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CounterPunch
February
19, 2003
The Return of Gary Hart
A Voice of Reason?
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
"We must not let our role in the
world be dictated by ideologues with their special biases and
agendas, by militarists who long for the clarity of Cold War
confrontation, by think-tank theorists who grind their academic
axes, or by Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish
their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties
to America and its national interests"
-- Gary Hart
Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala, of CNN's CROSSFIRE,
are booked to take diametrically opposite positions on every
imaginable issue. When discussing Hart's above comment, however,
the usually discordant duo settled into sweet harmony worthy
of Peaches & Herb.
"He's talking about Jewish-Americans",
the dapper Carlson declaimed. "Loathsome", cooed the
former Clinton adviser. Yet another manufactured controversy
in which the airbrushed prostitutes of the corporate media attempt
to get over on a politician for voicing an inconvenient sentiment.
Never mind that old saw about a man being unable to serve two
masters; the lapdog media is so cowed that it can't be suggested
that the folks advocating the US Conquest of the Middle East
should be tried for treason.
It's disgusting that neither Begala nor
Carlson is unwilling to deal with the stark facts surrounding
Israel's status as an adjunct of a superpower. Stephen Zunes,
of FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS, lays the matter out plainly:
"The pattern of U.S. aid to Israel
is revealing. Immediately following Israel's spectacular victory
in the 1967 war, when it demonstrated its military superiority
in the region, U.S. aid shot up by 450%. Part of this increase,
according to the New York Times, was apparently related to Israel's
willingness to provide the U.S. with examples of new Soviet weapons
captured during the war. Following the 1970-71 civil war in Jordan,
when Israel's potential to curb revolutionary movements outside
its borders became apparent, U.S. aid increased another sevenfold.
After attacking Arab armies in the 1973 war were successfully
countered by the largest U.S. airlift in history, with Israel
demonstrating its power to defeat surprisingly strong Soviet-supplied
forces, military aid increased by another 800%."
Quid pro quo, as any student of history
realizes. It's fanciful to assume that folks like Pat Robertson
ever had any real influence in our government's decision to adopt
Israel as a dependent. Israel showed its ability to be the "cop
on the beat" even before Dick Nixon was the frontrunner
for his party's 1968 nomination. The subsequent conflicts Zunes
mentions were successful; US funding for the Chosen People turned
Killing Machines increased exponentially just as the US was shedding
the gold standard. Perhaps the lesson there is that a debauched
foreign policy goes hand-in-hand with a bastardized currency.
So much else in America has changed since
those heady days of Nixon. On black radio, you can hear the resigned
voices of broken women issuing dedications to their strong black
men in lockdown. In places like DC's Anacostia, serving time
has come to be seen as a rite of passage. You're not a man, the
logic goes, until some cops rough you up, spitting in your ear
as they shove you into the car, all bumps and bruises accidental
of course.
So-called free love has been exposed
as the fraud it always was, replaced by various forms of exploitative
sex. A nation of men were taught to shave their chests and arms,
as they learned to expect women with small breasts to procure
enhancements. Women instinctively understood how devalued womanhood
was becoming, and have learned that they've had to fight for
their very survival. Because men weren't fighting for them; those
shiftless bastards who claimed to be unemployable, who claimed
that there were no jobs, who claimed that it was dehumanizing
-- like slavery, even -- to be told when they could piss and
what they could smoke before coming to work.
Zany proposals like the one to establish
a federal minimum income aren't even on the table at this point.
Because we have to protect freedom and democracy. Democracy,
when the House districts are gerrymandered to stretch through
as many separate media markets as possible. Freedom, when we
have come to expect random searches, frisks, and even arrests
from officers of the law. So there's no way to do right by all
those who have lost jobs in the last few years, who have lost
benefits they were taught to rely on by this government that
can print twenty billion dollars to pay off the Turkish leadership
and billions more to subsidize "Real World: Gaza Strip",
"Road Rules: Kandahar", "Cribs: Yassir Arafat",
and the hardy perennial, "Leave It To Bibi". This government
that can transform the blood, sweat, and wasted bodies of its
people into armaments for thugs around the world, but can't be
bothered to do anything for its poorest citizens except pat them
down and chuck them into concrete cells.
But what government doesn't pull off
that trick? There are all sorts of pretexts for "robust"
law enforcement activities, and a reasonable person would expect
to be introduced to them in the next couple of weeks. Some commentators
feel comfortable predicting that the US will lurch headlong into
totalitarianism by early March, expecting that the beginning
of the ground war with Iraq will coincide with terrorist attacks
and even more invasive security measures. But it's all eminently
worthwhile, of course; rumor has it that no less a figure than
Christopher Hitchens has anecdotal evidence from his personal
stylist that Baghdad has a number of unauthorized catapults.
And isn't Hitchens a fine advocate for
American wars? It's hard not to find a bit of irony in the fact
that so many of the loudest voices in favor of US domination
of Muslim nations emigrated to the United States, to earn tidy
livings and to get spread disinformation on so-called public
airwaves. They talk of the atrocities the US government inflicts
on the people of Iraq clinically, with language as shallow as
it is technical. It's not for them to know what it is to watch
family members explode or burn. It's not their concern that Iraqi
women give birth to babies with facial parts transposed onto
nether regions, and vice versa.
And none of them will ever face questions
from Tucker & Paul about why it is they moved here to plan
and pimp wars in which American men and women kill and die. Unless
a mainstream politician asks them, that is. If Gary Hart were
to take up that challenge, he may actually have a viable shot
at the nomination.
Anthony Gancarski, the author of 2001's UNFORTUNATE INCIDENTS,
welcomes comments at Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Colin
Powell and the Great "Intelligence Fraud"
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
The Whole World is Watching
Edward Said
A Monumental Hypocrisy
Wouter Hijink
Report from Amsterdam
"War: Do Not Feed!"
Linda Heard
At Last! Proud to be British
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Taking a Stand on Iraq
Robert Fisk
The Case Against War
Lev Grinberg
Lessons from Israel
A War Without Legitimacy
Chris Floyd
Cold Fronts:
Bush War Profits
Ahmad Faruqui
Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
Adam Lebowitz
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Kurt Nimmo
Bring Us the Head of Osama bin Laden
Forrest Hylton
The Revolt in Bolivia
Col. Dan Smith
Irrelevance and Credibility:
Bush, NATO and the UN
Wayne Madsen
The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
Anybody Remember the Powell Doctrine?
Poets Basement:
Eliot
Katz, Scott Handleman, and Bruce Tomczak
Website of the Weekend
Anti-War
Posters
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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