Conservatives are Jumping Ship: Bush is Going Down

[CrisisPapers]

| Bernard Weiner |

I'm more and more convinced that it will be Republicans, many of them of the true conservative and realist kind, who effectively will do in the Bush Administration.

In this, I am reminded of the behavior of Richard Nixon. Realizing that he was fast losing his middle-class, bourgeois base, he knew when to call it quits on the Vietnam War and on his presidency after his crimes were exposed.

Unlike Nixon's crew, Bush & Co. seem willing to take the country down with them, so desperate are they to hold onto power, deplete the treasury, pay off their corporate friends, carry out their ideological revolution - and keep themselves out of the federal slammer.

The crimes of the Bush Administration are so many and varied that none of us should be surprised by anything that might happen in the coming weeks and months: Bin Laden captured or reported killed, a U.S.-Israeli air assault on Iran's nuclear facilities, a major terrorist attack inside the U.S. to be followed by martial law, the announcement of a bird-flu outbreak with the military placed in charge. I'm pretty level-headed and don't usually think in these dire terms, but these guys have backed themselves into a political corner and are desperate - and dangerous.

THE IMPLODING SCANDALS

Bush is at 34% approval rating (Cheney is at 18%!), and their scandals are blowing up in their faces: Katrina lies and incompetence; Iraq lies and incompetence; the Dubai Ports deal; GOP bribery and corruption; Libby under indictment and Rove apparently about to be; Bush claiming authority to authorize torture, spy on millions of American citizens and violate the law whenever he says "national security" is involved; Congress rebelling at being frozen out of decision-making, etc. etc. But in the face of all that, the Rovian M.O. is always to attack their foes and to hype the fright quotient.

The Administration didn't have to consider the most extreme options until recently, when a lot of wheels started falling off the Bush bus. The attacks were no longer mostly coming from liberals and Democrats; more and more, they were coming from loyal conservative Republicans, who, being apprised of the sinking poll numbers, saw the handwriting on the wall: they realized they could well lose their majorities in the House and Senate - in other words, lose their jobs and access to the spoils of power - and they started distancing themselves from the Administration.

So, rather than beating my usual drum here denouncing the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration, I thought I'd just lay out the comments of those conservatives and let them speak for themselves. (My late friend Emile de Antonio, the documentary filmmaker, taught me a good lesson; it's always better, he pointed out, to quote what the Wall Street Journal is saying rather than quoting a hippie leftist making the same point. When their own supporters smell the moral rot up top, the end is near.)

I'll concentrate here on Iraq and the neo-con ideologues who took this country to war, though currently the flak is also coming hot and heavy from the Right on both the domestic spying and Dubai ports scandals. (Even conservative Republican Senator Richard Shelby says Bush broke the law in the way he handled the Dubai ports contract.)

THE NEO-CONS BEHIND THE WAR

Let's begin with a reminder that the conservative establishment didn't agree from the very beginning with Bush's obsession to invade Iraq. President George H.W. Bush, who successfully organized a massive coalition to push Iraq's army out of Kuwait in the first Gulf War, warned his son privately and through his spokesmen of the dangerous consequences both of invading and occupying Iraq and of doing so without wide international support. As he said of Iraq in A World Transformed (written with Gen. Brent Scowcroft): "Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome."

Fast forward to the present, when so many Republican stalwarts are saying, in effect, that they backed the wrong horse. Their party was taken over by rightwing extremists, incompetent at that, whose reckless policies are doing great danger to the country and to the future of the once-great GOP. Here's Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, chair of the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation, going even beyond the war into the deeper crimes being committed against Americans' freedoms:

Most Americans do not yet realize that a war is being waged - not against Iraq but against each of us. It is not the Republican Party that is charge in this administration but a small cadre who seized executive branch power and converted it to their own uses. Most Republicans are experiencing a deer-in-the-headlights moment right now. Their Party has been hijacked, their president has been hijacked, and they do not know what to do. I remain a registered Republican working for an effective coalition. The attack on us and on our rights has hardly begun. You don't go to the trouble of setting up this degree of control without having made plans to use it.

NEO-CON FUKUYAMA HAS SECOND THOUGHTS

Or try this out. Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the 1992 neocon best-seller The End of History, is exhibiting some serious recantation these days in interviews and in his new book, America at the Crossroads.

He now says that neo-conservatism has "evolved into something I can no longer support," and should be tossed onto history's pile of discredited ideologies. The doctrine, which has demonstrated "the danger of good intentions carried to extremes ... is now in shambles," and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy.

For example, though he once supported regime change in Iraq, he now believes the war there is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism. Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally.

By definition, outsiders can't 'impose' democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.

THE CHENEY-RUMSFELD CABAL

Then we go to a long-time Administration stalwart who couldn't take it any more: Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired U.S. Army colonel who was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," Wilkerson said in a well-publicized speech at the New America Foundation last October. "And you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either."

Wilkerson has also focused attacks on the Bush administration for condoning torture, setting lax and ambiguous policies on treatment of detainees that inevitably led to the scandal of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and elsewhere.

BUCKLEY BUCKLES TO REALITY

Onward to the intellectual godfather of the modern conservative movement, National Review founding editor William F. Buckley Jr., who concludes that what may have started as a decent move has evolved into disaster:

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. ... Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols. ... Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy. ... The kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

THE TROOPS WANT OUT, SOON

Speaking of the troops in Iraq, recent polling reveals that nearly 3 out of 4 of U.S troops in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country this year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admits also that the Iraqis want us to leave "as soon as possible."

Here are some pertinent comments by a U.S. soldier in Iraq, writing as "djtyg," about why the desire to leave that country:

We need to get out because our military cannot take much more of this. We are stretched too thin and it's about to get worse. ... Soldiers are frustrated. Every soldier I have talked to says that they are getting out of the military when they get home. Every. One. Of. Them. Regardless of rank, experience, or time in, they all want out. There has not been a single Soldier I've talked to that says they want to stay in. This include officers, NCOs, and rookies who are on their first tour of duty. We need to get out of Iraq because Iraq is the reason why the military is shrinking. We, like Cindy Sheehan, are curious as to what "noble cause" we are fighting for. We can't seem to find one. This is weakening America. At the rate we are going, we are going to have a military that can't fight because it has old and broken down equipment, and no troops to fight a war with.

SEN. HAGEL LOWERS THE BOOM

Then there are key Republican senators who are willing to stick out their necks by talking truth to power about Iraq - for example, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, who says the U.S. is losing in Iraq and raised a parallel to an earlier conflict.

"(The Vietnam War) was a national tragedy partly because members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the administrations in power until it was too late. To question your government is not unpatriotic - to not question your government is unpatriotic," he said, arguing that 58,000 troops died in Vietnam because of silence by political leaders. "America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices."

O'REILLY QUESTIONS STAYING IN IRAQ

So, let's see: Bush is losing old-money Republican conservatives, GOP senators, neo-con theorists outside the Cheney-Rumsfeld insider nexus, military insiders, troops under fire in Iraq - who else can he lose? Would you believe the lunatic fringe, as symbolized by that raving Limbaugh wannabee Bill O'Reilly?

The Fox News pundit, who usually is in lockstep with the Bush program and calls anybody who criticizes those policies idiots and worse, had this to say the other day about the need to get out of Iraq ASAP: " hand over everything to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible (because) there are so many nuts in the country - so many crazies - that we can't control them."

GOP DISCONTENT ON NATIONAL SECURITY

Well, one could go on and on with the criticism coming from the Right - conservative former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, former Reagan Administration official Paul Craig Roberts, Congressional warhawk John Murtha, et al. The point is that the Republicans, formerly associated with a winning national-security message, are now regarded much differently by many GOP rank-and-file and politicos.

Many Representatives and Senators also deeply resent the way the Congress has been frozen out of the power loop by the Bush Administration. "We simply want to participate and aren't going to be PR flacks when they need us," Florida's conservative GOP Congressman Mark Foley said. "We all have roles. We have oversight. When you can't answer your constituents when they have legitimate questions - we can't simply do it on trust."

Scott Reed, who managed Robert Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, called the current low poll ratings for Bush and the GOP "pretty shattering," noting especially that Bush's support among Republicans fell from 83 percent to 72 percent. "The repetition of the news coming out of Iraq is wearing folks down," Reed said. "It started with women and it's spreading. It's just bad news after bad news after bad news, without any light at the end of the tunnel."

THE PRESIDENT AS DICTATOR

"Even if you're a Republican member of Congress, you don't buy the exaggerated view of the unified executive theory, in which the only part of the Constitution that matters is Article II," on presidential power, said James B. Steinberg, a dean at the University of Texas at Austin. "If you want them to be in on the landing, you have to have people there for the takeoff."

For example, two staunch conservative Southern Senators won't accept Bush's Unified Executive theory of governance. "I think the administration has looked at the legitimate power of the executive during a time of war and taken it to extremes," said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. " to the point that we'd lose constitutional balance. Under their theory, there would be almost no role for the Congress or the courts." Mississippi's Sen. Trent Lott was even more blunt: "Don't put your fist in my face."

EVEN WALL ST. IS TALKING IMPEACHMENT

Now all those defections from the Bush orbit are doing great damage to the once-unified Bush & Co. juggernaut, but I've left out one key one: Wall Street. The titans of finance are agitated, even to the point of urging serious consideration of Bush's impeachment. Here's some of what Barron's Editorial Page Editor Thomas G. Donlan wrote in that establishment financial journal:

...The administration is saying the president has unlimited authority to order wiretaps in the pursuit of foreign terrorists, and that the Congress has no power to overrule him ... Perhaps they were researched in a Star Chamber? Putting the president above the Congress is an invitation to tyranny. The president has no powers except those specified in the Constitution and those enacted by law. President Bush is stretching the power of commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy by indicating that he can order the military and its agencies, such as the National Security Agency, to do whatever furthers the defense of the country from terrorists, regardless of whether actual force is involved.

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation ...

It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law ...

THREE MORE YEARS?

So, friends, when we're down in the dumps, depressed by the fact that Bush & Co. are still in power even in the face of all their lies and bumblings and policies that result in thousands of people getting killed and maimed and tortured, let us consider that even their once-loyal rats are deserting the sinking ship of state.

The thought of nearly three more years of Bush & Co. misrule is too horrible to contemplate. So let's ratchet up the pressure, incorporate distressed GOP moderates and conservatives into the impeachment momentum, and let's send the Bush Bunker crew packing and return the country to reasonable people dedicated to a restoration of Constitutional rule of law and a realistic foreign policy. It's the least we can do for our country.

[Atman]

1. WELCOME TO DU!

OH...wait, never mind!

[uppityperson]

2. hahahhahahaha

[CrisisPapers]

3. An Appearance of Guilt

| Ernest Partridge |

The accumulated weight of evidence of election fraud – statistical, circumstantial, and anecdotal – has failed to move the mainstream media to report or investigate this evidence, or the Democratic party to acknowledge and protest the apparent Republican control of our elections.

This essay is not yet another account of that evidence, which I have spelled out extensively and which I firmly believe to be compelling.

Instead, I wish to deal with another indicator that our national elections no longer represent the will of the voters, but rather are manipulated to produce the outcome desired by the "winning" candidates and party. This indicator is the behavior of those who manufacture, program, and operate the paperless, unauditable machines (direct recording electronic: "DRE"), and those who benefit from this technology.

Perhaps this new electronic voting technology is as honest and reliable as the private election industry and the winning candidates tell us it is. However, they simply do not behave as if this were the case.

My contention might be illustrated by this parable:

Suppose that a drug-sniffing dog at an airport identifies a suspicious piece of luggage. The customs officer then locates the individual whose name is on the tag, and orders him to open it. Now suppose further that this person then proceeds to do one or more of the following:

a) He denies that the luggage is his.

b) He calls his lawyer who presents an injunction against further inspection of the luggage.

c) He claims that he is a diplomat, and thus not subject to luggage inspection.

d) He offers a bribe to the inspector if he will "forget the whole thing."

Might one not suspect that the traveler was trying to hide something?

The dog then gets back to work, and soon identifies another bag, and the owner of this parcel is identified and ordered to open the luggage for inspection. He does so willingly and without qualm, having packed the bag himself and thus knowing that there is no contraband therein. He is also aware that the dog has a record of 30% false positives.

Which of these two responses more closely resembles the behavior of the DRE manufacturers (Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia), of the Republican Congress, and of the Republican National Committee? Are the DRE manufacturers and the Republicans acting in a manner consistent with their claims that "e-voting" is both honest and accurate? Or are they behaving as if they have something to hide?

Here are a few indicators. Because there are so many, I will be brief. For details and documentation, follow the links:

• First and foremost: DRE machines use secret software and produce no separate record of the voting to allow auditing and validation of the votes. Thus, by design, it is impossible either to prove or disprove directly the accuracy of the vote totals of a DRE machine or the neutrality of the software. (However, there is abundant indirect evidence of e-voting fraud: statistical, anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. But that's another topic).
  
  
• The manufacturers and programmers of DREs (all of whom have close ties with the Republican Party) insist that their software ("source codes") must be kept secret – for no apparent and defensible reason. (They claim to be concerned about copyright infringement. But music, essays, fiction, drama, etc., all are public by nature, and yet all are protected by copyright).
  
  
• The e-voting manufacturers also make ATM machines and automated gas pumps, both of which produce paper receipts. Yet they steadfastly resist demands that their "touch screen" voting machines produce printouts, which might then serve to validate the accuracy of the votes.
  
  
• DRE manufacturers will not allow "test hacks" of randomly selected machines. (Unauthorized hacks have proven DREs to be extremely vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation. So too a recent report by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office: a report that has been virtually ignored by the mainstream press).
  
  
• A bill by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) that would require validated printed paper receipts of the votes and random inspection of the DRE machines has been locked up in committee by the Congressional Republicans. A discharge petition, which would allow a vote on the bill, is unavailing, due to insufficient support by the Republicans.
  
  
• In 2000, computer programmer Clinton Curtis was asked by a GOP congressional candidate, Tom Feeney, to create a software program that would alter vote counts in favor of the Republicans. Curtis testified to this under oath, signed an affidavit, and took a polygraph test. Of course, Feeney, now a congressman, denies Curtis' allegations, but unlike Curtis, Feeney refuses to state his denial under oath or to submit to a polygraph.
  
  
• In California, Stephen Heller, a temporary employee of Diebold Election Systems, obtained copies of memos indicating that Diebold may have used uncertified voting systems in the 2004 primary and suggesting that thousands of voters might be disenfranchised in subsequent elections. Heller's "reward" for blowing this whistle? He was charged with three felony counts and, if convicted, could serve more than three years in state prison.
  
  
• In 2004, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified Diebold DRE machines. In a special recall election, Republican Arnold Schwarznegger replaced Democrat Gray Davis. Kevin Shelley was then harassed and forced out of office and replaced by Republican Bruce McPherson, who "conditionally" recertified the Diebold machines. (These are two types of machines: Optical scan with paper ballots, and "TSX" with touch-screens and no paper record. It is the paperless TSX machines that are especially vulnerable to undetectable manipulation and fraud." There is a heated debate within the election reform community as to whether Optical Scanning is an acceptable improvement over DREs, or whether, on the other hand, only hand counted paper ballots will do. But that's a topic for another essay).
  
  
• The Alaska "flip-flop." The Republican state government of Alaska refused to release to the Alaska Democrats the Diebold database files from the 2004 election on the grounds that it was "a company secret." (These were records of a public election, mind you). After persistent requests, the state relented albeit under very restrictive conditions. But then, just two weeks ago, the state again denied the request, claiming that it was a "security risk" to the state of Alaska.
  
  
• December 20, 2005: Rather than obey a North Carolina law requiring that source codes be made public, Diebold withdrew its machines from the state elections.

There is much more, which you might find here and here. But this much suffices to make my point.

What we find, then, is an industry and a political party which, on the one hand, insists that the totals from electronic voting machines are entirely accurate and honest, though these same machines are so designed that they preclude any independent evidence to support these claims. On the other hand, this same industry and party steadfastly resist any and all attempts to introduce reliable methods of validation, much less the most reliable system of all: hand counted paper ballots.

Persistent suspicion and charges of fraud are damaging to the industry and the GOP. If they are as innocent as they claim to be, why don't they just eliminate these damaging suspicions by offering proof, and then allowing, and even encouraging, paper records, independent audits, and exit polls?

Despite a near-total embargo by the mainstream media of news, analysis, investigation and commentary on ballot security and allegations of fraud, combined with an astonishing indifference to the issue on the part of the Democrats and their allies, public doubts about the security and accuracy of elections and hence of the legitimacy of the Republican control of the White House and the Congress, simply will not go away. In fact, these concerns appear to be increasing and will likely continue to increase, as the credibility and public approval of the Bush regime continues to drop.

Here's a thought experiment for those who insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the past three elections were above reproach and doubt. Put this confidence aside for a moment and just imagine, hypothetically, that the elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004 were all fixed, and that the coming election of 2006 will be fixed. Then ask yourself: if this were so, how would the behavior of the industry and the GOP be in any way different from what it is now?

Then ask, if the elections are honest and accurate, why don't the industry and the Republicans act like it? In short, if they are innocent, why do they willingly persist in appearing guilty?

These questions must be asked by the Democrats, loudly and persistently, for as Karl Rove and the GOP propaganda machine knows so well, repetition is the key to successful persuasion of the public. Satire and ridicule are also very much in order. We must "pile it on" until continuing silence by the GOP and by the compliant mainstream media becomes unendurable.

And if the e-voting establishment – party and industry – are ever forced, however reluctantly, to enact reforms consistent with their protestations of innocence, what might they do?

Here is a list of proposals that any honest voting machine industry and political party should be willing to endorse:

a) Publish the source codes. (The copyrights can be fully protected.)

b) Include printers with all machines. Stipulate by law that in case of recounts, the paper receipts are to be the official ballots of record.

c) Require independent audits – of local balloting, and of regional compiling of election returns.

d) Allow examination and "test hacks" of machines, selected randomly.

e) Outlaw all data inputs (by direct line, wireless, or UV) to voting machines and compilers with the exception, of course, of the "inputs" by the voters.

f) Rigorously enforce and prosecute election fraud laws.

If the industry and the Republicans won't agree to these assurances, then they must present a plausible explanation as to why they decline to do so. Absent that explanation, we citizens of this alleged democracy under an alleged rule of law must demand that every vote be counted and verified, and we must be supplied with proof that this has been accomplished. Furthermore, every individual who has engaged in election fraud must be tracked down and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We are entitled to no less than this.

[CrisisPapers]

4. Perception is Reality

| Ernest Partridge |

Yogi Berra said it best: "It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."

Predictions in politics rest upon two presuppositions: (a) that present trends will continue into the future, and (b) that there will be no totally unexpected "surprises."

Both assumptions are rarely true and are refuted both by common sense and by the lessons of history.

Case in point: last week's "Texas shootout." Until last week, the White House routine was in motion and functioning smoothly: Bush was the public face of the Administration, and Cheney the hand in the sock-puppet, self-selected in 2000 to give stability, maturity and "gravitas" to the Bush regime. Last week Cheney was exposed to the public at large as the reckless, self-absorbed, super-annuated adolescent that his perceptive critics knew him to be. Today the right-wing propaganda mills are up to full speed, telling us "move along, folks, nothing to see here." But try as they might, the public perception of Dick Cheney will not revert to status-quo-ante. The "present trend" of the Bush/Cheney team has been turned in an altered direction.

But Dick Cheney's bad aim was a minor disruption, of interest to us only because of its immediacy. Other "surprises" are well known to all of us.

• In the fall of 1958, Fidel Castro seemed to be insignificant irritant to the regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. On New Years Day in 1959, Batista fled Cuba, and two days later Castro and his "brigands," marched into Havana.
  
  
• In the summer of 1963, John Kennedy's election to a second term appeared to be a near-certainty.
  
  
• So too, his brother Robert's nomination at the Chicago Democratic convention in August, 1968.
  
  
• On election day in 1964, Lyndon Johnson seemed assured of a second term four years hence. And on election day, 1972, there was no reason whatever to doubt that Richard Nixon would serve out a full term.
  
  
• In the early eighties, Reagan's UN Ambassador, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, warned us all that where communism had established its rule, it had never retreated one square inch. And Mikhail Gorbachev, the Right told us, was just another Communist apparatchik, like all the others - "Khruschev with a tailored suit and a thin wife," as George Will put it.
  
  
• In 1990 Nelson Mandela was a prisoner of the South African apartheid regime. In 1994 he was elected President of the Republic of South Africa.

Political upheavals are like earthquakes. Beneath a placid landscape, stresses quietly build up until the fault ruptures, suddenly and without warning, forever transforming the landscape.

So, is an upheaval looming ahead for the United States? Not necessarily. For history also teaches us that democracies can descend slowly, by small increments, into despotism. As William O. Douglas put it: "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged."

Which is our future? A bang, or a whimper? Or perhaps a renaissance? We don't know. But the answer, to no small degree, is in the hands of us, of "we the people."

This much seems likely: given the increasing unrest among the American people, the accumulating evidence of GOP corruption and Administration crimes, and the likelihood of a devastating economic setback, come September and October this year, the political landscape will be radically different than it is today. It could be far worse, with an intervening catastrophic terrorist attack followed immediately by martial law and full-fledged fascism. On the other hand, we the people just might achieve our deliverance from this reign of error, lies, greed, and cruelty.

The latter, hopeful, outcome may appear impossible today. But we must never forget that every successful peoples' liberation movement begins as an impossible dream. (And, be sure, many such movements remain so). They then proceed to possibility, then probability, and finally to inevitability and success.

The resistance to Bushism is now at the "impossible" stage; today, the Busheviks control the ballot box and the mainstream media. Their continuing control of the Congress and soon the Courts seems assured, and the alleged "opposition party" is enfeebled, disorganized and compliant. To be sure, if conditions and trends remain as they are today, and there are no "surprises," continued control by the GOP of all branches of government is a certainty.

However, it is very unlikely that conditions and trends will remain as they are, or that there will be no disrupting "surprises." Below this controlled and placid political and economic landscape, the stresses are accumulating.

Among them:

• More and more moderate republicans and authentic conservatives are finally coming to realize that they share little more with the Bush Administration and the GOP Congress than a name, "Republican," and an adjective, "conservative." With the rightward shift in US politics, traditional Republican values and policies - fiscal responsibility, small government, local control, individual self-reliance - are approaching congruence with those of the Democratic party. And genuine conservatives share with the Democrats, and in opposition to the Bush regime, a respect for our Constitution, the balance of governmental powers, and the rule of law.
  
  
• Similarly, many libertarians are becoming disenchanted with the Bushevik assault on civil liberties and its flirtation with theocracy. In fact, a recent analysis of congressional voting records has determined that with the exception of the estimable libertarian-republican, Ron Paul, virtually all the top voting scores in the libertarian index belong to House Democrats.
  
  
• Bush has lost the confidence and support of a majority of Americans. His approval ratings have once again dropped below 40%. A November AP-Ipsos poll found that 57% of those polled do not believe that the Bush Administration has "high ethical standards," and the same number say that Bush is not honest. Last month, a Gallup poll found that 58% consider Bush's second term a failure, and 53% believe that Bush's administration deliberately misled the public about Saddam's alleged WMD programs. Finally, an October Ipsos poll found that exactly half of the population would want Congress to consider impeachment if Bush lied about his reasons for going to war with Iraq
  
  
• The Religious Right is fracturing, and the moderate Christians are becoming politically active, reminding us that Jesus blessed the peacemakers and http://www.crisispapers.org/essays/wwjd.htm">condemned the wealthy and the hypocrites. Some evangelical Christian ministers are openly criticizing Bush's environmental policies and expressing exerting considerable economic pressure on the US government.[br />
  
• Bushism is based upon and sustained by a scaffolding of lies and deception. At long last, the public is beginning to "wise up," and as the Busheviks respond to public skepticism with still more lies, their credibility crumbles, and with it their legitimacy and political clout.
  
  
• Doubts about the validity of the election process will not go away, despite the disparagement of the issue by the mainstream media and the persistent indifference of the Democratic Party. More and more jurisdictions are decertifying electronic voting devices as legal challenges proliferate.
  
  
• The US economy is approaching a breaking point, as the housing bubble is about to burst followed by the bankruptcy of millions of double-mortgaged speculating home owners. With ever-more Americans "maxing-out" their credit cards and credit qualifications, and with the continuing decline in median middle-class income, consumer spending is certain to stall. Nothing provokes the American public to political action more than economic distress.
  
  
• It is finally beginning to dawn on a few "movers and shakers" of finance and industry that where Bush, Inc. is leading, they should not want to follow. There are few winners in an economic depression, least of all investors. And a country that fails to invest in infrastructure, in scientific research, in technological development, and in education, and which "outsources" its technical jobs, is committing economic suicide. Savvy investors and corporate financial officers recall that they flourished during the Clinton administration, not to mention most Democratic administrations.
  
  
• After five years of slavishly spewing out Bushite/GOP propaganda, the mainstream media is losing its credibility and its audience. The public is beginning to look to alternative sources for its news: the foreign media, the independent press, and of course, the Internet.
  
  
• The would-be despots, Bush, Cheney and the rest, are not very good at despotism. There is a widening charisma-gap, as these leaders appear ever-less "commanding" and ever-more puerile, incompetent, and even pathetic. In addition, Bush and his minions are not "deep thinkers." They prefer faith to science, and gut-feeling to expertise. The public is beginning to appreciate that this administration can not bend reality to its will, and that eventually "reality bites."

All these factors are working to the disadvantage of the Bush regime, thus, the sub-surface stresses are accumulating. Given the manifest skills of the Bush propaganda machine, and the blackmail and intimidation issuing from Karl Rove's office, the political fault beneath could hold fast throughout the next decade, into the Jeb Bush Administration. Or it could rupture next month. My guess is sooner, rather than later.

Meanwhile, the resistance is gaining in strength.

The catalytic moment for liberation movements arrives when (a) the movement achieves self-awareness - when the dissenters look about and find that they are not alone, and recognize that they are participants in a concerted political force, (b) when the movement acquires effective leadership that focuses goals and coordinates action, and (c) when leaders and followers of the movement achieve results, albeit minor, and thus perceive that success is achievable. This perception that success is possible is, in itself, a formidable political force. "Perception is reality." Si, se puede!

I opened with a warning about the unreliability of political predictions. So I will not now hazard predictions about the State of the Union in the fall, as the mid-term election approaches. However, I can point out some factors that might emerge in the meantime to re-shuffle the political deck.

Election fraud

As Bush's approval ratings continue to fall, the economy sours, the Iraq casualty toll increases with no end in sight, the Abramoff and Plame scandals yield indictments, the defensive lies from the White House become more transparent and desperate, opinion polls point to a Democratic blowout in the November elections. As more and more voices are heard to ask, "why on earth did we elect these guys?," the public becomes ever more receptive to the reply, "we didn't! Those damned machines elected them!" Then the Busheviks face a daunting dilemma: can they allow a Democratic takeover of the Congress, and with it the power of congressional investigation including the levers of subpoena and the threats of perjury and contempt of Congress? Or dare they once again "jigger" the computer programs, in the secret and unauditable ballot and compilation codes, to assure a GOP "victory," thus inviting a Ukrainian-style public rebellion?

The Mainstream Media

As the MSM continues to lose its audience, it faces another dilemma: propaganda vs. profits. When the Soviet media, state-owned and thus in no need of profits, persisted in spewing out state propaganda, it gave rise to an underground media, samizdat, and an enthusiastic public audience for foreign broadcasts and publications. In the United States today, profits are a factor, as here and there elements of the MSM, facing competition from foreign and independent sources and the Internet, are exhibiting increasing critical independence from the GOP party line. The opponents to Bush, Inc., need no counter-propaganda. A healthy dose of the truth will suffice as an invaluable resource in the struggle to bring an end to the reigning oligarchy.

Leadership

The resistance to Bushism is essentially leaderless, and thus unfocused and disorganized. When the leaders emerge, reflecting the values and aspirations of the resistance movement, that movement may become a formidable force.

I am not proposing another despot to replace the ones we have. If prospective leaders step forward with agendas alien to the followers, they will be discarded. Successful leaders must embody the values and aspirations of the movement. For if the movement is to be effective, its goals must be defined and focused, and its activism coordinated. In an authentic popular movement, communication and coordination between leaders and followers flows in both directions. Let's be realistic: where would the sixties civil rights movement be without Martin Luther King, Jr. – or, if not King himself, a King-like leader? Where India, without a Gandhi, South Africa without a Mandela, Russia without a Sakharov? For that matter, where would the United States be without a Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and the rest? All of these succeeded as leaders because those in their movements chose to follow. Other individuals, lost to history, claimed leadership and were rejected.

Message Discipline is behind much of the success of the GOP. Memos with "talking points" issue forth from the offices of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, with clear and simple messages that are heard, incessantly, in the echo chambers of right-wing talk radio and right-wing punditry. In contrast, the left speaks with a thousand tongues, with worthy causes spread all over the political landscape, and with factions, that should be allies, fighting amongst themselves for a place at the podium. Witness the Washington Mall peace rallies, where we hear messages of gay pride, reproductive freedom, animal liberation, save the rain forests, abolish the death penalty, and, oh yes, end the war. All these are commendable causes, and all these are also wedge issues that fracture the coalition, to the delight of the right, which therein gains an opportunity to divide and conquer.

To the public at large, a thousand messages equate with no message, and a validation of the tiresome right-wing criticism that "the left has no new ideas."

The essential message of the resistance movement must be simple, clear, with few elements, and comprehensive enough to encompass a broad coalition of citizens, who may differ on particular issues: liberals, progressives, the religious, the secular, moderate Republicans, conservatives, libertarians. To the religious, ask "What would Jesus Do?" (ie., promote peace and charity, and condemn wealth and hypocrisy). To "establishment" Republicans and their followers, "What is the supreme object of your loyalty? A party? A man who happens to be President or your country and its laws and Constitution?" And to citizens in general: "What have they done to our country?"

If these few and simple messages are repeated, over and over, the public might at last pay attention, and the resistance movement might achieve self-identity and grow into an irresistible force for reform and renewal.

In conclusion, we must pay no attention to the pundits' proclamations that Democratic control of Congress is "out of reach," that impeachment is impossible, or that claims of election fraud are groundless paranoia. There are live bombs in the basement of The House of Bush – scandals, crimes, betrayals, treachery, even treason. Any one of these potentially explosive issues might, at any time, go off and bring down the entire wretched structure. Or they might all be defused, as a long night of despotism falls upon our republic. We can be confident only of this much: the present trends will not continue, and we must expect and be prepared to deal intelligently with the unexpected.

We Americans are not an evil people. Woefully ignorant at times, and short on political sales-resistance. But when we sense that we've been swindled and lied to, watch out! Our country was born in rebellion against tyranny. We have a Constitution and we have a tradition of liberty and the rule of law. We have vivid memories of a short time ago when we lived in a country that was both prosperous and free.

But neither were the Germans or the Russians fundamentally evil people. Yet they succumbed to evil regimes. The Germans had to be liberated at horrendous cost. After seventy long years, the various nationalities of the Soviet Union threw out their oppressors. We may suffer the fate of the Germans – there are no guarantees. Or perhaps "the Old World" will come to the rescue of the "New," just as we came to their rescue in the century just past.

Far better that we accomplish our own liberation and renewal. For only the American people can restore the honor of the United States of America.

[CrisisPapers]

5. Slicing Away Liberty: 1933 Germany, 2006 America

| Bernard Weiner |

I must confess that I'm utterly baffled by the lack of sustained, organized outrage and opposition from Democratic officials and ordinary citizens at the Bush Administration's never-ending scandals, corruptions, war-initiations, and the amassing of more and more police-state power into their hands.

And so, facing little effective opposition, the Bush juggernaut continues on its rampage. How to explain this? Certainly, one could point to a deficient mass-media, to the soporific drug of TV, to having to work so hard that for many there's no time for activism, to education aimed at taking tests and not how to think, to the residual fear-fallout from 9/11, to a penchant for fantasy over reality, to the timid and unimaginative Democratic leadership, to scandal-fatigue, etc. But I would suggest that even more disturbing answers can be found by examining recent history.

Just so nobody misunderstands what follows: I am not saying that George W. Bush is Adolf Hitler, or that the rest of his Administration crew are Nazis. What I am saying is that since history often is opaque (making it difficult to figure out the contemporary parallels), when the past does offer a clear lesson for those of us living today, we should pay special attention.

What happened in Germany in the 1920s and '30s can teach us much about how a nation in a few years can lose its freedom in incremental slices as a result of a drumbeat of never-ceasing propaganda, strong-arm tactics, government snooping and harassment, manufactured fear of "the other," and wars begun abroad with the accompanying rally-'round-the-flag patriotism.

In America of the 1980s and '90s, it was extremists on the far-right fringes who believed the country was moving toward "black helicopter" authoritarian rule in Washington, and often blamed big-government liberal Democrats. Now, as a result of just four-plus years of the Bush Administration (supposedly anti-big government, conservative Republicans), huge segments of American society, including those in the mainstream middle, wonder what has happened to our democratic republic, our civil liberties, our time-honored system of government.

THE ENABLING MANTRA OF 9/11

The Busheviks defend the Administration's harsh, sweeping actions as necessary in a "time of war." The U.S. was attacked by forces representing fanatical Islam, this reasoning goes, and the old rules and systems simply don't apply anymore - they are old-fashioned, "quaint." Instead, we are expected to inculcate the "everything-changed-on-9/11" mantra, the effect of which is to excuse and justify all. Defense of the fatherland comes first and foremost, trumping all other considerations, including the Constitution, checks-and-balances in the three branches of government, separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, international law, etc. etc. (The Busheviks refuse to believe that one can be muscular in going after terrorists and do so within the law and with proper respect for the Bill of Rights and Constitutional protections of due process.)

Not only do the Busheviks pay no attention to recent history, but they seem to have forgotten how our very nation came into existence and why: our Founding Fathers rebelled against a despotic British monarch, one who ran roughshod over their rights and privacy and religious beliefs. Learning that hard lesson, they established a system of government that scattered power so that no person or party or religion could easily reinstate authoritarian rule. Politicians and citizens would have to compromise and cooperate in order to get anything done. It's a slow, cumbersome system (democracy, said Churchill, is the worst form of government ever invented, except for all the others), but the system they devised served this nation well for more than two centuries, making American government a model for much of the rest of the world.

And now, using the fear of terrorism as justification for all their actions, the Bush-Rove-Cheney-Rumsfeld crew within just a few years have moved America closer to a militarist, one-party state, led by a ruler in whom virtually all power is vested. In '30s Germany, this was called the Fuhrer Principe, the principle of blind obedience to the wise, all-powerful Supreme Leader. We've seen other such examples in Stalin's Soviet Union, Kim's North Korea, Mao's China, Saddam's Iraq, etc.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND LOTS OF UGLY

To the Busheviks, there is pure Evil and pure Good, and because we Americans are pure Good, especially blessed by God, we can do anything in the service of fulfilling God's plan, which only we understand. If you're not with us, you're against us; get on board or get out of the way.

And so, under Bush/Cheney, we've become an America that has codified torture in official state policy, that admits it went into a war under false premises but continues to keep our targeted troops there anyway, that spies on its citizens without court orders, that is willing to out a covert CIA agent (one who was probing the extent of Iran's nuclear program) for reasons of political retaliation, that "disappears" American citizens into military jails and doesn't permit them any contact with the outside world, that flies suspects in its care to secret prisons abroad and "renders" others to countries that use even more extreme torture measures, that passes laws permitting police agents to "sneak and peek" into citizens' homes, phone records, computer databases, library requests, e-mails and medical records without permission or even informing those whose privacy had been violated, that neuters the Congress by saying it will listen to "suggestions" but that the ultimate decisions are to be made by the Chief Executive, that emasculates the political opposition in Congress by cutting them out of the key decision-making processes, that declares the president has the right to violate the law whenever he so chooses and Congress and the courts have no role to play in reining in that power-grab, that is eager to keep America on a permanent war footing since it's engaged in a never-ending battle against a tactic (terrorism), and on and on.

Even though much of the above transpired in secret and is only now being revealed, not all of this desecration of the American ideal happened overnight. As in Germany in the 1930s, the extremists placed in charge of the government said one thing in public and did another in private, slowly slicing away at rights of the citizenry, to avoid triggering a popular uprising.

THE SLICING MACHINE

In the beginning of their rule, the Nazis would announce restrictive policies aimed at marginalized citizens (the mentally handicapped, for example), and if no great uproar of objection came from any power centers such as the churches or physicians or political leaders, the Nazis would proceed to the next slice aimed, say, at Communists, or homosexuals or Jews or Gypsies. All of these moves were carefully couched in terms of saving the national security of the Reich or purifying the country of "non-productive" or "destructive/dangerous" elements in society. The Nazi propaganda machine was clever, intense and all-pervasive, using the Big Lie technique masterfully - endlessly repeating its falsehoods until the drummed-upon populace came to accept them as truth.

Many ordinary "good Germans" and moral arbiters went along with these violations of civil rights and liberties either because they inwardly agreed with the propagandists or because they were afraid to disagree in public. Those few leaders in academia, the church and the press who courageously or even tentatively demurred or asked too many questions tended to be punished - demoted, fired, their honors revoked, etc. - and so more and more citizens got the message to "watch what you say." The Nazi juggernaut pushed on, widening its list of what was forbidden, issuing harsher and harsher edicts.

Hitler, leader of the rabidly right-wing Nazi party, was installed as chancellor in 1933, even though his party was not in the majority, in the hope that he could bring some order and stability to a society still reeling from the horrendous economic/social Great Depression that had devastated the country during the '20s and early-'30s. Given the reins of power, Hitler felt free to unleash policies that most citizens earlier had rejected as way too extreme. He had written about them in his book Mein Kampf, but many thought he would modify his demented views once he was inside the establishment corridors.

The "Enabling Act" that gave Hitler full control of the organs of power in Germany was passed in 1933, following the burning of the German Reichstag (Parliament), an arson that was blamed on Communist "terrorists." Hitler "temporarily" suspended civil liberties during this "national emergency," which of course never ended. Hitler lied to the Reichstag about his true intentions in order to obtain approval of the Enabling Act. Shortly after its passage, Hitler began rounding up tens of thousands of political enemies and sending them to concentration camps. Democracy was dead in Hitler's Germany.

The corporate titans, seeing that there might be profit to be gained from Nazi economic and military policies, supported Hitler's rise and rule; those who had objections to what he was doing thought they could tame his passions through their immense influence. But slowly, and then quickly, the Nazis took over one institution after another, until total control was in their hands. To stamp out any hint of dissent, all citizens were to spy on each other - "each one of us the Gestapo of the others," to use Sebastian Haffner's scary phrase - and the security forces arrested and tortured at will. (To learn more from Haffner's contemporaneous account, see Germany in 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism).

Arming itself to the teeth, Hitler's military forces carried out lighting-quick wars of conquest ("Blitzkrieg") on weaker nations and the fascist German empire spread over Europe and, in alliance with Japan, in Asia as well. More than forty million human beings would die in the resulting World War II. His arrogant belief in his own military intuition and infallibility led to his downfall, as, against all common sense and advice, he invaded the Soviet Union and wound up in a military quagmire of the worst sort.

PARALLELS IN OUR OWN AGE

Again, what follows here is not to allege one-for-one comparisons to Nazism, but to note certain parallel events and tactics that require special consideration if we are to avoid imitating disastrous history even more fully.

In our time, a Leader (who, we later learned, probably lost the election) was installed in 2000 by a far-right majority faction of the Supreme Court. The Hard Right had been laying plans for a restoration of Republican rule after Clinton won re-election; first they made sure Clinton would be unable to concentrate on his political agenda by constant iterations of supposed scandals that, as various probes demonstrated, revealed no illegality. When Clinton handed the Republicans an opening by engaging in a sexual dalliance in the White House, they engineered an impeachment and trial by the Senate; it didn't really matter that Clinton was not convicted, as the requisite damage had been done, with a side benefit - his Vice President and presumable successor was tainted by being close to Clinton and thus weakened politically.

The point of all this is that the Hard Right restoration forces were planning for a Bush administration far in advance of the actual 2000 election. There was no one person's Mein Kampf, but other writings laid out in stark terms what this neo-conservative cabal had in mind for the country's foreign/military policy should they return to power, especially in the reports of The Project for The New American Century: "pre-emptive" wars of conquest, permitting no rivals for influence, control of energy sources, etc. (See "How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer," where PNAC lays out the sole-Superpower strategy for achieving "benevolent hegemony" around the globe.)

Some of that planning included an invasion of Iraq. Even though Cheney still won't reveal what executives made up his secret energy task-force, we do know that at least part of that panel's meetings involved the question of Iraq, with discussion and a map of which companies might get exploration blocks after Saddam was removed from power. Further, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how astonished he was that at the first meetings of the Bush Cabinet in early-2001, much time was spent on the need to invade Iraq.

The terror attacks of 9/11/2001 served as the equivalent of the "Reichstag Fire" - or, seen another way, as a "new Pearl Harbor", the phrase lifted from a 2000 PNAC document. The Bush Administration's "enabling act" came in several key bills passed by Congress: the unread and barely-debated Patriot Act, which gave virtually unlimited police powers to the government in rooting out "terrorism," and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), written so broadly as to give the Supreme Leader authority to take whatever unspecified actions he considered to be necessary against those responsible for 9/11. Attorney General Gonzales recently claimed that the AUMF, in conjunction with Article 2 of the Constitution, permits Bush to authorize both the torture of prisoners and spying on American citizens, without the need to seek any court warrants, thus over-riding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that states in no uncertain terms that all such eavesdropping requires court permission.

REINING IN DISSENTERS AND THE INTERNET

Even though the mainstream, corporate-owned media by and large does the bidding of the Bush Administration, ignoring and playing down bad news and hyping the Administration's spin points, full control of the mass media is still not complete - even with the Bush Administration spending $1.6 billion tax dollars last year on its own public-relations spin. The few insurgent media outlets and reporters, and the unruly analysts on the internet, are still to be dealt with. (FEMA has contracted with Halliburton and others to build several hundred detention camps around the country, ostensibly to house illegal immigrants but easily convertible for malcontents of one sort or another. See Maureen Farrell's "Detention Camp Jitters").

Likewise, the Judiciary. Bush & Co. have placed nearly two hundred of its Hard Right jurists on the federal appeals courts, and got its new Federalist Society justices onto the Supreme Court - presumably tipping the balance in favor of more rightwing decisions - but more work needs to be done to lock down total control of the Judiciary.

The democratic institutions that possibly could still backfire on them are approaching terminal weakening: the Republican-controlled Congress has become a rubber-stamp appendage of Karl Rove's political office; the Democrats are essentially marginalized with no real power except to whine and complain and embarrass.

Plus, election votes are counted by the same GOP-friendly corporations that controlled (and appear to have manipulated) the vote-tabulations in 2002 and 2004, that manufacture the computer-voting machines, and that own the secret, proprietary software.

The one dangerous element that cannot be fully controlled are the human beings who are the public face of the Hard Right elite. Bush is a simpleton who often says more than he should, giving away the game; Cheney is a callous Rasputin whose penchant for secrecy as he runs the government constantly gets the group into hot water; Rumsfeld is a media-savvy incompetent whose fingerprints are all over the Iraq disaster and the torture scandal; Rove, a brilliant dirty-pool tactician (it is reported that his grandfather was an active Nazi Party supporter in Germany), is likely to be indicted in the Plamegate scandal. Others Administration heavies, such as Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales are little more than toadies for the big boys.

So, let's see: a Supreme Leader who has taken his country into blitzkrieg ("shock and awe") attacks on foreign nations, bogging down in an ill-advised invasion quagmire in Iraq; who has forsaken civil rights and liberties in the name of defense of the fatherland; who has destroyed or rendered toothless his nominal opposition; who has wrapped himself in the flag and questioned the patriotism of those who raise questions about his policies; who has engaged in a Big Lie propaganda strategy to move his agenda; who has demonized internal enemies; who violates the law to get what he wants and claims that he serves a higher power in doing so; who controls (or whose agents control) the voting process; and so on.

What's scary is that it didn't take much verbal stretching to see the parallels, even admitting that life in Bush's U.S.A., however comparable in many areas, can scarcely be equated to life in Hitler's Germany.

Even so, history has presented its warnings to us. Will we understand and act in time to return our country to a more moderate balancing point, thus making us better protected in terms of national security? It's up to each of us.

This bungling Bush crew seems to have a reverse Midas touch; virtually everything they touch turns not to gold but to foul-smelling waste matter. They are so out of touch with the American mainstream that they've brought their own poll numbers down into the 30s, and key Republicans in self-defense are racing to separate themselves from Bush before the November elections. Bush & Co. may be reckless bumblers, endangering America's national security and economy and environment, but they still wield the levers of power and they're not about to give them up; indeed, it appears they are willing to take us all with them as they fall.

That's our challenge, to get rid of them as quickly as possible - by agitating for impeachment hearings now, or moving for impeachment and a Senate trial after taking back the House in November - and return America from its current dark cave and out into the bright light of hope and civility and reality-based governance.

[Lefty48197]

6. They say the healthy rats jump ship and swim for their lives

while the sickly rats go down with the sinking ship.

[CrisisPapers]

7. The Middle East Muddle: Is Peace Still Possible?

| Bernard Weiner |

The run-up to the impending war against Iran - and make no mistake, the foundations are being laid daily by the Bush Administration - bears a remarkable resemblance to the propaganda barrage before the U.S. attacked Iraq: Iran is the repository of all things evil, they will destabilize the region if they get nukes, they support terrorists, the U.N. and international community can't wait until there are mushroom clouds in the sky, etc. etc. All that's missing is an invented tie-in with 9/11.

Because of the thorough botch the Bush Administration has made of the Iraq Occupation, and because there are no extra U.S. troops to go around, it's a reasonable presumption that there will be no ground invasion of Iran. Instead, following passage of some ambiguously-worded U.N. Security Council resolution, there might well be an air assault by U.S./Israeli bombers on that country's nuclear facilities. (The experts tell us that Iran won't have nuclear weapons capability for anywhere from three to 10 years out - in short, there is no imminent threat to the U.S. or anyone else.)

The reaction by Iran and other Islamic countries to such an air assault is likely to be intense, perhaps including retaliatory attacks on Israel, and damaging the American and European economies by withdrawing oil sales to the West or blocking ships from traversing the Straits of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. And, of course, one can anticipate that the Bush Administration - unless the impending attack can be stopped in its tracks by popular opposition - will be caught flat-footed (again!) by its usual lack of planning for the unforeseen consequences of its wars.

But rather than focus on what is about to go down in Iran, the chaotic disaster that the Bush Administration's attack on and inept occupation of Iraq has led to, or even the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, I'd like to propose an examination of the Middle East situation, since it serves as the kindling for the firestorms that sweep the region.

Hamas is now on the inside of the halls of power, Israel is about to choose its new leaders, and the situation is encouragingly fluid, with a tenuous truce in major fighting between the two sides. Thus, this is an especially propitious time for all parties to reflect and meditate on how, or even whether, a just solution is still possible, and what such a Middle East peace might mean for the entire region.

THE MEDIEVAL ISLAMISTS

A resurrected holy Muslim empire has been the dream for many decades of a segment of the Islamic religion. Or if that is impossible, at least of being left alone, outside the distractions and decadent temptations of the 21st century, to implement their strict version of the Koran.

Regardless of what the U.S. does, that Islamist resurgence is bound to occur, even, or especially, amidst a more widespread Islam that is willing to exist side by side with Western modernity and tolerance.

But certainly in modern times, the harsh treatment of Palestinians by Israel, a nation supported by the U.S. for more than half a century, has been a spur to the growth of that fanatic Islamist movement in the Middle East.

U.S. NEGLECT OF THE REGION

On the surface, American policy in the region appears to make no sense. It seems clear that if the U.S. is after a calmer Arab Middle East, and with it a stable flow of oil to America and Europe, its first order of business, one would think, would be to ensure a just peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, so as to tamp down the fire that endangers so much in that region.

But under both Democratic and Republican presidents, the status quo has been left to fester, partially because intervening in this convoluted, passionate dispute rarely pays off for the U.S. and often leads to embarrassing failures. And so Israel, America's lone dependable ally in the region, is blindly supported by U.S. administrations, no matter what its leaders do. The Palestinians are teased with words about a coming Palestinian state, but nothing much really happens from the U.S. end.

While Carter and Clinton at least tried to bring the parties together, and actually were starting to accomplish something, the Bush Administration promises much and delivers little, and is unwilling to use its leverage to get its ally Israel to make the concessions it will have to make for a lasting peace.

WHY SHOULD THE U.S. WORK FOR PEACE?

The well-armed Israelis feel insecure, the powerless Palestinians feel humiliated and brutalized, thousands die, terrorism grows in this atmosphere - and not much changes, decade after decade. And, from the point of view of America's political leaders, why should it be changed? The oil keeps flowing, so why would any U.S. administration risk touching this dangerous third-rail of international politics?

How about because it's the right thing to do? How about because the Middle East would be stabilized? How about because Islamist terrorism would lose one of its most potent recruiting arguments? How about because the U.S. would regain much of the positive prestige it has lost as a result of Bush's wars against Muslim countries?

Even supposing a just peace could be worked out between the Israelis and Palestinians, Islamist terrorism would still exist, would still be capable of awful acts of mayhem and murder. But much of the passion behind today's terrorism would be diminished or, in some areas, even disappear were the Palestinians to obtain their own viable state. Similarly, there would be a concomitant dimunition of Israeli brutality and murder in the new arrangement.

Which brings us to how we get to that state of peace. Even with the victory of Hamas, an organization dedicated to the elimination of Israel from the map, polls continue to demonstrate that most Palestinians prefer a peaceful, two-state solution. Most Israelis, if their security can be guaranteed by treaty, likewise seem to prefer peace with a Palestinian neighbor-state rather than decades of still more bloodshed and insecurity.

WHAT WILL HAMAS AND ISRAEL DO?

It's not going to be easy. Hamas has been dedicated to the destruction of Israel, so asking them to recognize Israel's right to exist now that they are in charge of the Palestinian Parialment seems to make no sense. Likewise, Ehud Olmert, Israel's acting prime minister, wants to carry on many of the hardline policies of Ariel Sharon, such as completing the Separation (Border) Wall and enlarging key existing settlements in the Occupied West Bank, which antagonizes the Palestinians.

We don't know how the new Hamas leadership will look at the compromises that will have to be made in the movement toward peace. Will it, can it, evolve into a government that accepts a two-state solution? If a geographically and economically viable Palestine state were to be created next door to Israel, would they, could they, accept that neighbor?

We don't know who the new leaders of Israel will be after the upcoming election. If it's the hardline Likudist Benjamin Netanyahu, peace prospects are minimal. But if the new Israeli leaders are open to the idea of an equitable two-state solution, progress can indeed be made. (And, looking at the demographics, as Sharon did, Israel simply has to divest itself of the Occupied Territories, lest the Jewish nature of the State of Israel be placed in jeopardy. The probable outcome is that the bulk of the Palestinians will be on one side of the border in their own state, with the bulk of the Jews on the other side in a smaller, but more religiously homogenous, Israel.

WHAT A SOLUTION MIGHT LOOK LIKE

So, everyone knows, and always has known, what the eventual solution will be, will have to be: A secure Israel, a viable Palestine, an internationalized Jerusalem of some sort. To get there, Israel will have to exit from virtually all of the West Bank, abandoning almost all of the settlements there and agreeing not to attack inside the new Palestine's borders; the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel's right to exist, and refrain from terrorist attacks on their neighbor.

Those Palestinians who would prefer to return to their ancestral homes inside Israel will, for the most part, have to relinquish their claims and agree to accept financial compensation for those properties, money that will help them purchase land and buildings inside the new Palestine state. As Ernest Partridge ingeniously has suggested, only partially tongue in cheek, Jewish settlers in the West Bank would be allowed to remain on condition that they renounce Israeli citizenship and accept Palestinian citizenship. One imagines that the settlers would leave voluntarily.

Those parts of Jerusalem that are regarded as Holy Land by three great religions will have to be administered by an international body of some sort.

Once the peace treaties have been signed and implemented, then the doors will be open for bilateral treaties on water, jobs, environmental protection, etc.

WHAT'S BLOCKING MOVEMENT TOWARD PEACE

I suspect that there will be no significant U.S. movement toward bringing peace to the Middle East while Bush/Cheney are in power. It's simply not a priority for them; indeed, it's possible that they are quite content with keeping the Palestine/Israel dispute on the boil, thus ensuring their superpower hegemony in the region. (Then, too, Bush & Co.'s fundamentalist Christian base requires that Armageddon take place in the Holy Land prior to the Second Coming of Christ, so peace is not what they're after.)

Keeping the parties at war reminds one of the reason why the Reagan Administration supported Iraq's war against Iran in the 1980s, to ensure that the two regional giants would battle and decimate each other. Because of Bush Administration screwups, if current trends hold, Iraq will be ruled by Iran-leaning Shi'ite parties, bringing Iraq and Iran closer together. The irony of history.

In addition, nobody quite knows how to factor in Fatah, Arafat's organization, into the Palestinian equation. Would the more moderate Fatah, defeated in the recent parliamentary elections by Hamas, be willing or able to serve as a mediator between Israel and the new Palestinian rulers (since the Israelis don't want to negotiate with Hamas)? Could Fatah, would it, work out tentative peace proposals with the new Israeli leadership? If so, could they sell it to Hamas?

And will Hamas, now that it is the governing body rather than the secret militant opposition, move somewhat toward the center? In doing so, would they be willing to deal for a geographically/economically viable Palestine by agreeing to recognize Israel's right to exist? Would their fanatic base permit them to do this? (Sort of like the Catholic IRA making peace with the Protestants in Northern Ireland, which spawned "the Real IRA," those extremists eager to continue the violence.)

THE HOPE THE OTHER WOULD VANISH

It seems to me that no progress whatsoever toward peace can be made without a willingness to start at a point "beyond history," as it were. That is, both sides would acknowledge historical grievances going back decades, or in some cases hundreds or even thousands of years - but, in the interest of bringing the conflict to an acceptable close, simply stipulate that each side has its historical grievances and move on. No more "my victimhood was worse than yours, and you owe me for this, that and the other atrocity."

In the past, neither party has wanted to move seriously toward peace because, in truth, each side believed that with just a bit more pressure or violence, the other side would disappear. The Palestinians believed that they could force the Israelis to give in and grant them everything they wanted; the Israelis believed they could force the Palestinians through the brutalities of an Occupation to move to other lands and abandon their desire to push the Jewish state into the sea.

Now, it's possible that both sides, after ceaseless murders and brutalities over the decades, might come to a mutual awareness that enough is enough, that the Other is not going to disappear, that the Israelis can destroy Palestine if they so choose, that the Palestinians can ensure that Israel will never live in peace - but a political accommodation will have to be made, for the sake of the children and grandchildren, and economic viability, of both countries.

Supposing that a peace treaty can be obtained, and implemented properly with great tact and sensitivity, peace and prosperity for both peoples may eventually be achieved.

But, as always, how to get from here to there? Aye, there's the rub. All we can be sure of is that Middle East peace won't be, can't be, accomplished as long as the current U.S. administration is in power.

-- Bernard Weiner

[CrisisPapers]

8. The Right and the Left, in a Nutshell

| Ernest Partridge |

Those of us who are at middle age or beyond have lived through a revolution in political and economic theory and practice, a revolution so profound that few of us can even begin to appreciate its significance, much less its peril.

Future historians, however, will understand and appreciate this revolution and will wonder at the passivity of the public today and the ease with which those who instituted this upheaval achieved their success. The same historians, I would venture, will be equally or more amazed at how this moment played out. But this we cannot know, for their past is our immediate future. We are the agents of that still-to-be written history. The United States of America, in this year of 2006, is at a hinge of history. Our fate, and that of our successors, rests directly in the hands of all of us who are politically alert and active today. As Edward R. Murrow famously said, "we can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result."

Those factions and interests now in control of the United States government declare that their policies, which they choose to call "conservative" and I prefer to call "regressive," are an advancement in the course of human history. Those who disagree, and the pollsters tell us that they are a majority of the American people, believe that in the past five years, and arguably in the past twenty-five years, the people of the United States and their government have suffered a grievous setback.

I count myself among this dissenting majority. In my book, Conscience of a Progressive, now nearing completion, I attempt to articulate that dissent, criticize the foundational dogmas of the regnant, "regressive" regime that now controls our country, and justify the principles of "progressivism" – the political-economic ideology that distinguished and honored our past, and if we are both determined and fortunate, may once again guide and enrich our national future.

Here, briefly, are the "players" in this political contest.

The Regressives:

To begin, it is important to note that the regressivism that controls and supports our present government is not a unified political doctrine. Rather, it is a coalition, some factions of which are in strong disagreement with others, most notably "the libertarian right" and "the religious right."

In general, most regressives tend to believe that the ideal society is merely a collection of autonomous individuals and families in voluntary association. In fact they assert that strictly speaking, as Dame Margaret Thatcher once proclaimed, "There is no such thing as a society - there are individuals and there are families," and Ayn Rand, "There is no such entity as 'the public' ... the public is merely a number of individuals." It follows that there is no such thing as "public goods" and "the public interest," apart from summation of private goods and interests. Moreover, there are no "victims of society." The poor choose their condition; poverty is the result of "laziness" or, as the religious right would put it, a "sin."

Each individual, by acting to maximize his or her personal self-interest, will always act "as if by an invisible hand" (Adam Smith) to promote the well-being of all others in this (so-called) society: that which is good for each, is good for all. Accordingly, the optimal economic system is a completely unrestricted and unregulated free market of "capitalist acts by consenting adults." (Robert Nozick) Moreover, private ownership of all land, resources, infrastructure, and even institutions, will always yield results preferable to common (i.e. government) ownership and control. Finally, the regressives firmly believe that because economic prosperity and growth are accomplished through capital investment, the well-being of all is accomplished by directing wealth into the hands of "the investing class;" i.e. the very rich, whereby that wealth will "trickle down" to the benefit of all others.

The libertarian right insists that the sole legitimate functions of government are the protection of the individual's unalienable natural rights to life, liberty and property. The libertarian's demand for individual autonomy and government non-interference entails a tolerance and respect for privacy, and thus the libertarian has no use for sodomy and drug laws, for laws prohibiting gay marriage, abortion, voluntary euthanasia, and least of all for government endorsement of religious dogma or enforcement of religious practice. Thus the libertarian fully endorses John Stuart Mill's pronouncement that, "over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." In general, the libertarian advocates the fullest possible freedom of the individual, consistent with equivalent liberty of all others. In these respects, there is much of libertarian thought that should be attractive to the progressive.

The religious right, of course, vehemently rejects the libertarian's uncompromising tolerance and insistence that the government has no right whatever to interfere in the private life of the individual. The religious right, to the contrary, believes that the government is entitled to enforce moral behavior and even to support religious institutions and "establish" religious doctrines in the law. In the most extreme cases, the religious right advocates the establishment of "biblical law" in place of our present system of secular Constitutional law.

With the exception of the dispute between the libertarians and the religious right regarding private behavior, all the other tenets of regressivism share this characteristic: They all lead to policies that benefit wealth and power ("the masters"), to the disadvantage of all others; i.e., the "ordinary citizens."

The Progressives:

"Progressivism" is essentially the "liberalism" of most of the twentieth century, as promulgated by both Roosevelts, by the Kennedy Brothers, and by many Republicans, such as Dwight Eisenhower, Jacob Javits and Earl Warren. "Progressivism," to put it simply, is "liberalism," free of the slanderous connotations heaped upon it by contemporary right-wing propagandists.

In general, progressives endorse the political principles of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as the fundamental moral precepts of the great world religions and the ideas of many secular moral philosophers – precepts most familiar to the American public through the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Accordingly, progressivism is founded on enduring "conservative" principles. Thus the familiar "liberal vs. conservative" dichotomy is a hoax. Moreover, the Right, far from being "conservative," in fact endorses a radical political doctrine, with policies designed to return society and the economy to a condition of autocracy, wealth and power for the privileged few, and servitude, poverty and ignorance for "the masses" – a condition which, until recently, was generally believed to be permanently discredited and relegated to the distant past. Hence my preferred term, "regressive."

In contrast to the regressive, the progressive regards society not as an aggregate of autonomous individuals but as an "emergent" entity that is more than the sum of its individual human components. In this sense, a society is like a chemical compound such as table salt or water: substances with properties that are separate and distinct from the properties of their component elements. It then follows that there are "social goods" and "public interests" that are demonstrably separate from the sum of private goods and interests. Moreover, there are genuine "victims of society" who are in no way responsible for their suffering and poverty. (The illegitimate child of a teen-age heroin addict did not choose her parents. The decision to "outsource" a job was out of the hands of the worker who loses that job).

Because society (or "the public") is demonstrably distinct from the sum of its component individuals, behavior that might be good for each individual, may be bad for society as a whole; and conversely, what is "bad" for the individual (e.g., taxes and regulations) may benefit society at large. These fundamental precepts: "good for each, bad for all" and "bad for each, good for all" are of essential importance to the defense of progressivism, and by implication to the refutation of regressivism.

The progressive is not "against" free markets, but rather believes that in the organization and functioning of society and its economy, markets are invaluable servants. But markets can also be cruel masters. Thus, in the formulation of public policy, markets should count for something and even for much, but not for everything. There is a "wisdom" of the marketplace, but that "wisdom" is not omniscient. Adam Smith was right: each individual seeking his own gain might act, "as if by an invisible hand," to the benefit of all. But as Adam Smith also observed and regressive economists tend to forget, there is a "back of the invisible hand," whereby self-serving action by each individual can bring ruin upon the whole – a warning that was vividly presented by Garrett Hardin in his landmark essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons." (1968)

The progressives are so much in favor of a market economy that they are determined to protect it from its excesses and from its inborn tendency toward self-destruction. The progressive recognizes that the natural tendency of "free markets" is toward monopoly and cartels, which are, of course, the end of the free market. Thus the progressive endorses anti-trust laws, which means, of course, a rule of law enforced by government.

The progressive also recognizes that market transactions, especially those by large corporations, affect not only the parties of those transactions (the buyers and sellers), but also unconsenting third parties, the "stakeholders;" for example, citizens who reside downwind of and downstream from polluting industries, citizens who are enticed by false advertising to endanger their health, and parents whose childrens' minds and morals are corrupted by mass media. "Stakeholders" should thus have a voice in these corporate transactions, and the only agency with a legitimate right to represent the stakeholders is their government; hence the justification for regulation of corporations.

The progressive agrees that economic benefits "trickle down" from the investments of the wealthy. But he also insists that the wealth of the privileged few "percolates up" from knowledge and labor of the producers of that wealth – the workforce – and from the tranquility and social order that issues from a public that is served well by, and freely consents to the rule of, its government. The progressive insists that the workers are most productive and prosperous when they participate, through collective bargaining, in determining the conditions of their employment. The progressive also recognizes that the productivity of that workforce results from public education and from the publicly funded basic research that might otherwise be neglected by private entrepreneurs.

In addition to the libertarian's defense of government's function of protecting the rights of "life, liberty and property," the progressive believes that it is also the function of government "to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, ... promote the general Welfare." Critics of The Right, who choose to call themselves "conservatives," should note that these words are quoted directly from the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.

Also, along with the libertarians, the progressive endorses the "like liberty principle" which affirms that each individual is entitled to maximum liberty, consistent with equal liberty for all. Likewise, the "no-harm principle," expressed in the familiar folk maxim, "my freedom ends where your nose begins." However, the libertarians fail to come to terms with the full implications of these principles, for their program results in freedom for the privileged few at the cost of the freedom and welfare of the many. To put the matter bluntly, the progressive disagrees with the libertarian, not because the progressive values liberty less, but because he values liberty more.

The progressive insists that certain institutions and resources are the legitimate property, not of private individuals, but of the public at large. These include, first of all, the government itself: the legislature, the executive, and the courts. In addition, the natural environment – the atmosphere, the waterways, the oceans, the aquifers, wildlife – can not be parceled out, marked by property lines, and sold to the highest bidder. Language, the arts, literature, the sciences, are common heritages which must be protected and nurtured for the common good, and not be used and exploited exclusively for private gain.

Finally, the progressive demands that government belongs to the people, and not exclusively to those interests that can afford to "buy into" access to and influence upon the government. "Governments," the progressive reminds us, "are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," and that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government." And if the (self-described) "conservatives" find such sentiments to be treasonous, they should again take note of the source. These words are from the founding document of our republic: The Declaration of Independence.

Accordingly, far from being "traitors," as Ann Coulter would have us believe, progressives are among the most authentic of patriots.

-- Ernest Partridge

[goodriddance]

9. ...and building websites to that effect - please view

i voted for Bush twice but have never felt less allegience to GOP...i would have voted for a worthy Dem in 2004 but Kerry did not qualify

i, for one, think the US should send Bush out of office with a "Good Riddance Celebration"

please see website to that effect: www.goodriddance.org

- first website i've built using Front Page 2003...still a lot of work to be done...any constructive criticism would be welcome

thank you

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[struggle4progress]

11. Can't find Weiner? Here's the link:

http://www.crisispapers.org/essays6w/jumpingship.htm

I don't know if he's correct or not. But it seems not everyone agrees with your political analysis:

Conservative Christians Warn Republicans Against Inaction

WASHINGTON, May 13 — Some of President Bush's most influential conservative Christian allies are becoming openly critical of the White House and Republicans in Congress, warning that they will withhold their support in the midterm elections unless Congress does more to oppose same-sex marriage, obscenity and abortion.

"There is a growing feeling among conservatives that the only way to cure the problem is for Republicans to lose the Congressional elections this fall," said Richard Viguerie, a conservative direct-mail pioneer.

Mr. Viguerie also cited dissatisfaction with government spending, the war in Iraq and the immigration-policy debate, which Mr. Bush is scheduled to address in a televised speech on Monday night.

"I can't tell you how much anger there is at the Republican leadership," Mr. Viguerie said. "I have never seen anything like it" ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/washington/15dobson.html

And welcome to DU! :hi: