Now
Available!
Dime's
Worth of Difference:
Beyond the
Lesser of Two Evils
Order Here!
Today's
Stories
September 3,
2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
September 3,
2004
High Plains
Grifter
The
Life and Crimes of George W. Bush
By
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Part
Four: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Get George Bush in front of a bunch
of preachers and his tongue tends to loosen up a bit and occasionally
some luminous black pearls spill out. Shortly after the Supremes
invested him with the presidency, Bush confided to the Reverend
Jim Wallis, head of the Call of Renewal coven of churches, the
following: "I don't understand how poor people think."
This presidential gem, worthy
of Antoinette herself, neatly mirrors a statement made during
the darkest trench of the recession by Bush's director of Housing
and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson, who deflected criticism
of the Bush economic disaster by pronouncing that "being
poor is a state of mind, not a condition."
Jackson's coarse declaration
reflects a kind of economic phenomenology that might even give
Milton Friedman the willies. Naturally, Bush doesn't know the
difference between phenomenology and proctology, but he keenly
intuits its essential meaning: The suffering of the poor is entirely
self-inflicted. They simply lack faith. And the circle of blow-dried
Cotton Mathers the president surrounds himself with sanction
his cold sense of compassion. Blaming the victim is not only
a political device; it's infused with ecclesiastical authority.
The downtrodden must be blamed for their own good.
Bush presided over the loss
of more than 2 million jobs, the cruelest blow to working people
since the Great Depression. Not his fault. Homeless and poverty
rates have soared as a result and thanks to Clinton when this
recession hit the social safety net of welfare and food stamps
had already been sheared away. Not Bush's responsibility. The
mounting piles of corpses in Afghanistan and Iraq. Others are
to blame.
Here you have the prime virtue
of being a born-again politician: automatic absolution from responsibility
for inflicting even more deprivations on the weakest in society.
(For more on Bush and the fundamentalists I highly recommend
David Domke's excellent new book, God
Willing: Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the 'War
on Terror' and the Echoing Press.)
All of this feeds Bush's stunted
capacity for human empathy. His joking about executions. His
refusal to comfort the families of the slain in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His imperviousness to the plight of the poor. How else can you
explain his bizarre remarks at a White House Christmas party
in 2001 made in front of Billy Graham and other guardians of
the faith. "All in all, 2001 has been a fabulous year for
Laura and me," Bush gushed, even though the ruins of the
Twin Towers were still warm to the touch and cruise missiles
were cratering hovels in Kandahar.
In the spring of 2001, Bush
invited a flock of religious leaders to the White House for tea
and a prayer session. The president soon strayed from his prepared
script. "I had a drinking problem," he confessed during
the gathering. "Right now, I should be in a bar. Not the
Oval Office." There's no record of any objection being lodged.
Of course, perhaps the pastors
of doom and damnation sensed that the cure had not entirely taken
hold. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that Bush continues
to nip at the bottle every once in a while-and it's almost certainly
good for the country and the world that he does imbibe. An Austin
musician told us of a night in the mid-1990s, a decade after
Bush went on the wagon, when he hustled into the bathroom of
a bar between sets only to find the Governor face down on the
less than spic-and-span floor, mumbling inanities. It was an
episode of foreshadowing worthy of O. Henry, for years later
Bush would be similarly felled on the floor of the Oval Office
by a renegade pretzel.
Some presidents need a blowjob
to unwind; others just crave some blow. Save an Iraqi child;
get George high.
* *
*
Some leaders of state have
a hotline to other bigwigs. Like an Old Testament king, George
Bush gets operational faxes straight from the Supreme Deity.
"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and
then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now
I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East,"
he told Abu Abbas, the former Palestinian Prime Minister. "If
you can help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come
and I will have to focus on them."
He is surrounded by Christian
soldiers, the real coalition of the willing. One of them, Gen.
Jerry Boykin, proclaimed that God put Bush in office --apparently
Jim Baker was merely an unwitting instrument of the Supreme Deity.
Boykin also fumed that God had told him that followers of Islam
where heathens and it was his duty to smite them. This is the
same brand of bracing biblical exegesis that marked the Fifth
Monarchists of puritan England, who believed they could hasten
the Apocalypse by firing off their blunderbusses in unison inside
the Houses of Parliament. Praise the lord and program the cruise
missiles.
Bush's wash-and-wear fundamentalism
has revved up liberals into a frenzied panic. But aside from
Boykin and Ashcroft, Bush hasn't surrounded himself with that
many more religious fanatics than Reagan or even Carter embedded
into their ranks. After all, who is Bush's guide to God? None
other than, good old Billy Graham, the sky pilot for nearly every
president since LBJ, who has absolved official villainy for more
than 40 years. Is there a more stable fixture of the federal
government than Graham? Alan Greenspan is a mere piker compared
to Billy G.
When Bush talks religion, it's
a surefire sign that's he's in trouble. His public utterances
of piety serve as a distress call to the stalwarts, the base
that never wavers. Hence the fervid imprecations against gay
marriage issued in Bush's darkest hour.
Bush's stop-and-go pursuit
of a religious agenda has been perfunctory at best, backfiring
deliriously more often than not. Indeed, John DiIulio, the arch
zealot in the Bush inner circle, quit in a huff and denounced
the administration as sellouts and frauds, more interested in
Moab bombs and tax cuts than state-coerced conversions to Christ.
"There is no precedent
in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a
complete lack of a policy apparatus," DiIulio told Ron Suskind,
writing for Esquire. "What you've got is everything-and
I mean everything-being run by the political arm. It's the reign
of the Mayberry Machiavellis."
One of those Mayberry Machiavellians
is John Ashcroft, the Savonarola of the Potomac. Ashcroft, the
singing senator who lost his reelection to a dead man, is an
unapologetic bigot, who launches weekly sorties against the Bill
of Rights. (Apparently, no one informed Ashcroft that his raids
on the Constitution are the equivilent of a saturation bombing
strike on a Potemkin village-- Madison's carta of liberty having
been hollowed out by more fiendish minds, long, long ago.) But
the censorious Missourian, who sought and received three draft
deferrments during the Vietnam war, rumbles on, rummaging through
the private corners of our lives, like one of Moliere's pious
buffoons, draping the breasts of Lady Justice one day and condemning
homosexuality as "a sin" the next. In The
Bush Betrayal, the libertarian writer James Bovard's pitiless
dismantling of the Bush era, Bovard quips that the Persecutor
General wants to "repeal 1776."
Whether or not anyone has briefed
the president to this fact remains unclear, but Ashcroft has
become an oozing liability to the Bush crowd, ridiculed even
by Republican ultras such as Bob Barr and Dick Armey and repudiated
by federal judges in nearly every circuit. Ashcroft has overreached
so far that he begins to make Ed Meese seem like Ramsey Clark.
There's nothing spiritual about
Ashcroft's jihad and that's why, ultimately, his vindictive crusade
will flounder on its own rectitude and rigidity; he offers only
persecution and purges, no transcendence. Frail Billy Graham
could teach the Reverend Prosecutor a thing or two about how
to con a congregation into compliance.
That's not to say that the
Patriot Act (and its odious offspring) doesn't qualify as one
of the spookiest legislative incursions on civil liberties since
the McCarran Act. But Ashcroft can't be saddled with all the
blame for that inquisitorial bill. After all, he didn't write
it. He merely plucked it fully-formed from one of Janet Reno's
shelves, dusted it off and dumped it on a complicit Congress,
which passed it nearly unanimously. Only Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin
progressive, and Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian, spoke out as
prophetic voices of dissent, warning that we were slipping into
a culture of official suspicion and interrogation. And so it
came to pass: warrantless searches and wiretaps, governments
snoops in libraries, infiltration of dissident groups, immigrants
rounded up and sent to detention camps without legal redress,
prosecution of lawyers who work too sedulously in the defense
their clients, and on and on. Paranoia as federal policy.
The maintenance of this creepy
state of affairs depends on the mainlining of anxiety, inculcating
an ever-tender sense of trauma in the psyche of the populace.
Thus, the color-coded terror alerts, issued with the precision
of a metronome. But here Bush faces his most puzzling problem:
keeping the whole thing knotted up tight. Unless he, by some
miraculous heresy, legalizes pot, there's no way this condition
of perpetual paranoia can be sustained. The republic is too diverse,
too innately averse to prosecutorial probings (memo to K. Starr),
too unwieldy and restless to be kept sedate under the looking
glass for long before minor rebellions begin to erupt, sending
out little fuck-yous to the system.
Bush began to lose ground in
the winter of 2004: from Janet Jackson flashing her right tit
at a scandalized Michael Powell to US soldiers refusing to serve
in Iraq to John Dean calling for the impeachment of the president
to the exposure of the Sadean circus at Abu Ghraib to the punch-drunk
economy, seemingly face-down for the count. It had begun to unravel.
By early summer, the once unsinkable Bush was listing, desperate
for any life-ring in the sucking maelstrom.
Of course, that's where the
Democrats come in.
Part Five: The House Rules
Part
One: The Ties That Blind
Part
Two: Mark His Words
Part
Three: More Pricks Than Kicks
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been
Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature
and, with Alexander Cockburn, Dime's
Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|