[Peace-discuss] Norman Solomon's thoughts

[C. G. Estabrook]

In order to give a conventional account of the parties, Solomon has to ignore
entirely the largest insurgent group within either one, the Ron Paul faction.
(As do the US media, as some on this list have just pointed out.)

And we hear a new version of the disingenuous (thanks, Ron!) Democratic party
bleat, "We can't do anything about the war -- our majority isn't large enough!"
-- "the potential for achieving progressive changes in government policies is
severely limited while the right wing is entrenched in the White House."

In fact, if "the right wing" = the neocons, they seem to been have rather
roundly repulsed in the last year, for whatever reason (Bush's conversion?
incapacity?), and the foreign policy establishment is back in charge -- the very
people who'll be in charge in an Obama administration.

E.g., Obama has already let it be known that he'd like to retain Mr. Gates (avid
to kill people in Pakistan) at the Pentagon.  Within Bush's war council Gates
has been advocating for months a secret plan for a much broader campaign by
Special Operations forces inside Pakistan, and a new step seems to have been
taken that way yesterday: American soldiers landed from helicopters inside
Pakistan and killed children, the US military admits. (We forget that My Lai was
not an aberration but the way that that war was fought; the FPE seems to lack
imagination.)

I've often found Solomon insightful and persuasive, but this fatuity ranks right
up there with, "He has to say that in order to get elected, but he'll change
when he's in office."  Perhaps. --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> I believe this piece comes close to describing our present situation, not as
> some have distorted it.  --mkb
> 
> 
> Published on Thursday, September 4, 2008 by CommonDreams.org *Beyond the
> Conventions*
> 
> by Norman Solomon
> 
> With varying degrees of confidence or even complacency, many people have 
> assumed that the jig is almost up for the horrendous political era that began
> when George W. Bush became president. Always dubious, the assumption is now
> on very shaky ground.
> 
> The Bush-Cheney regime may be on its last legs, but a new incarnation of 
> right-wing populism is shadowing the near horizon.
> 
> Much as modern capitalism is always driven to promote new products in the
> marketplace, the corporate-fundamentalist partnership must reinvent and
> remarket itself. We're now seeing the rollout of a hybrid product under the
> McCain-Palin brand.
> 
> Last night, after watching Sarah Palin's acceptance speech and the laudatory
> responses from many TV journalists, I remembered wandering around the floor
> of the Democratic National Convention a week ago. At the base, the two major
> parties are even more different than the speeches are apt to indicate.
> 
> Under the roof of the Democratic Party, notwithstanding its shades of 
> corporatism and militarism and numerous other grave faults, there's a lot of
> longstanding and ongoing involvement from key progressive constituencies --
> including labor unions, African Americans, gay rights activists, human rights
> defenders, environmentalists, fair-trade advocates, healthcare-for-all
> organizers, feminists, and on and on.
> 
> In contrast, the Republican Party is a political institution that views all
> such constituencies and activists (including last night's new target of
> derision, "community organizers") as enemies to be smothered and crushed. The
> party's latest "populist" packaging is another wrinkle in a timeworn pattern;
> the most avid political servants of corporate elites are eager to keep
> generating the anti-elites rhetoric and imagery of down-home regular folks.
> 
> *At the Democratic convention last week, some of the speeches ran counter to
> basic progressive tenets of peace and social justice. But none came close to
> the zeal for social Darwinism, jingoism and militarism routinely spewing from
> the Republican convention's podium.* * * *In ways too numerous to count and
> in realms too profound to truly evoke, this decade has grimly underscored
> that -- notwithstanding theoretical claims to the contrary -- it matters
> greatly who is president. From the Supreme Court to thousands of subcabinet
> positions to executive orders to a vast array of foreign-policy decisions 
> including the potential use of nuclear weapons, the president is able to 
> wield state power with consequences huge enough to be unfathomable.* * * *A
> popular strand of analysis on the left has downplayed the importance of the
> president. The story goes that corporate forces rule, and the person in the
> Oval Office is little more than a figurehead for those rulers. There's some
> validity to that assessment, but in the face of experience it has tended to
> calcify into a form of denial.* * * *With right-wing Republicans running the
> White House for 20 of the last 28 years, maybe the downplaying of the
> importance of the presidency has become a kind of coping mechanism for some
> progressives. Accustomed to a status quo that grows increasingly dire, we've
> settled into an uncomfortable "comfort zone" as familiar as it is macabre. At
> the same time, the cascading effects of right-wing control over most of the 
> federal government have been cumulative and devastating.* * * *Of course
> progressives should always keep organizing, educating, protesting and
> agitating. But the potential for achieving progressive changes in government
> policies is severely limited while the right wing is entrenched in the White
> House. The changes we need can only be propelled from the grassroots, but the
> possibilities are badly circumscribed when the far right maintains a grip on
> state power.* * * *The election will happen in 60 days. After that, it'll be
> President McCain or President Obama.*
> 
> We'll never pass this way again.
> 
> * * *
> 
> To see Norman Solomon's posts from the Democratic National Convention, go
> here. Norman Solomon, a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare 
> campaign, is the author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep
> Spinning Us to Death." A documentary film of the same name, based on the
> book, has been released on home video. For information, go to: 
> www.normansolomon.com <http://www.normansolomon.com>
> 
> 
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