[Peace] News notes 2006-11-12: Democrats are right

[Carl Estabrook]

[These notes on the Global War on Terror were prepared for the weekly
meeting of AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana.
Much of this material was discussed on the Saturday morning radio program,
"News from Neptune," by me and Paul Mueth, with the assistance of producer
J. B. Nicholson-Owens and research director Eric Sizemore.  Archived
programs and citations are at <www.newsfromneptune.com>.  Other references
will be provided on request.  --CGE]


"One freedom that defines our way of life is the freedom to choose our
leaders at the ballot box. We saw that freedom earlier this week, when
millions of Americans went to the polls to cast their votes for a new
Congress. Whatever your opinion of the outcome, all Americans can take
pride in the example our democracy sets for the world by holding elections
even in a time of war.
	--G. W. Bush Saturday 11 November, apparently regretting that the
administration didn't use its fake Global War on Terror as an excuse to
cancel last week's elections.

[1] ELECTIONS. I think that the most salient fact about the elections is
that the antiwar vote led the Democratic vote across the country.  Nowhere
was that better illustrated than here in Champaign County, where the mayor
of Champaign simply didn't believe the size of the vote for the advisory
referendum for withdrawal from Iraq (which our local antiwar group managed
to get on the ballot).  Like many others, he'd been misled by the media on
what the country's opinion actually is.  (Often people say to us about our
radio program, "I agree with you guys, but I thought I was the only one
who thought that way"; that's no accident.)

[2] DEMOCRATS. Owing to the fact that both major parties are well to the
right of the American populace, the Democratic party now has the job of
neutralizing that anti-war vote and bringing policies safely back to the
pro-war consensus of the US elite.  So Democratic leaders insist that
impeachment is "off the table" (Pelosi, Conyers) and that there would be
no substantial change in the war policy (Dean, Levin).

The most cogent comment on the elections came not from pundits but from an
otherwise undescribed resident of Baghdad quoted on Democracy Now this
week: "Whether the Democrats or the Republicans win, America has one
policy. It always has imperialistic plans that take priority. So, there is
no difference: Democrats or the Republicans, America has one policy."

The Democrats' task, to tamp down Americans' anti-war views, was well
underway in the run-up to the election, when the Democrat party removed
anti-war candidates in favor of pro-war Democrats in districts they
thought they could win. In some places, like Illinois 6th CD, where
pro-war Iraq veteran Tammy Duckworth was defeated by an obscure
Republican, that policy failed notably.  See the following account of the
work of Democrat Congressional Campaign Chairman Rahm Emanuel in excluding
anti-war candidates: <http://counterpunch.org/cockburn11082006.html>.

[3] ISRAEL.  Meanwhile, covered over by the American elections, the
US/Israeli occupations in the Middle East went on without much comment in
the American media.  In the West Bank and Gaza, the murder of a nation
continued as some 50 civilians were killed by the Israeli military and 20
killed by "accidental" shelling. The United States vetoed a U.N. Security
Council draft resolution Saturday that sought to condemn the continued
killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip and demand Israeli troops pull out
the territory.

[4] IRAQ.  The Pentagon announced plans to send National Guard units back
to Iraq, breaking the no-more-than-two years'-deployment rule previously
observed.  On Thursday, BBC Radio reported that Sunni and Shiite
neighborhoods in Baghdad were shelled -- not by each other, but both from
an unknown place in northern Baghdad.  I've not subsequently been able to
find that story on the web, but if true it's possibly more evidence that
the US is encouraging revenge killing between Sunnis and Shiites, in
accord with the imperialists' oldest maxim: divide et impera.  (Note the
similar policy by the FBI in regard to black nationalist groups in the US
in the 1960s.)
	There are rumors on the web that the US Army will attack the Mehdi
army now that the elections are over -- if so, that would mark another
shift of the US toward the Sunnis and away from the Shia groups dominating
the US puppet government.

[5] PENTAGON.  What NPR considered "the big news this week" was that SOD
Rumsfled will step down when the Senate allows Robert Gates to step up.
Tainted by the Iran-Contra scandal, Gates is a CIA insider, a member of
the Bush Sr. Realist group, and a member of James Baker's Iraq Study
Group, where his place will be taken by Lawrence Eagleburger.  As Maureen
Dowd put it, "Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play
with and he broke it. So now theyre taking it back. They are dragging W.
away from those reckless older guys who have been such a bad influence and
getting him some new minders who are a lot more practical."
	That's cute, but it would be funnier if there weren't hundreds of
thousands of tortured, wounded and dead people and a shredded US
constitution to show for the experiment.

[6] LOOTING. Meanwhile, the Financial Press is worried about the effect
the elections might have on the money the Bush administration has
channeled ot its base, such that the rich got rich and the poor pooered at
an ever greater rate in the Bush years.  Pharmaceuticals and energy are
said to be worried that the gravy train might slow down, but the Democrats
seem interested in rewarding their perhaps slightly different base:
they've turned their attention to removing the Alternative Minimum Tax,
which effects only fairly large incomes.  So although the Democrats won
every income category under $100,000 in last week's election, they seem
primarily concerned to reward their richest backers.

[7] LATIN AMERICA. In Nicaragua, former Sandinista president Ortega was
reelected after 16 years.  His critics, some from within the Sandinista
party, say that he has changed policies opportunistically, but his
election has to be seen as part of the general move to social democratic
governments in Latin America.  The Bush administration seems to think so:
they quietly granted a waiver this week to train militaries from 11 South
American and Caribbean countries.  It was the US relation with Latin
military establishments that, e.g., brought Pinochet to power in Chile.

For those old enough to remember: "A Bush in the White House, the
Democrats in control of the House and Senate, Jimmy Baker, Robert Gates
and now Larry Eagleburger making U.S. foreign policy, the neocons in
retreat and the Sandinistas back in power in Nicaragua. I feel like I
stepped into a political time warp and came out in 1989" [billmon.org].

[8] CIA. Undercover American agents are staging secret "entrapment"
operations in Britain against terrorist suspects they want to extradite to
the US.  Some Brits are annoyed, even though the Blair government is
trying to stir up fear of attacks by Muslim sleeper cells in the UK.

[9] IRAN. Iran must understand that if it fails to cooperate with the
international community, it will pay dearly, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
said in an interview with the US weekly Newsweek on the eve of his
Washington visit. And in France, the presumed leftist candidate for the
French presidency joined George Bush and Barak Obama in saying that Iran
might be attacked if it looked like getting nuclear weapons.

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