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Recent
Stories
May
6, 2003
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
Are Many; They are Few"
Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
Their Pockets
Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kenthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"
April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
of the Iraq War
Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
Gancarski
Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
Wallace
Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29
Hot Stories
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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May
6, 2003
An Activist in the Trenches
In Defense of
Bill Bennett
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
I have to salute Mr. Bennett for his gambling
preferences. Video Poker, according to Jonathan Alter [who advocated
torture as acceptable in the Terror War, remember?]. I too am
a video poker player.
Unlike Bennett, though, I never come
out ahead. Some nights have found me breaking even. Others, forty
or even fifty dollars behind on a machine owned and operated
by one tribal nation or another.
I'm not a high-stakes gambler on video
poker. But I can see why Bill Bennett is. Bill Bennett, unlike
me, is a player. So ensconced in the Washington establishment
that he calls Hannity Stepin and Colmes Fetchit. Bennett has
a piece of more think tanks than I've had first dates. While
the best-selling moralist was penning such tomes as "The
Death of Outrage" and "The Book of Virtues", I
was pimping myself out to Blockbuster and Sherwin-Williams to
pay rent on some dump. He's a player, a pimp, and by comparison
I'm a tricked-out streetwalker, scraping nickels off of the oil-stained
pavement.
Obviously, virtue pays. As does profiteering
off of the misery of others. Those who scold Bennett for escapism
through casino video games miss the point. Bennett was in a position
to gamble in such a manner because he was well-paid to advocate
a federal imposition of morality on a hapless, helpless people.
Bill Bennett should not be pilloried
because he maxed out his credit line in Atlantic City, Vegas,
or even Reno. Bennett should be taken to task for undermining
teacher's unions while Education Secretary. If it weren't for
the work Bennett did as Drug Czar, the federal government might
not have a pretext to build a police state around combating blunts
and bongs. Over two million in jail, many for weed busts, and
Bill Bennett served as the Thomas Jefferson of the Drug War.
These are serious gambles that the American
people lost. No matter how many third-world countries the US
dominates, the US will never undo the damage of policies Bill
Bennett advocated and helped implement. Our treasury will never
cover the bets Bennett and his cronies floated on the backs of
those too mute to protest what is done, has been done, and will
be done in their names.
Don't criticize Bill Bennett because
one of his foibles has been exposed by an enemy in the mainstream
press. Criticize Bennett because his brand of big-government
conservatism has created a disastrous situation in Washington.
As the Treasury raises the Federal debt limit, as new federal
law enforcement programs are proposed hand in glove with tax
cuts, it's impossible not to see that the losses Bill Bennett
has inflicted on his own bank account pale in comparison to those
he and his boys have inflicted on present and future generations.
In that context, even millions dropped at Caesar's is merely
walking around money.
Of course, Bennett will have money to
burn until he keels over dead. He's better than almost anyone
in America at rallying the people against amorphous menaces.
Consider how Bennett sold the Terror War at UCLA recently. No
conflict but an open-ended one would lend itself to rhetoric
like this:
"I had a sense that the ardor for
this effort against terrorism was starting to grow dim, was diminishing
in this country just six months after 9-11, and that I wondered
whether we had the stuff to take this effort over the long run,
over the long haul, over the 10, or 20, or 30 years that this
World War IV, as it was referred to earlier, may take, because
indeed I don't know how long it will take, but it will take a
long time. It will take many places, there will be many theaters
of operation, but it will be a long struggle. We concluded a
long twilight struggle some 20 years ago, or 15 years ago, and
now it looks like we are embarked on another. But, it's very
important, and it's essential that we do it."
The struggles are always very important.
Stemming the Soviet tide in Nicaragua, or Grenada. Making America
drug free by 1990, or maybe 1995. The role of the people, in
Bennett's eyes, is to trust the federal government.
And the people, bless their would-be
virtuous hearts, wouldn't understand "theaters of operation"
in "twilight." That's Bill Bennett's job, and that
of others like him, comfortable no matter how high the stakes
are. After all, they're playing with house money.
Anthony Gancarski, a regular CounterPunch writer, accepts emails
at Gancarski@Hotmail.Com
Yesterday's
Features
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/0
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