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Today's
Stories
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's the Answer, What's the
Question?
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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March
2, 2004
Progressive Interventionism
If
Kerry's the Answer, What's the Question?
By WILLIAM BLUM
Of all the issues that the presidential campaign
will revolve around, none is more important to me than foreign
policy. I say this not because that is my area of specialty,
but because the bombings, invasions, coups d'etat, depleted uranium,
and other horrors that are built into United States foreign policy
regularly bring to the people of the world much more suffering
and despair than any American domestic policy does at home. I
do not yearn for "anybody but Bush". I yearn for a
president who will put an end to Washington's interminable indecent
interventions against humanity. This is, moreover, the only way
to end the decades-long hatred that has spawned so many anti-American
terrorists.
So desperate am I to have the chance
to vote for someone like that, that a few days ago I allowed
myself to feel a bit buoyed when John Kerry, in response to a
question about the situation in Haiti, said that the Bush administration
"has a theological and ideological hatred for Aristide"
which has led to the administration "empowering" the
rebels.{1}
To me that remark revealed a significant
nuance of understanding of the world of US foreign policy that
rarely makes it to the lips of an American politician. Could
it be, I wondered, that Kerry is actually a cut or two above
prevailing wisdom and rhetoric on such matters? (I must point
out that, holding little expectation, I seldom closely follow
who's who amongst establishment politicians, so until very recently
I knew almost nothing specific about Kerry; in fact, I only just
learned to distinguish him from Bob Kerrey, former senator from
Nebraska.)
As it happens, the next day Kerry delivered
a talk entirely about his views on foreign policy, particularly
about the war on terrorism.{2} And my heart lost its buoyancy.
He called for an increase of "40,000 active-duty Army troops"
-- not exactly the kind of relief our shell-shocked world hungers
for.
"But nothing else will matter unless
we win the war of ideas," Kerry said. "We need a major
initiative in public diplomacy to bridge the divide between Islam
and the rest of the world. For the education of the next generation
of Islamic youth, we need an international effort to compete
with radical Madrassas." -- This is the stuff of public
relations, improving "image", ignoring the reasons
for anti-Americanism. The problem, however, ain't a misunderstanding
and it ain't due to poverty. It's the interventions, stupid;
it's the harm we do to those people.{3}
"We have seen what happens when
Palestinian youth have been fed a diet of anti-Israel propaganda,"
Kerry added. -- Again, no weight given to anything Israel has
done to the Palestinians; it's all just a matter of propaganda;
Palestinians are becoming suicide bombers because of something
someone said, not because of the Israeli devastation of their
lives. In fact, the US has done remarkably well in "the
war of ideas". In June, 2003 the Pew Research Center released
the results of polling in 20 Muslim countries and the Palestinian
territories which revealed that while people interviewed had
much more "confidence" in Osama bin Laden than in George
W. Bush, "the survey suggested little correlation between
support for bin Laden and hostility to American ideas and cultural
products. People who expressed a favorable opinion of bin Laden
were just as likely to appreciate American technology and cultural
products as people opposed to bin Laden. Pro- and anti-bin Laden
respondents also differed little in their views on the workability
of Western-style democracy in the Arab world."{4}
Kerry in fact refers to this poll in
his talk, but he mentions only the support of bin Laden, not
the apparent contradictions found in the rest of the results.
"I will strengthen the capacity
of intelligence and law enforcement at home and forge stronger
international coalitions to provide better information and the
best chance to target and capture terrorists even before they
act." -- As if the United States was not already wiring,
tapping, bugging and surveilling every institution in the known
world and every creature that moves across the earth, and summarily
imprisoning them by the thousands. It sounds like a remark Kerry
threw in, as with many of his other remarks, hoping to demonstrate
a nonexistent difference between his foreign-policy views and
those of the Bush administration.
"I will not hesitate to order direct
military action when needed to capture and destroy terrorist
groups and their leaders." -- As The Washington Post stated,
"Kerry appeared to outline his own preemptive doctrine in
the speech."{5}
Kerry faulted Bush for providing insufficient
funding for the National Endowment for Democracy. -- He probably
thought he was on safe ground; the word "democracy"
always sells well.
But this is his most depressing comment
of all. He's calling for more money for an organization that
was set up to be a front for the CIA, literally, and that for
20 years has been destabilizing governments, progressive movements,
labor unions, and anyone else on Washington's hit list.{6} Which
would be a worse mark against Kerry, that he doesn't know this
about NED, or that he does know it? It sounds like another throwaway
to imply a divide between he and George W.
So, what do we have here? Not a single
word about the tens of thousands killed by US military actions
in Afghanistan and Iraq; not a word about anything the United
States has ever done anywhere in the world that could conceivably
lead to anyone ever harboring justified resentment against the
United States and seeking retaliation.
Not a word about ending, or even lessening,
interventions.
It does not require total cynicism to
point out that at most, at best, John Kerry's beef with the Bush
administration over foreign policy -- to the extent that he really
has any -- is a very minor difference of opinion between technocrats,
Kerry offering a few tiny adjustments, a tweaking here or there.
Most of his policy suggestions concerned things already being
done by the Bush administration.
In sum total, nothing at all threatening,
or even challenging, to business as usual for American foreign
policy. What relief from the bully's outrages can the world expect
from a John Kerry administration? What relief from the outrages
done in our name can we Americans expect?
I think I can go back to ignoring establishment
politicians.
NOTES
{1} Newsday (New York), February 27,
2004
{2} Talk
at UCLA, February 27, 2004;
{3} For a discussion of this thesis,
see the author's essay, "Myth
and Denial in the War Against Terrorism" at: <http://members.aol.com/bblum6/myth.htm>
{4} Ibid.
{5} Washington Post, February 28, 2004
{6} See the author's essay
on NED
William Blum is
the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II, Rogue
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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