Revolution #56, August 13, 2006
On
August 2, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before Congress
that “what we are considering now is a better product.” His new summer
item: NEW RULES FOR TORTURE. Once again with the Bush crew, language
sanitizes and anesthetizes. Gonzales said he wants to bring “clarity”
to the Geneva Convention’s prohibition of torture, a regulation that he
previously called “quaint.” What he is concerned about is the U.S.A.
being able to continue a deadly, immoral, and illegal policy and
practice of torture around the world-and he wants it legalized because
he knows that he and the Bush administration have committed
internationally recognized war crimes.
How have we come to a
place where a serious discussion is held in government on the
efficacy-not the immorality – of torture? How have we come to a place
where such heinous considerations take on the deadening aura of
business as usual? And how do we get to a different place?
There
is a deadly dance afoot in official politics and political discourse in
this country. A dance that is mind-numbing in its ritualized circular
repetitiveness, yet it is a dance that is sliding perilously close to a
precipitous cliff. There are consequences in lives and for the future.
In
early June, eight men were strapped in chairs with feeding tubes jammed
up their nostrils by the U.S. military. Eighty more were refusing food,
protesting the U.S. government holding them in purgatory in Guantánamo
for 4+ years without charges. By mid-June, three had committed suicide.
Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., in a stunning display of fascistic
Orwellian logic, denounced the suicides as “asymmetric warfare” and
proposed a criminal investigation of the detainees” attorneys.
In
early July, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Hamdan decision, decreed
that the Bush administration overstepped with their international
torture and gulag setup, ruling that they had to get Congressional
approval for their military tribunals and that the international law of
the Geneva Convention couldn’t be summarily ignored. This is what led
to Gonzales” appearance August 2.
For a moment after the
Hamden decision, hope abounded in progressive circles that at last
Bush’s criminal fascistic direction as symbolized in torture and
detention might finally be reversed. Yet, within days the Bush
administration was adamantly demanding Congress codify its policy – an
option pointed to by the Court ruling. And now, the terms of official
debate are about legitimizing torture and detention in ways that don’t
come back to bite the U.S. military in the ass. If the current
trajectory continues – very soon a very bad law will be passed.
This
pattern is repeated in every sphere. In response to broad outrage at
the revelation of massive secret illegal NSA spying on Americans” phone
conversations, the administration strong-armed a “compromise” with the
“moderate” Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen
Specter. A deal worthy of Tony Soprano, the proposed legislation would
allow the illegal spying to continue, with the proviso that the government should get constitutional approval for the program from the secret
rubber stamp FISA courts, although they could even avoid this, if they
decide it would jeopardize national security. In addition, the right to
all further judicial review will be eliminated. In sum, in exchange for
being forced to get Congressional approval, Bush can continue secret
spying on personal calls, maybe approved by a secret court, appointed
in secret by Chief Justice Roberts, and even this can be circumvented
in secret.
Some Democrats protested, some proposed alternate
bills, but no one has called forward the people to refuse to go along
with this. The expectation in Washington is that some version close to
Specter’s compromise will pass. Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman
said: “This is the president and the Congress coming together to codify
the capacity for future presidents to take action to protect the
country.”
This is the process through which a radically new
social order-the architecture and structures of fascistic social
norms-are rapidly being bolted into place, with repercussions that
could last generations, if not stopped. It should be a familiar dance
by now. Look back at the Patriot Act. Rammed through in the days after
9/11, before Congress even read it; within months, people came to
oppose its police-state measures such as government looking into your
library reading. Over 400 cities, towns, and states passed resolutions
against it. Yet in early March 2005 Patriot Act II was cemented into
law by a Senate vote of 89-10.
The dance is a basic
four-step box pattern. The Bush Regime unilaterally “creates new
reality” on the ground. The policy gets exposed or runs into obstacles.
Then, some Democrats express outrage and complain that they should have been consulted and that they could have administered whatever the atrocity is, even better.
Finally, the policy gets passed and codified into new law, and we move
on to dance the whole four-step over again-now with even less room to
move.
Listen to them-the Democrats tell you that this is
what they are doing! In response to the Supreme Court Hamdan Decision,
NY Senator Chuck Schumer-who is running the Democrats” 2006
Congressional election campaign, said: “Had they come to Congress a few
years ago on this issue, my guess is they would have gotten most of
what they wanted.” No opposition to torture or secret incarceration
without charges, trial, or representation from Mr. Schumer. We must
break out of this box-or we will dance our way to the Death Camps.
What
is so starkly revealed in the example of the Patriot Act is that there
was, and today still is, ample broad opposition to the Bush program-
enough to stop it, but that as long as this opposition remains
harnessed to politics as usual, hoping for a Democratic victory in the
mid-term elections so that then the Democrats will do something, which they will never do-the deadly dance will go on.
Remember
a year ago when Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court? The
Democrats, including the leadership of the women’s movement, said to
the horrified and angry people in their social base: we”re holding our
powder, we”re going to really take them on with the next
nomination. And then, as surely as the “left” foot follows the right,
Alito was confirmed six months later without a fight. Yet if all the
anger and hatred for this course can get harnessed and expressed
through truly independent mass determined opposition to the whole
program, then a whole new struggle for the world’s future will be afoot.
The
logic of this dynamic is, quite literally, killing. Abortion is on the
verge of being made completely unavailable to the vast majority of
women and possibly totally illegal within a year or two. No problem,
the Democrats will run anti-abortion candidates to build a majority and
the women’s movement will keep quiet. And then? The Christian fascists
will go after birth control and the Democrats” “right to life” Roman
Catholic senators will do what? Go against the pope?
If you
seriously, honestly, think about everything that has changed since
September 11, 2001: the laws; the governing norms-the separation of
powers, the separation of church and state; how it is routine today that the leaders of both
parties make obligatory visits to, and genuflect before, the theocratic
fascist lunatics Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson; if you take on board
that 1/3 of the U.S. Congress has top ratings from the most
conservative, Christian Fundamentalist organizations -if you take all
of this in, a picture emerges of just how far down the road to fascism
we”ve traveled. These things add up and you can wake up one day and
find that there is no ground left to stand on.
What has to change before we dance a different step to our own tune?
For
one thing, people have to learn to turn down that invitation to the
Democrats’ midterm election prom. Why? Listen to Al Gore, current star
suitor of progressives who desperately want to go to the dance,
speaking to Rolling Stone about Iraq:
“We”re all, in some
ways, lashed to the mast of our ship of state here. Because the little
group at the helm should resign. You know, Rumsfeld and that whole gang
have made horrible mistake after horrible mistake””
Rumsfeld
and his boss should resign, but the essence of Gore’s point, and the
problem with Gore himself, lies in the first sentence, “We are all
lashed to the mast”” We, who? Just what are the actual interests of the
ship of the U.S. imperialist state in the Mideast and throughout the
world? And what does that have to do with the people’s interest in
ending the war, and not living in and perpetuating a new Rome? Like
Ahab lashed to the whale, Gore and the rest of the Democrats will bind
us thrashing about in a sea of trouble to save their ship.
People
see the carnage and the danger of wider war from this conflagration and
hope against what they are being told by all of the Democratic
leadership that somehow, if in power, they would do different. But they
and the Republicans are proceeding from a different set of imperatives.
Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker that there is no
pressure coming from the Democrats or anywhere else in official
Washington that forcing Iran to capitulate was not ultimately worth the
price of war.
The Democratic Party, like the Republicans,
act in the interests of the system as a whole. Responding to the
imperatives of a fast-paced global unfettered capitalism they all
recognize the need to forcibly assert an unchallengeable empire. They
agree and are both party to using the War on Terror as the rubric to
advance this internationally, they agree that this requires tightening
the home front, they agree that the social compact of the New Deal and
the Great Society, with their array of social support programs, is
over-it was, after all, Clinton who ended “welfare as we know it”-and
that this requires a reassertion of traditional morality to salve and
stupefy.
Yet, there are sharp differences between them. At
the core of the Republican Party is a highly organized Christian
Fascist movement determined to impose biblical literalism as law.
Currently, these theocrats are in an uneasy coalition with the neo-con
cadre such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, who developed the Bush
strategic doctrine of unilateral pursuit of empire- unrestrained by
international law, treaty, or diplomacy. This strategic doctrine finds
its echo in and is reinforced by the “theology” absorbed by millions of
Christian Fundamentalists who read and believe in La Hayes “End Times.”
Kevin Phillips in “American Theocracy” writes that “chaos in the
explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the
awaited second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil-price hikes, murderous
hurricanes, deadly tsunamis, and melting polar ice caps lend further
credence.”
The Democrats have no coherent program in answer.
This is, first of all, because they are lashed to the same imperialist
ship-they are not going to risk undermining U.S. global hegemony. Since
9/11 the top Democrats have been insisting that they could wage the
“war on terror” even better. If your interest is securing strategic
control of the Mideast to muscle out potential rivals, secure the
resources under U.S. control, and bludgeon the Islamist fundamentalists
and secure the region with completely pliant client regimes, then you
want the Iraq war to succeed, and will only offer ways to conduct it
better.
The Bush Regime sets new terms-advancing their
international and domestic fascistic program, the Democrats find
themselves with less and less ground to stand on-unless they are
prepared to take on the whole direction, which they [a] are not, and
[b] don’t intend to, since they are proceeding from the same set of
necessities of empire. This is why, absent a mass struggle from below to STOP the whole direction of the Bush regime, even if the Democrats win in November, we will not.
At
the current moment there are illusions that perhaps Bush is done, he is
having to use diplomacy at this point to deal with Iran and North
Korea. Time magazine has a cover with Bush’s cowboy hat on his boots
with the headline: “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy.” But this too is a
dangerous illusion. The very problems created by the Bush regime in
Iraq and Afghanistan actually argue-from their perspective-for even
more aggressive action;or else their whole strategic initiative could
be lost. The very radical fascist changes that the Bush regime is
trying to effect in the world and at home argues for a logic of
continual offensive until victory.
A Bush spokesperson
opined to Ron Suskind in the New York Times that the Bush
administration creates its own reality. That reality has already done
great harm. It has also created a huge sea of people who deeply hate
all that it is doing. This is the force that, as the World Can’t Wait
call for October 5 puts it, can “decidedly break the paralysis that
still grips much of American political life” breach[ing] the walls
around us to say Enough!”
Making that break requires saying NO to the deadly dance and stepping out on our own.
There is time. Not all the time in the world, but time enough to save the future.