that realization will 
condemn the Democrats to the same fate as the Whigs. With the battle between 
capitalist and wage slave shaping up to be the same kind of conflict that shaped 
American society in the 1860s, we need as many abolitionists today as we had 
back then. That is the highest calling in 2008, to rise to the occasion of 
Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.

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