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HOW HADITHA HAPPENED; WHY IT WILL
HAPPEN AGAIN
"You
live like an animal. You learn to like killing. .. Hate civilians.
Can't trust the bastards. You hate taking prisoners. You'd rather
kill them. Why?" Read Vietnam vet Marc Levy's extraordinary
Primer on the Whys and Wherefores of PTSD and understand what
is happening in Iraq. PLUS
Andrew Lack on the incredible frauds of the bottled water industry.
Why you should drink tapwater out of a glass and save your money
PLUS Jeffrey
St Clair on the deadly secrets of America's oldest bomb factory
PLUS Chris Reed on Eros
and Militarization: how Japan's sexpot schoolgirls fit into the
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The Bush Administration has it right.
The Democratic Party is the party of cut and run. It used to
be the party where progressives could find a home. No longer.
Cut and run has turned it into the party that stands for total
disarray, desertion of core values, or nothing at all.
What happened to universal
health care? Cut and run. The welfare state? Cut and run. Calling
as a party for an end to atrocities such as torture and rendition?
You guessed it. Holding government leaders responsible for
their actions? Donald Rumsfeld is still secretary of defense.
Support for international law and the United Nations?
In 2002 twenty-eight Senate
Democrats voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force
Against Iraq Resolution. One of the minority who didn't, Russell
Feingold, got it right from the start: "Both in terms of
the justifications for an invasion and in terms of the mission
and the plan for the invasion, Mr. President, the Administration's
arguments just don't add up."
Cut and run is the reason George
W. Bush was re-elected. Instead of taking a strong position against
the invasion of Iraq that would have energized his supporters
John Kerry cut and ran in 2004 and his Presidential campaign
fizzled to defeat as a result.
Cut and run is the reason 31
Democratic Senators voted last week against a resolution calling
for the pull out of US troops in Iraq by July 1, 2007. Hillary
Clinton who is entertaining a run for President in 2008 was one
of them.
Where are the Democrats calling
for closing Guantanamo? Cut and run. For the resignations and
prosecution of everyone responsible for Abu Gharib? Cut and run.
Cut and run is the reason George
Bush has gotten away with torturing prisoners, wiretapping our
homes, keeping records of what we read and how we spend our
money and violating human rights at home and abroad in a myriad
of other ways.
Cut and run, in short, is why
progressives in this country are fed up with the Democratic Party
and looking for real leadership elsewhere. That is why when the
party claims the way to stop Bush is to elect more Democratic
representatives and senators the response on the left is likely
to be less than enthusiastic.
Jeff Bingaman, Robert Byrd,
Hillary Clinton, Kent Conrad, Mark Dayton, Dianne Feinstein,
Herb Kohl, Bill Nelson, Ben Nelson, and Debbie Stabenow are ten
of the seventeen Democratic Senators up for reelection. Every
one of them voted against the amendment for setting a date to
bring the troops home. How then, we might ask, will voting for
them help hasten an end to the occupation? Where are the members
of the party with real progressive values and the courage to
stand up for them?"
What this country and the world
desperately needs now is voices that will stand up for the ideals
embodied in our constitution, human rights around the world,
and international law. Progressives expect those voices to come
from representatives in the Democratic Party. Instead what it
has received from those representatives is cut and run.
Therefore, it is our job to
turn things around. It is our job to finally do what too many
of our would be allies in the Democratic Party have failed to
do: stand and fight. That means more than just taking part in
protest marches. There are people out there ready to lead the
kind of actions that will get our elected "representatives"
to take notice.
Those people include grandmothers
who were arrested for blocking a military recruitment office
in New York, protesters in Seattle who tried to stop the shipment
of military supplies to Iraq, and demonstrators at the U.S. Mission
to the United Nations who denounced the torture of prisoners
at Guantanamo. All we need do is join them.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
