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Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
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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Weekend
Edition
December 13 / 14, 2003
Pretty Damn Evil
An
Interview with Edward Herman
By ADAM ENGEL
Edward Herman is Professor Emeritus
of Finance at the
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, an economist and
media analyst, with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues
as well as political economy and the media. He is the author
of numerous books, including Corporate Control, Corporate Power
(1981), Demonstration Elections (1984, with Frank Brodhead),
The Real Terror Network (1982), Manufacturing Consent (1988,
with Noam Chomsky), Triumph of the Market (1995), and The Global
Media (1997, with Robert McChesney). He is just going to press
with The Myth of The Liberal Media: an Edward Herman Reader (1999).
ENGEL: In the mainstream media, there
are three parties: the Republicans, the Democrats, and the whacko
fringe lunatics. That's understood. But lately, in many so-called
alternative media outlets, mostly websites, I see support for
Kucinich or even Dean as the only "realistic" alternative
to another four years of Bush.
Having seen the Democrats roll over and
die on literally every "defense" issue put before them
since "the day that changed the world," (9/11) I can't
believe that the "only alternative" is yet another
Democrat. What are they/we afraid of?
HERMAN: You are overlooking the fact
that the electoral system now in place in this country is so
plutocratic, so skewed, so anti-populist that even a populist
Democrat like Kucinich doesn't have a chance to win a nomination
let alone a final electoral triumph. The left is essentially
outside the system, small, fragmented and even beyond marginalization.
So if leftists want to participate in the election at all they
can run (or support) a populist candidate who will be competing
with the two major parties, and get smashed, or they can try
to throw their puny weight toward getting a lesser evil Democrat
nominated and a lesser evil Democrat elected to national office.
They have a third option-steering entirely clear of the elections
and going about other business like grass roots organization,
trying to build alternative media and other projects focused
on long-term objectives. The Nader campaign and crushing defeat
was an important testimonial to the contemporary hopelessness
of running an alternative candidate. Given his limited exposure
to the population I don't think his campaign's educational value
was very great, and the outcome was a moral defeat for those
hopeful of alternative candidacies.
Furthermore, I don't think we can dismiss
the arguments of people who argue for working within the Democratic
Party, trying to influence its choice, and supporting its ticket.
The difference between a rotten lesser evil and an extremely
dangerous great evil can be quite significant and can be the
difference between millions of deaths and much pain at home and
abroad. At this point it seems clear that Al Gore would almost
surely not have been as terrible as George Bush, who even his
dad is finding a bit hard to take (giving the annual George Bush
Award for Public Service for 2003 to Senator Edward Kennedy).
So what leftists are afraid of is total irrelevance or possible
default support for a greater evil that can be pretty damned
evil.
Another thing to keep in mind is that
social democrats and leftists "roll over dead" as commonly
as Democrats. Blair, Lula, Menem, Schroeder, Bob Rae-it is pretty
systematic, reflecting the power of the plutocratic establishment
as fund-raisers, media guard-dogs, and financial operators and
corporate investors ready to defund or flee to more hospitable
investment climes. The system is working beautifully right now,
despite Bush's current problems, which stem from his ability
to violate all international and moral norms up to this moment,
which got him into a morass a decent world would have prevented
him entering.
ENGEL: A recent poll I saw showed that
for all the hype and ballyhoo among "progressive/leftist"
publications, Hillary Clinton, who gave no indication she's even
running, was by far the most popular Democratic "candidate"
with 26% followed by Clark (!?) and Lieberman (!!?) with about
ten percentage points each. All the rest, including Dean, were
in the single digits. Kucinich, whose name is pushed into my
"inbox" daily, scored around 1%. Probably because,
like Nader, he has a "lock" on the lefty white college
crowd, but very little name recognition among blacks, Latinos
and lower-middle class and "working class" (is their
still such a thing?) whites. Basically, Hillary is the only bona
fide Celebrity in the crowd.
You said, ""The left is essentially
outside the system, small, fragmented and even beyond marginalization."
Why is this so? Is there something "the
average American" (who or wherever he/she is) sees that
leftists don't see? I'm beginning to think that the people I
read in print and on line and their collective audience would
fit into an average sized catering hall. In the late eighties,
the poet, Allen Grossman, told me that the actual audience for
serious poetry in the U.S. was about five thousand people. That's
poetry, which is important, but not essential to making decisions
as an informed adult. I see this as an extremely dangerous situation.
What "America" seems to be saying is that all serious
scholarship and journalism be relegated to a few journals, websites
and publishing houses with a total audience equal to the readership
of that dead art (Weep for Adonais indeed!) poetry. Possibly
less.
HERMAN: The left is outside the system
in good measure because ordinary citizens-the "average American"--can
never hear its message, or if they do hear it, it is fleeting,
short, and usually presented in a dismissive context. Effective
messages are those that are repeated and attached to friendly
symbols. Left messages being unfamiliar they need lots of repetition
and lots of space and time to counter cognitive dissonance. They
never get that. This of course reflects the fact that the left
has no numerous and financially solid power base, so it can't
fund its messages and can't provide them to that power base to
firm up their resolve and clarify their understanding of reality.
The labor movement, the natural power base, has not focused on
this and its leaders have therefore helped weaken themselves-for
the most part these leaders were cold warriors who even collaborated
in subverting labor movements in countries like Brazil in service
to the corporate interest in a "favorable climate of investment"-which
called for weak or non-existent trade unions. In the crucial
formative years of broadcasting, 1927-1933, the top labor brass
even refused to support union-funded and controlled broadcasting,
letting a pioneer labor broadcaster fail, arguing that ad-based
commercial media would surely do justice to labor's interests
(as described in Robert McChesney's Telecommunications. Mass
Media, and Democracy)! This left the workers to watch CBS, NBC,
and later ABC and Fox, to get their information and world view,
with the results we see in ignorance, depoliticization along
with a readily manipulable patriotism, and a marginalized left
unable to reach their potentially sympathetic audience with messages
that might be quite attractive if seen and heard. The decline
and rightward trajectory of the Labor Party in Britain is also
traceable in part to the death of a labor-supportive trio of
major papers in the 1960s, which had given workers not only news
but arguments and principles supportive of their interests. These
were replaced by rightwing rags that featured tits, welfare mothers'
abuses, and attacks on liberals, the left, and governments (except
governments of the right, and the police and military segments
of government).
ENGEL: The "third option" you
spoke of, "steering entirely clear of the elections and
going about other business like grass roots organization, trying
to build alternative media and other projects focused on long-term
objectives," seems to me to be the only option. There is
little use playing poker when you know the game is fixed and
every player at the table except yourself is part of the hustle.
Nevertheless, the Nader campaign was
valuable in a number of ways. No one I knew believed Nader would
win; but we all believed he could garner enough votes to allow
the Greens to qualify for federal funds. That he couldn't even
do that much was less of a moral defeat than a lesson in how
impossible it is for a newcomer to ante up, put a chip in the
game. He may have had "limited exposure" in 2000, but
he was Ralph Nader, a household name. The entire experience could
be likened to the college football star, big man on campus, taking
his first real beating at the hands of the pros. Many illusions
were shattered. Being laughed down on Labor Day by macho union
workers who waved posters of Hillary Clinton. Attending all-white
"rallies" where the focus was on celebrities and pop-singers
rather than rumpled old Ralph. Experiencing the hysterical invective
of Democrats who castigated you for "ruining the election."
All this capped by a stolen election made for what many considered
a radicalizing experience. The question was, and is, where do
we go from here. From my perspective it was a movement of "under-forty-year
olds" and college kids who got their asses kicked by the
big boys. Having gone through this experience, I think many of
the Nader Greens of 2000 are a politically mature lot, relative
to the Mainstream Democrats and Republicans who risked nothing,
yet lost a great deal, albeit "painlessly."
HERMAN: Certainly there was a lesson
in the futility of third parties in the present U.S. electoral
system, but what follows from that is less clear. Shall we abandon
electoral politics on the ground that the game is fixed, focusing
on the long run and organizing to build a media and constituency
in the long run?. There are several problems with that approach.
One is that, as Keynes said in deriding the emphasis of economists
on long run adjustments, in the long run we are all dead, so
that putting all our effort and money into trying to assure change
later is speculative and misses possibilities for doing something
right now. Further, the long run is a series of short runs, so
that what we fail to do today will have future consequences.
Finally, it is hard to mobilize people to do something with speculative
future benefits when they are hurting and eager for immediate
or near-term results.
ENGEL: I think you raise some serious
questions when you say:
"I don't think we can dismiss the
arguments of people who argue for working within the Democratic
Party, trying to influence its choice, and supporting its ticket.
The difference between a rotten lesser evil and an extremely
dangerous great evil can be quite significant and can be the
difference between millions of deaths and much pain at home and
abroad. At this point it seems clear that Al Gore would almost
surely not have been as terrible as George Bush, who even his
dad is finding a bit hard to take (giving the annual George Bush
Award for Public Service for 2003 to Senator Edward Kennedy).
So what leftists are afraid of is total irrelevance or possible
default support for a greater evil that can be pretty damned
evil."
First of all, if the left is as weak
and inconsequential is it appears to be, what would we be bringing
to the table? Look at what's been happening to black people year
after year since 1968. The Democrats take it as a given that
African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities, but in particular
African-Americans, are going to vote Democrat. There may be threats
of "we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore,"
and maybe some kind of separatist movement, like Jesse Jackson's
Rainbow Coalition early on, but come November, those who vote
are going to vote Democrat. Who else are they going to vote for
in a two-party system? With the country swinging further and
further to the right - recent polls showed Republicans gaining
across the board among every ethnic group, Latinos and Jews in
particular (Cubans against Castro and the Israel Uber Alles crowd?).
Some attribute this to the Democrats' flawed strategy of putting
all their money of the Presidential election while Republicans
court their own "rainbow coalition" for city, state
and Congressional elections.
Either way, especially in this polyarchy
of plutocrats, who's going to listen to a bunch of kids, college
professors and unemployed workers? Additionally, if we put our
"chip in the game" (our only chip) and bet on a Kucinich
or someone like him, the DLC or other real players will only
add it to the stacks and stacks of chips that will be used to
support a Lieberman or a Clark (or a Hillary Clinton?) in preparation
for the Big Game against Dubya. What will the platform be? Some
moderations of the PATRIOT ACT, some military cuts, some medical
benefits to the elderly; more money to Israel; more "aid"
to Columbia to fight the "drug war," etc. Republican
vs. Republican-lite. The only "leftists" who might
catch the ear of the Party machers might be of the cruise-missile
variety, whose ranks swell daily with additions of such "public
intellectuals" as Michael Moore, Arrianna Huffington, and
various aging rock stars, movie actresses and other celebrities
whose semi-literate opinions carry far more weight in this culture
than Noam Chomsky's (or Edward Herman's).
On the other hand, whoever is in office
in 2005 will inherit Bush's mess, even if it's Bush himself:
economic nightmare which Americans will sooner or later awaken
from only to realize it was no dream; War against Terrorism (Islam)
which, by then, 1,000,000,000 Muslims will realize, if they haven't
already, is a Fundamentalist Christian/Zionist war against them;
and most important of all - in my opinion - an Environment that
not only votes Independent, but may very well vote to be independent
of the Human Race within the next five to ten years, rather than
the twenty to fifty years scientists had previously predicted.
Whoever is President two years from now
is going to take the blame for all of this. I wonder if Truman
were alive and head of the DLC, he might take a dive to allow
Bush to face the cacophonous music of the next four years until
the "American People" are begging for an FDR Democrat.
Then again, who knows what another four
(or forty) years of Bush Inc. might bring? Would he push that
book of Revelations fantasy to it's nuclear conclusion? Would
the land of the free and home of the brave roll over and die
for PATRIOT II? Would Israel be allowed to enact the "Final
Solution" while it's puppet/patron took on the three ring
circus of the "axis of evil?"
HERMAN: The left is very weak, but insofar
as it can act at all it has to make choices. If it chooses to
play the electoral politics game, a good case can be made that
it should try to influence the Democratic Party to defeat the
Clinton-Lieberman-DNC-New Democrat grip on the electoral levers
and permit at least a tolerable Democrat that the left can support
without retching (i.e., not Lieberman or Clark), and who will
at least hold the line and maybe even slightly reverse the rightward
shift. We need breathing and organizational space, and so does
the rest of the world, threatened with perpetual war, an arms
race, and further regression of environmental policy. The view
that we should purposely allow Bush to win so that the coming
disaster will fall on his head is not defensible. The disaster
is not inevitable if he is ousted, but a nasty one is pretty
well assured with four more years of the cabal. Some of them
really want what we would consider a disaster (including a de
facto termination of constitutional government in this country).
ENGEL: Your statement,
"The system is working beautifully
right now, despite Bush's current problems, which stem from his
ability to violate all international and moral norms up to this
moment, which got him into a morass a decent world would have
prevented him entering."
leads me to some questions about the
Democrats and "international and moral norms" that
nobody has yet, to my knowledge, clearly answered:
a) Why on Earth did Al Gore let Bush
get away with stealing the election? Supreme Court or no Supreme
Court, if it had been Nader whose Presidency (and responsibility
to those who voted to create it) had been stolen like that, he
would still be fighting it to this day.
b) Gulf "War" I was a "typical"
war over land, oil, a client dictator disobeying - or perhaps
misunderstanding - orders etc. The sanctions themselves, while
costing ten times the damage in lives and social and economic
devastation as the "war" itself, was not atypical,
considering the ruthless use of embargoes used by great powers
against small in the past. But the "humanitarian" action
in Kosovo was unprecedented. Intelligent adults became like children
in fifth grade history class as it was explained that the United
States along with its puny "partner" nation states
in NATO bombed Serbia to bits in order to prevent the alleged
genocidal attacks that just such a reckless, ruthless use of
force encouraged. What was the term they used, "humanitarian
war?"
Could this have been a precedent for
Afghanistan and Iraq II? In Afghanistan, as in Bosnia, "we"
bombed them to bits to save them from themselves and the wicked
Taliban, who dressed their women like lampshades, then left it
to crumble. Yet, as in Bosnia, American troops remain. Scattered,
almost forgotten.
Iraq is a bit more complex. We have to
stay there because of the oil, the WMD hype, or maybe just "because."
Anyway, Iraq II was a continuation of the "old" standard
war begun in 1991.
Afghanistan, like Bosnia, was something
different. Beyond the "humanitarian" fairy-tales, what
was it? The oil that no one seems to be getting? I can't help
but think that Bosnia was a precedent, a test case that, successful
in its "humanitarian goal" was left to rot under the
eyes of a few American army units (a nurse who worked for my
Doctor was a reservist called to serve there for a year, well
after the "successful" campaign). Likewise Afghanistan.
The Clinton administration, as it did with the Effective anti-Terrorism
and Death Penalty Act which morphed into the USA PATRIOT Act,
set a precedent for the Bushites to follow. But what was this
precedent? Why the destruction of an already war-torn country
for no discernable purpose? Or perhaps I'm missing something?
Of course, the logical next step would be to bomb Israel as part
of our "humanitarian quest."
This is why I wonder whether the Bush
phenomenon is exactly that, a phenomenon, a virus in the system
that must be allowed to play itself out so the system can go
back to "normal" again, or a great leap rather than
a "next step" from Clintonism to absolute military
corporatism. Again, no one is fooled by the Bosnia/Afghanistan
charades (Hitler Milosovic replaced by Hitler Bin Laden). But
what was the political purpose of these elaborate "drive-by
shootings?" If, as you say, the system is running beautifully,
wanton destruction must be useful to the system. But in what
way?
HERMAN: The system can't be counted on
to return to normal if we were to let the Bush "virus"
play itself out. The analogy is not a good one, as the Bush phenomenon
is rooted in structural facts whose strength is likely to be
reinforced by Bush policies. For example, the further concentration
of the media will serve rightwing interests in the future, just
as the further growth of the military establishment and police,
and further Bush appointments to the courts, will do the same.
I think the Balkans wars were very important
in setting the stage for the Bush wars: they represented a decline
in and perversion of the UN, a brazen violation of the UN Charter
and rules of war, and a lot of destruction and killing that were
quite unnecessary and rooted more in Western policy than in bad
men in the Balkans (as described in Diana Johnstone's outstanding
book Fools' Crusade, summarized
in my long review). The political collapse of the liberals
and left in this case was also very important in clearing the
ground for the Bush wars, with their half-witted concept of humanitarian
intervention, that is still being peddled in The Nation magazine
and even in In These Times (see my "The
Cruise Missile Left , Part 4: The Nation Magazine's Forum on
'Humanitarian Intervention," Swans, September 2003.
As you say, Clinton really led the way to the Patriot Act with
his Effective Antiterrorism and Death Penalty Act, and he also
led the way to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the global "war on
terror"-really "war OF terror"-with his fine effort
in the Balkans. Ousting the Clinton gang from domination of the
Democratic Party, while no guarantee of sanity given the institutional
scene, would still be a necessary step in at least delaying Armageddon.
ENGEL: For the past few weeks I've been
"arguing" publicly in articles such as "The
System Really Works" and "Republican" with
Democrats who, failing to recognize that the presidency was stolen
from Gore by the Supreme Court, and that Gore did nothing to
fight for himself or his constituents, blame Greens for Bush's
destruction of "their country." In addition to pointing
out that the Democrats in Congress and the Senate gave Bush Inc.
everything they asked for, from War Powers to the USA PATRIOT
ACT etc., I protested that such "lesser-of-two-evilism"
must end. However, in my reaction against being told who to vote
for and what to say, in addition to the ludicrous fiction that
all was "well and good" under Clinton or any other
Democrat, I failed to think practically. That is, what to do
about Bush. I must admit, I am one of those people you argued
against by holding the "view that we should purposely allow
Bush to win so that the coming disaster will fall on his head."
I did not think "the disaster is not inevitable if he is
ousted, but a nasty one is pretty well assured with four more
years of the cabal," and perhaps I was a bit cavalier in
believing myself one of those who "want what we would consider
a disaster (including a de facto termination of constitutional
government in this country)." I have not been looking at
November 2004 with clear eyes. Then again, that's one of the
reasons for this interview. I'm not standing on steady ground.
Is the only choice we have then, at least
to give ourselves some "breathing room" as you called
it, to vote Democrat, hopefully for a Kucinich or some other
progressive minded Democrat? If so, what if it's not Kucinich,
but Clark or Lieberman? It would be less painful if we really
did have some say to put up a Kucinich who would at least try
to repeal some of the damage done, but it seems more likely the
"anti-Bush" will be of the DNC variety. Are we stuck
with the "choice" of "anyone but Bush (which to
me means DNC)?
HERMAN: Recent developments suggest that
the DNC is very unhappy about Dean, and Gore's endorsement has
put them in a rage over the betrayal of a true DNC man, Lieberman.
The New York Times has been equally enraged, after their front
page accolade to that "centrist" Lieberman, and this
regrettable shift to "the left"! These creeps can't
stand the slightest trace of populism or any lightening up of
the imperial thrust. They pretend that the people want a centrist,
which Lieberman is not, and that such a move to the left will
be fatal electorally. The DNC crowd and mainstream media have
been playing this game for years, even as their preferred centrist
and center-right candidates get eviscerated (Clinton excepted,
though his terms coincided with crushing losses for Democrats
in the states and federal legislatures). I believe the DNCers
prefer a Republican to even a mildly liberal and centrist Democrat
like Dean, and they might sell him out as they did McGovern in
1972. They would surely never support a Kucinich, and of course
the Free Press would savage Kucinich, and they have been pretty
nasty to Dean as well, just as they have been kissing Bush ass
as he moves from one looting and murder operation to the next.
So our effective political choices are
narrow, and the DNC crowd would make them even narrower if they
could, and they are trying hard. We always face a lesser and
great evil choice, and in my lifetime, while I've occasionally
voted for third party sure losers as a conscious protest vote,
I've also consciously voted for several lesser evil scoundrels
who I considered to be war criminals. The greater evil scoundrels
clearly threatened even more massive war crimes, as George Bush
does today. This reflects a gruesome political system, that has
reached new lows in the last few years.
Adam Engel can
be reached at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
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