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Recent
Stories
May
21, 2003
Dave
Lindorff
Ari Fleischer Quits the Scene: The
Liar's Gone, the Enablers Remain
Chris
Floyd
How Blood Money Becomes Business Opportunity
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Graham's God and Bush's Pathology
Patrick
Cockburn
In Post War Iraq, the Signs of Breakdown
are Everywhere
Brian Cloughley
The Fatuous Braintrust: Newt, Rummy and Wolfowitz
Saul
Landau
Shopping, the End of the World and the Politics of Bush
Larry Kearney
Two Morning Poems, May 2003
Steve
Perry
Chaos in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted?
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Justice Comes to Iraq
May
20, 2003
Tariq
Ali
The Empire Advances
Ahmad
Faruqui
Whither American Nationalism?
Ben Tripp
Dialysis with Osama
Linda
Heard
The Cage of Occupation
Cynthia
McKinney
Toward a Just and Peaceful World
Edward
Said
The Arab Condition
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Why Ari Should Have Resigned in Protest Long Ago
Stew
Albert
Yale Men
Steve Perry
The New Face of Al-Qaeda
May
19, 2003
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Letter to Kofi Annan on Powell's Missing
Evidence
CounterPunch
Wire
"Terror" Slut Steve Emerson
Eats Crow
John
Chuckman
Blair's Awkward Lies
Matt
Vidal
Corporate Media and the Myth of the Free Market
Michael
S. Ladah
The Fine Print to Bush's Road Map
Robert
Fisk
Bush's Eternal War Backfires
Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
Jonathan
Freedland
Ann Coulter's Appalling Magic
Steve Perry
Play It Again, O-Sam-a
May
17 / 18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Children's Teeth
Peter
Linebaugh
An American Tribute to Christopher
Hill
Gary
Leupp
Nepal Today
Rock and
Rap Confidential
The Republican Plot Against the Dixie Chicks
Walter
Sommerfeld
Plundering Baghdad's Museums
Ron Jacobs
Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades
Thomas
P. Healy
Dubya Does Indy
Tarif Abboushi
Bush, Sharon and the Roadmap
Francis
Boyle
Debating US War Crimes in Iraq
Mark Davis
An Interview with Richard Butler
Richard
Lichtman
American Mourning
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Overcoming Terrorism
Adam
Engel
Uncle Sam is YOU!
Alan Maas
The Best News Show on TV
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Elaine
Cassel
Good Enough for an Alien
Website
of the Weekend
The 37 Americans Who Run Iraq
Song of
the Weekend
Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues
May
16, 2003
Leah
Wells
In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix
Ben Tripp
Fear Itself
Sharon
Smith
The Resegregation of US Schools
Ramzy Baroud
Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating?
Sam
Hamod
A Nation of Fear
Phil Reeves
Baghdad Pays the Price
Robert
McChesney
The FCC's Big Grab
Mark Engler
Those Who Don't Count
Steve
Perry
We're All
Extras in Bush's Movie
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
May
15, 2003
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Junaid Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
Fooling
Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
Hot Stories
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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May
22, 2003
Cultivating
& Exploiting American Anxiety
Republic of
Fear
By CARL ESTABROOK
By any reasonable calculation, members of the
Bush administration should be looking for jobs as desperately
as this year's college graduates. There are two million fewer
jobs in the American economy today than on the day George Bush
took office, and that fact alone should be enough for the voters
in 2004 to turf out this ridiculous president and what Matt Taibbi
calls his "small gang of snickering, stupid thugs whose
vision of paradise is full of explosions and beautifully designed
prisons".
So how did they get away with it? And
how may they still get away with it in November 2004?
Greg Palast and others have demonstrated
the racist purging of voters' lists, pioneered by Florida (but
hardly limited to one corrupt state) for the 2000 election.
And instead of fixing a system that casts doubt on every election,
as Palast recently pointed out, "Astonishingly, Congress
adopted the absurdly named 'Help America Vote Act,' which requires
every state to replicate Florida's system of centralized, computerized
voter files before the 2004 election."
The manufacture of consent in the 2000
election was confirmed up by the Supreme Court, the final bulwark
against democracy since the time of John Marshall and his discovery
of "judicial review" (which is not in the Constitution).
The court made sure that the candidate with the most votes did
not become president. Of course Gore, as a carefully vetted
and pre-selected candidate, did not object enough to risk his
membership in the elite political club.
But almost four out of five of Americans
of voting age did not vote for George Bush in 2000 -- half didn't
vote, and fewer than half of those who did, voted for Bush --
a more important figure than the vague "approval rating."
(As Michael Moore says, in these days of the Patriot Act, if
someone you don't know calls you at home and asks whether you
"approve" of the president, what are you going to say?)
"Nearly 70% of each group [voters
and non-voters] says that the modern campaigns 'seem more like
theater or entertainment than something to be taken seriously,'
and over 70% of each group agrees that candidates are 'more concerned
with fighting each other than with solving the nation's problems.'"
That was the conclusion from polls taken by the Joan Shorenstein
Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, just
before the 2000 election. But how can the condign condemnation
of a pre-cooked electoral system by the vast majority of the
nation's citizens be turned into the modicum of support that
Bush requires to avoid impeachment? One word: fear.
In the propaganda campaign for the Bush
administration's second demonstration war against a helpless
country, Kanan Makiya was a helpful player. His book Republic
of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (1989, republished in 1998)
retailed the horrors of Saddam Hussein's government without much
emphasis on the fact that they were accomplished with US aid
and support. As Iraq became the official hate-object in America
through the fall and winter of 2002, Makiya's prominence grew
-- e.g., he became the capstone for an article advocating war
in the "liberal" New York Times Magazine.
But the true "republic of fear,"
it was clear by then, is the United States of America. Only
in America was government propaganda able to make citizens personally
afraid of Saddam Hussein, sufficiently to promote a war for non-existent
"weapons of mass destruction." 911 was a godsend to
the Bush administration, for in all the world only Americans
could be made to fear Saddam Hussein because of his supposed
link to "terrorism."
In mid-April the New York Times tried
to take the edge off a poll showing that, even as US troops were
entering Baghdad, a majority of Americans remained opposed to
the policy of pre-emptive war that Bush invoked in attacking
Iraq. In contrast to the unforgiving numbers, it offered this
nugget of "human interest":
"Ina Urness, 71, of Higginsville,
Mo., said in a follow-up interview that she approved of the administration's
moving pre-emptively against nations that posed a threat to the
United States. 'We ought to nip it right in the bud, because
it's better them than us,' she said. 'Get over there and get
them before they can have a chance to turn those missiles loose
on us over here.'"
In America the fears of foreign attack
are bracketed with much more reasonable fears of personal economic
collapse. Can the Bush administration continue to cover one
fear with the other, so that it can go on with its policy of
imperial war abroad and transfer of wealth from the poor to the
rich at home? Since no real critique will come from the "other"
party (with an occasional exception), that seems likely. The
policy of aggressive war has both domestic and foreign attractions
for any United States government.
The dangers are great to the people of
the world and also to the perpetrators of this vicious policy.
At the end of the Second World War in Europe, the US and its
allies tried and executed the German leadership for launching
aggressive war, on the basis of international law formulated
as the Nuremberg Principles. If those principles were applied
to recent American presidents in the same way, Reagan, Clinton,
and Bush pere et fils would have to be hanged. Remember, mental
incompetence does not preclude execution in the US.
Carl Estabrook
is a Visiting Scholar University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and a CounterPunch columnist. He can be reached at: galliher@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Yesterday's
Features
Dave
Lindorff
Ari Fleischer Quits the Scene: The
Liar's Gone, the Enablers Remain
Chris
Floyd
How Blood Money Becomes Business Opportunity
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Graham's God and Bush's Pathology
Patrick
Cockburn
In Post War Iraq, the Signs of Breakdown
are Everywhere
Brian Cloughley
The Fatuous Braintrust: Newt, Rummy and Wolfowitz
Saul
Landau
Shopping, the End of the World and the Politics of Bush
Larry Kearney
Two Morning Poems, May 2003
Steve
Perry
Chaos in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted?
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Justice Comes to Iraq
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