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CounterPunch
November
7, 2002
The Perils of
LSD:
Lame, Spineless, Democrats
by TOM STEPHENS
A plague has seized the Nation. It emanates from
Washington, D.C., and is spreading wherever People try to come
to grips with the abuse of power there by the most dangerous
government corporate money can buy. Symptoms (particularly among
People committed to real democracy, social justice, and non-violence
in our relations with others) include barely controllable rage,
enormous frustration, organization of third parties, and ultimately
a sense of total scorn for mainstream electoral politics as anything
other than a personal career. The name of this malady is Lame,
Spineless Democrats (LSD). Friends don't let friends enter the
hallucinatory, pseudo-powerful world of LSD and its pushers in
the Democratic Leadership [sic] Council without strong mutual
support.
Thanks to leading Democrats who misplaced
their spines, their passion, their intelligence, and their guts,
the Republican Party seized total power over all three branches
of the United States Government in the 2002 mid-term elections.
With Republican control of the Senate we face federal courts
packed with ultra-right wing ideologue judges (enjoying lifetime
appointments) for at least a generation. It has been said that
for evil to triumph it is only necessary that good People do
nothing. The national leaders of the Democratic Party, the Tom
Daschles, Dick Gepharts and Joe Liebermans who have been trying
to win elections for 20 years now by beating the Fat Cat Republicans
at their own corporate bribery game, let America and the world
down. These uncertain trumpeters failed to grasp one very simple
and fundamental fact about the type of electoral "democracy"
that prevails today in America. If you let your political opponents
define the key issues and control the timing of which issues
will dominate the agenda, while you avoid providing any clear
answers to their inflammatory and flagrantly misleading rhetoric
about "freedom," "security," and "evil,"
you will get your ass kicked. Duh.
In the midst of a major international
crisis of violence accompanied by a deep economic recession,
the top Democrats on the national scene gave Americans no real
reason to vote for their candidates and caused this disaster.
They offered no vision, no voice, and no message or theme that
resonates with ordinary folks. But it goes far beyond their
(lack of) "the vision thing," beyond the tired "issue"
of "moderates" vs. "liberals," and even beyond
the timid fear of challenging a wartime president. Look at just
some of the embarrassment of riches squandered by the Democrats'
refusal to fight or even criticize Boy Emperor George W. Bush
on any fundamental issues of war and peace, corporate corruption,
and the economic health of the Nation and its People:
- Bush's thugs did everything they could
to obstruct and delay the congressional hearings on intelligence
failures that preceded the September 11 attack. This administration
had come into office in January 2001, facing intense warnings
from its predecessors about the then little known potency of
al-Quaida. A robust plan for attacking them had been developed
under LSD Clinton. It has been described as essentially everything
done after September 11. National Security Advisor Condoleeza
Rice simply sat on it for four months. By April a paper Bush
administration "policy review" for covert action against
bin Laden had been completed, but it stalled in the National
Security Council. It was not included in an actual plan on paper
until August, when Rice signed a White House policy directive,
and Bush was briefed at his Texas ranch. In the meantime, especially
in June, the intelligence community was receiving constant threats
and corroborating information about bin Laden's major, "spectacular"
attack plans. Those in the know were convinced that something
horrible and really huge was coming soon. Nothing was done.
(All of this is in addition to the unconscionable failures to
detect, investigate or keep track of the hijackers and their
alleged associates.) It may well be possible for someone in
Rice's position, responsible for assessing and responding to
such critical national dangers, or that of CIA chief George Tenet,
to screw up their jobs worse than this. But I can't see how.
One of the Democrats' most blatant failures as a political opposition
after September 11 has been giving Bush and his top aides a wholesale
pass on their unbelievably irresponsible actions and omissions
in the area of national security. With very few exceptions,
Congresspersons have not called for the firing of the top "intelligence"
officials who enabled this disaster. The administration was
allowed to obstruct, delay, and manipulate a series of superficial
inquiries into these failures in the congressional intelligence
committees. Then, when some of the ugly truth finally came out
during committee hearings in late September 2002 (just in time
to be pre-empted by plans to attack Iraq), Bush's spin doctors
promised to convene the special commission they previously opposed,
to finally get to the bottom of it all. We are no safer from
terrorist attacks today than we were before the World Trade Center
was destroyed. Democrats have completely failed to challenge
the Bush administration's incompetence, demonstrated both before
and after September 11, in matters of security and intelligence.
- The Republican right wing has taken
a fervent, and ostensibly religiously inspired, position on the
critical Arab/Israeli conflict that can only be described as
madness. It makes the traditional extreme American bipartisan
consensus on support for Israel, which has itself been far outside
the mainstream of international politics, diplomacy and opinion
for decades, seem reasonable by comparison. A new alliance between
hard core Zionists and the most extreme fundamentalist Christian
political cadre has emerged to dominate U.S. foreign policy in
the Middle East. As reflected in recent remarks about "so-called
occupied territories" by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld,
the real powers on the intellectually light weight Bush team,
current U.S. foreign policy is justified by the Bible. The Book
of Exodus has the Israelites putting the inhabitants of the Promised
Land to the sword, so Christian fundamentalists in 21st century
America "reason" that Ariel Sharon's massacres are
acceptable, even desirable as they hasten the second coming and
the blessed "rapture." That the real basis for supposedly
responsible public officials supporting such millenarian nonsense
has less to do with the Book of Revelations, than with the bottom
line of military contractor corporations who do billions of dollars
worth of business with Israel, is not particularly comforting.
- U.S. policies on "free trade"
and corporate globalization have thrown Africa, most of Latin
America, and much of the U.S. itself into the economic toilet.
Now the Bush administration's September 2002 National Security
Strategy (NSS) makes explicit their drive for a global empire.
It says that there is only one model for successful national
development, its version of "free market" capitalism,
lower taxes for the rich, and "free trade" abuse of
democracy by the world's ruling multinational corporations. If
anyone anywhere ever challenges our dominance or any of these
policy choices, the NSS says we will attack them (as with Iraq,
and "Either you are with us, or you're with the terrorists").
George W. Bush was (sort of) elected President of the United
States, not Emperor or Mafia Don of the Planet Earth. The first
George who occupied this office stressed that he was not to be
addressed or viewed as a King. But the Bush/Cheney administration's
policies, in addition to being a recipe for breeding anti-U.S.
terrorism around the world, require a new job description. The
LSD have not even attempted to make this outrageous arrogance
of power an issue in our national political life.
- Then there is Iraq (at least for now).
Thanks to the top Democratic leadership, the congressional "debate"
on war against Iraq was not Hawks vs. Doves. It was Hawks vs.
Hawks. Tens of thousands of Americans joined in hundreds of
anti-war demonstrations throughout October 2002. We were led
by respected members of the religious and civil rights communities,
and by organizers of local labor unions. We demonstrated in
the streets against the proposed slaughter of tens of thousands
of Saddam Hussein's victims, which would be for the profits of
Big Oil, and for U.S. control over Iraq's energy resources as
well as the strategically vital region. The Democratic Party
was by and large, with a few notable exceptions, completely AWOL.
In the absence of strong congressional opposition, Bush's political
guru Karl Rove transparently used the war with Iraq debate to
"maintain a positive issue environment" for Republican
candidates. The savvy LSD pols walked right into Rove's trap
and didn't even put up a struggle. Is it any wonder that voters
don't trust their brand of "leadership?"
- The 2002 election, incredibly, was
not a referendum on corporate corruption, as embodied in the
Enron scandal, and all it portends for American democracy and
the economy. Exploding budget and trade deficits, and rapidly
growing economic inequality between workers and the corporate
elite, were non-issues. LSD leaders even limited their arguments
about the ailing U.S. economy, inadequate health care, and unemployment
to whining about how Iraq pre-empted the agenda. They offered
no policy program for a better life for the majority of American
working families. The Lame, Spineless Democrats have not figured
out a way to address such issues, without being accused of "class
warfare" by the real class warriors whom Enron and its ilk
put in position to rob the rest of us blind. LSD is known to
produce such a powerful sensory and cognitive disconnection from
the surrounding real world.
To have democracy, there must be serious
debate of fundamental issues, and a decent respect for the truth.
In the 2002 campaign the Bush/Cheney/Rove administration successfully
avoided the former. They never had the latter. Bush's hypocrites
are the guys--now in unchallenged control of the most powerful
military/imperial machine in the planet's history--who responded
to the disaster of September 11 by advocating a "Department
of Homeland Security," without civil service or union protections
for the employees tasked with protecting Americans from terrorist
violence. They want a bloated new "don't rock the boat"
bureaucracy. Its hundreds of thousands of employees, like the
FBI agents who were prevented from searching Zacharias Moussaoui's
computer before September 11 for evidence of al-Quaida connections,
would lack any protection from retaliation by their bosses if
they speak up about bad policies or decisions. To their credit,
even the LSD in Congress have opposed Bush's union-free "security"
plans. But taking such a position on one relatively narrow issue
is not enough by a long shot. Effective leadership demands consistency
and principles. In order to claim leadership in such troubled
times, a party has to boldly show People what they stand for,
forthrightly say what they'll do, and clearly demonstrate that
they are a better alternative to John Ashcroft's Gestapo tactics
and Dick Cheney's corrupt imperial ambitions. Instead the leading
Democrats have loyally supported such abuses. They are tripping
if they expect the majority of the American People to support
them in their moral shame, their unforgivable physical endangerment
of the rest of us, and their utter political irrelevance. Thanks
to LSD hallucinations of an excuse for leadership, we now face
the arrogance of absolute, unaccountable power in the White House,
Congress, and the Federal Courts, without any of the effective
checks and balances envisioned by the architects of American
government.
Into the streets to save the world before
these losers piss it all away.
The author would like to acknowledge
the following excellent articles published during late September
through October, while Karl Rove's Iraq strategy played out in
the election campaign, as particularly influencing this essay:
1. Don't Ask, Don't Tell, by John Prados,
The American Spectator, 9/23/02
2. For the Democrats: A Defining Moment, by Marty Jezer, Common
Dreams News Center, 9/27/02
3. Fighting Terrorism with the Wrong Weapons, by Ahmad Faruqui,
Counterpunch, 10/16/02
4. The Red Queen Program, by Molly Ivins, Boulder Daily Camera,
10/25/02
Tom Stephens
is a lawyer and a member of the board of directors of the Detroit
Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. He welcomes comments
at lebensbaum4@earthlink.net.
Yesterday's
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Bush: Left-Liberal?
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Hypocrisy
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Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
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October 26
/ 27, 2002
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A Place
of Tears
Ilija Trojanow
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