Hillary or McCain, more Status Quo - by Alex Cockburn

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Will Bush Bomb Teheran? Would the Democrats Do Anything Different?
What the Fortune Teller’s Parrot Taught Me
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The aftershocks of Israel’s inability to crush Hezbollah continue to send their political tsunamis round the globe. After the ceasefire the Forward newspaper in New York said Bush is bad for the Jews, meaning Israel. The editorial in this influential megaphone of Jewish opinion stated that "Bush has been convinced by self-appointed spokesmen for Israel and the Jewish community that endless war is in Israel's interest". Forward calls for regime change among the Zionists directing U.S. foreign policy. Hardliner unilateralists out! Peace processors in! Bush "needs to hear in no uncertain terms that Israel is ready for dialogue, that the alternative - endless jihad - is unthinkable". It almost makes you feel sorry for Bush. He’s always been convinced that it was the loss of Jewish support that finished off his father in ‘92, after Bush Sr had publicly attacked the Lobby. He vowed never to suffer the same fate, whatever it took. Now this, after all he’s done for them.

Will Bush bomb Teheran? I’ve never thought so. You know the arguments. The US Army is dead against. A US attack on Iran might prompt Muqtada al-Sadr to lead a Shi’a uprising that would sever US supply lines from Kuwait. The US forces in Iraq might have to flee north into Kurdistan or bunker down in their desert bases. But now well informed fellows in Washington say that an attack might well be in the offing. The War on Terror is the only card the Bush crowd has ever had that worked for them, and the only riposte from the democrats is that they could play the same card better.

Though president Bush has now plummeted so far in public esteem that he appears to be deep, deep down in some well, the only reason we can see the top of his head is that he’s standing on the shoulders of some Democrat. By all rights the Democrats should be making their way to straight for the midterm elections with a light heart. Here we are at the end of six years of oppressive, often lethal mismanagement of the nation’s affairs. I shall not rehearse the milemarkers on this road to ruin. You know them well. But when the crowds lend an ear to
what the Democrats are pledging, it turns the Bush-Cheney mix.

Here’s how, Anatol Lieven, a fairly smart European journalist and sometime Washington liberal think-tanker recently described the current scene: “The overwhelming consensus among political analysts here is that well before November 2008 the Bush administration will in any case have withdrawn US troops, if not from Iraq altogether, then off the streets and into secure bases in the desert. The Republicans are not fools enough to run in the next elections while the headlines each day report more US deaths in Iraq. “As to the wider issues of US world strategy, the almost identical approach of the two party establishments is easy to demonstrate. One only has to read the speeches and statements of the two figures who at present seem most likely to be the contenders for the Presidency in November 2008, Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton, and their closest associates. “Both Clinton and McCain advocate early NATO membership for Ukraine, and have expressed strong hostility to the Putin administration in Russia. On Iraq, they differ mostly over the degree to which Clinton --naturally -- has been far more critical of the Bush record so far. But both oppose early or unconditional withdrawal. On the latest Middle East crisis their words might as well have been drafted by the same speechwriter. “Hillary Clinton states that: ‘I want us here in New York to imagine, if extremist terrorists were launching rocket attacks across the Mexican or Canadian border, would west stand by or would we defend America against these attacks from extremists?.. We will support efforts to send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians... They do not believe in human rights, they do not believe in democracy. They are totalitarians, they are the new totalitarians of the 21st century.’

full article
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09052006.html

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1. Parrot pic