Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
September 2, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Recent
Stories
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
2, 2003
The Democrats in 2004
Perfect
Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
By DAVID LINDORFF
A number of factors appear to be coming together--a
perfect political storm if you will--to suggest that the 2004
elections could be a watershed in American politics instead of
the Democratic Waterloo many were anticipating only six months
ago.
First of all, the growing cynicism about
and disinterest in politics on the part of the majority of American
citizens appears to be convincing political strategists in both
parties that the Clintonian strategy of seeking out and winning
over the undecided voter is a waste of time and money. Since
so few of these swing or so-called "independent" voters
will vote anyway, since they are so easily swayed back and forth
in their choices, and since winning them involves a huge risk
of alienating otherwise assured partisan voters, it is and has
always been a foolish strategy.
This raises the possibility of a more
ideologically driven  campaign, with both parties
appealing to what is left of their principles in an effort to
get their more ardent supporters active in the campaign and to
the voting both on election day.
Bad news that for the Democratic Leadership
Council and for Republicans in Democratic clothing like Joe Lieberman.
I'm not deluding myself that the Democratic
Party will suddenly become the party of FDR in '36, but it and
Democratic candidates for national office clearly will have to
give those remaining 13 million trade union members, along with
the nation's black and Hispanic voters, its low-wage hamburger
flippers, and its idealistic students, a reason to campaign and
to vote.
Those fabled soccer moms of the 2000
campaign will not be courted so ardently this time around. In
this campaign, they may simply have to decide for themselves
whether abortion rights, adequate school funding and clean air
trump feel good images of family men bussing their wives in public
or talking about the need for morality in government.
Second, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld all-war-all-the-time
strategy of maintaining Americans in a state of jingoistic fervor,
while keeping everyone on edge with color-coded terror alerts,
appears to have backfired. Yellow and orange Homeland Security
alerts don't have everyone jumping for the duct tape and plastic
any more. And meanwhile, things are falling apart rapidly in
both Afghanistan and Iraq. A few months ago, if Iraqi guerrillas
had managed to pull off a Lebanon-style mass bombing of American
troops, a pumped-up American public probably would have demanded
a massive infusion of more heavily armed troops to crush the
bastards. Now, after months of quagmire-like occupation, with
Iraq no better off than it was at the end of the American assault
on Baghdad, with American GI's getting picked off at a rate of
about one per day, such a military disaster would probably, Tet-like,
lead to popular demands for the U.S. to simply pull out of Iraq,
leaving the country in complete chaos.
The Bush administration is desperate
to avoid going into the 2004 election with a messy Iraq occupation
still on its hands, but there is probably no way out at this
point. The attacks on the U.N. compound and the latest horrific
mosque bombing have pretty much obliterated any chance that other
countries--already angry at U.S. unilateralism--will step in
to help with the occupation (does anybody seriously believe that
it was the U.S. that decided, after that latter blast, to delay
the planned takeover of occupation duties in Najaf by Polish
troops? ). At the same time, it has become politically impossible
at this point for the Pentagon to send in more U.S. troops--something
it might have gotten away with two months ago but which now would
be portrayed as a replay of Vietnam.
Neither can Bush adopt the Nixonian approach
of declaring victory and pulling out. The Nixon "secret
plan" for ending the war in Vietnam, recall, was to hand
the war over to the South Vietnamese government and army, providing
it with sufficient firepower to allow it to hold off the inevitable
Communist victory long enough to either get him through his term
or to allow him to lay the blame for the "loss" of
South Vietnam on Saigon.
But Iraq has no government or army to
hand things over to, and the likelihood that its feuding tribes
and religious sects could be cobbled together into something
that could pass for a government at least through next November,
or that the semblance of a puppet army could be created that
wouldn't simply fuel further chaos, civil strife and attacks
on U.S. troops, is next to nil.
My guess is that Karl Rove is probably
kicking himself for that hubristic staging of a Bush carrier
landing. If anyone ends up using it in campaign commercials,
it will probably be the eventual Democratic presidential candidate.
My suggestion is for a "Mr. Bill"-style commercial
featuring the KB Toys Bush flight-suited action figure, mocking
his declaration that "Major conflict" in Iraq is over.
This would capitalize on the new penchant, among pundits, to
suggest that we need to have grownups in charge in Washington,
instead of the adolescents who are running things these days.
The economy too, is likely to be in sorry
shape during this campaign. Anyone who thinks that corporate
America is going to start investing, with the prospect of those
huge budget deficits on out to the horizon, with over 6 percent
of Americans unemployed, and with everyone extended to the limits
on their credit, is simply delusional. One in five Americans
has been laid off at some point in the last two years, which
means that just about everyone knows or has relatives who have
been laid off, and that everyone is worried about their own job
security. That's hardly fertile ground for an economic boom.
The best that Republicans can hope for
is perhaps a stock market rebound, but that won't help that Democratic
base or lowly wage-earners to which it appears the party will
now be turning.
Of course, the Democratic Party and its
presidential candidates have shown an uncanny ability to do the
wrong thing in recent years. It's still possible that Democratic
candidates, whose lust for corporate affection resembles Clinton's
insatiable and self-destructive appetite for young women, could
adopt the losing strategy of trying to appeal yet again to Republican
voters. Candidate Howard Dean, for example, whose basic position
on most economic issues are close to Lieberman's, could end up
campaigning after the primaries like a centrist and losing those
crucial union and minority voters.
If whoever wins that nomination does
decide to appeal to the party's traditional base this year, however,
and goes after Bush and Republican congressional candidates on
the key issues of the war, the economy and the massive tax breaks
for the rich and corporate America, November 2004 could bring
dramatic changes.
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Weekend
Edition Features for August 30 / Sept. 1, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
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