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"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Alexander Cockburn in New York City

Today's Stories

October 5, 2007

Andy Worthington
The Anonymous Victims of Guantánamo

October 4, 2007

Uri Avnery
The Power of the Israel Lobby

Dave Marsh
Dick Cheney, a Eulogy

Valerio Volpi
How Italy Became a Launching Pad for the US Military

Cecilie Surasky
Dissenting at Your Own Risk

Dave Lindorff
Remaking Iraq, as Vietnam

Norman Solomon
Sputnik, 50 Years Later

Laura Carlsen
Costa Rica and CAFTA: Memo Reveals Manipulation Scheme

Walter Brasch
When Compassion Fails: Bush and the Children's Health Act

Ben Terrall
Haitian Human Rights Advocate Kidnapped

William S. Lind
Beyond the OODA Loop

Website of the Day
Musicians in Handcuffs

 

October 3, 2007

Vijay Prashad
Gang of Four

Anita Sinha
Black Ties and Bulldozers in New Orleans

Winslow T. Wheeler
Posturing at the Petraeus Hearings: Where was the Oversight?

Sharon Smith
The Kucinich Quandary

Jeff Leys
Our Bonhoeffer Moment

Sen. Russ Feingold
We Must End This Tragedy

Mohamad Bazzi
Playing Into the Hands of Ahmadinejad

Brenda Norrell
A Cry from the Top of the World

Robert Weissman
No Sex, Still a Scandal at the IMF

Website of the Day
Jena by Mellencamp

 

October 2, 2007

Ibrahim Warde
Logical Lies About Bin Laden's Wealth

Gary Leupp
"I Hate All Iranians": Frank Talk from a Defense Dept. Official

David Macaray
The Hunt for a Blue November: In Pursuit of the Labor Vote

Conn Hallinan
Religion and Foreign Policy

John Ross
The Great American Chess Match

Alan Farago
Ripping Off Miami's Poor

Sonja Karkar
The Right to Exist: States or People?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Meteor and the Mahatma

Website of the Day
Grandin on Che's Legacy

 

October 1, 2007

Al Giordano
The Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors

Paul Craig Roberts
From Burma to Iraq: Hypocrisy Rules the West

Moshe Adler
The Crimes of Microsoft

Ingmar Lee
My Kayak Journey Down the Wild Pacific Coast

John V. Walsh
Ahmadinejad is Not My Enemy

Norman Solomon
Political Science and Truth of Consequences

Roger Burbach
Historic Victory in Ecuador for the Left

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Assassination

Stephen Lendman
The Maestro of Misery: Greenspan's Dark Legacy

Susie Day
Honey, I Shrank the Military!

Website of the Day
Letters from Fort Lewis Brig

 

September 29 / 30, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back?

Uri Avnery
So What About Iran?

Andrew Cockburn
Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable

Jeffrey St. Clair
Through the Gates of Lodore

Wajahat Ali
The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi

Andy Worthington
The Curse of the Military Commissions

Don Santina
Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco

Ralph Nader
Free Lunches, for Corporations!

Fred Gardner
The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad

Seth Sandronsky
The US Economy Since 1980

Gideon Levy
The Children of 5767

William S. Lind
A Ticking Bomb

Reza Fiyouzat
An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran

Richard Rhames
Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog

David Michael Green
Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret

Zach Mason
Hate and Hope in Herndon

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss

Website of the Weekend
Domestic Crusaders

 

 

September 28, 2007

Kathleen and Bill Christison
The Teflon Alliance with Israel

Roberto J. González /
David H. Price

When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents

Saul Landau
September, the Cruelest Month in Chile

Tom Clifford
Burma by the Numbers

Christopher Brauchli
Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef

Martha Rosenberg
Spinning Suicide Statistics

Dave Zirin
Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6

Laray Polk
Bush Library or Lockbox?

Binoy Kampmark
When Reagan Turned Brown

James McEnteer
Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant

Website of the Day
Concerned Anthropologists

 

September 27, 2007

Alan Farago
Housing Market Crashes and Burns

Andy Worthington
A Bad Week at Guantánamo

Jonathan Cook
Why Did Israel Attack Syria?

William Hughes
Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed

Ray McGovern
Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy

Ron Jacobs
Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement!

Joshua Frank
Pruning the Green Party

Anne Dachel
The CDC, Vaccines and Autism

Website of the Day
The God-O-Meter

 


September 26, 2007

Bill Quigley
HUD's Home Wreckers

Paul Craig Roberts
A Pandemic of Police Brutality

Jeff Kisseloff
Still Smearing Alger Hiss

China Hand
Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran?

Behzad Yaghmaian
At the Gates of Paradise

Sonja Karkar
The Quality of Mercy in Gaza

Mike Ferner
Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time

Col. Dan Smith
Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn

Clifton Ross
Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech

Brenda Norrell
A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas

Website of the Day
The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture

 

September 25, 2007

Nicole Colson
On the March Against Racism

Uri Avnery
Foam on the Water

Brendan Cooney
Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him!

Harry Browne
Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell

Marjorie Cohn
The Drift Toward War with Iran

David Macaray
The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out

Ralph Nader
Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite

Anthony Papa
Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws

Christopher Ketcham
All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants

Website of the Day
John Waters on Free Speech

 

September 24, 2007

George Ciccariello-Maher
Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland

Saree Makdisi
The War on Gaza's Children

David Keen
Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt

Sherwood Ross
Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure

Ron Jacobs
Greenspan's Open Secret

Donna Saggia
The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values

Mike Ferner
Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating

Malini Johar Schueller
Norman Hsu is a Model Minority

Monique Dols
and Dylan Stillwood
Ahmadinejad and Columbia

Website of the Day
The Promotion


September 22 / 23, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"

Jennifer Loewenstein
Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism

Jeffrey St. Clair
Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One)

Alan Farago
Genuflecting to China

Brian Cloughley
Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities

Robert Fantina
The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico

Jason Hribal
Fear of an Animal Planet

David Rosen
Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality

Mike Whitney
The Era of Global Financial Instability

John V. Walsh
Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill?

Dave Lindorff
Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here?

David Michael Green
Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt

Fred Gardner
Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger)

Cassandra Jones
Support Our Mercenaries

Roger van Zwanenberg
Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Ford

Website of the Weekend
"For the Bible Tells Me So"

 

September 21, 2007

Karim Makdisi
Letter from Lebanon

M. Shahid Alam
A History of Violence

Alan Farago
Who Will Buy My House?

Joshua Frank
The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus

Dave Zirin
Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports

Kenneth Couesbouc
A Short History of Lending and Borrowing

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein
Mass Health Care Failure

Ben Terrall
The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi

Steve Fournier
Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here

Frederico Fuentes, et al
Voices in Defense of Bolivia

Website of the Day
Sabra and Shatila, Remembered

 

September 20, 2007

Kathleen Christison
Whatever Happened to Palestine?

Zoltan Grossman
An Endless Occupation?

Paul Craig Roberts
As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed

Stan Cox
and Wes Jackson
Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet

Russell Mokhiber
AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead

Charles Modiano
Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power

Raymond J. Lawrence
Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion

Brendan Cooney
Body-Snatched Nation

Website of the Day
Mind Control for Breakfast

 

September 19, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By?

Paul Krassner
The Power of Laughter

Sgt. Martin Smith
The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq

Seth Sandronsky
Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own?

Claud Cockburn
Looking back at the Great Crash

Victoria Buch
Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer

Robert Weissman
Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger

Mike Ferner
Can We Talk?

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water

Website of the Day
Housing Cost Calculator

 

September 18, 2007

Mike Whitney
U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel

Alan Farago
Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It

John Ross
America's Great Wall:
Where Will the Workers Go
When They Finish It?

Ron Jacobs
Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md.

Alex Doherty
Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible?

September 17, 2007

Marjorie Cohn
Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom

Paul Craig Roberts
Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be

Ricardo Alarcón
The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era

Marc Levy
Fake Vets Chasing Fame

Eva Liddell
In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like

Website of the Day
Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel

Sept. 15-16, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The General Came to Washington

Vicente Navarro
How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy

Mike Whitney
Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch

Herman Mindshaftgap
Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future?

Ellen Cantarow
Girls! Music! Palestine!

Jordan Flaherty
K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D.

Zachary Hurwitz
Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development

September 14, 2007

Debbie Nathan
New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator"

Franklin Lamb
Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later

Patrick Cockburn
Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha

Farzana Versey
The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon

Alan Farago
This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption

Hank Edson
Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache

September 13, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official

Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot
The Barksdale Nukes

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last

Michael Baney
Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past

Dr. Susan Block
Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern?

September 12, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
American Economy: RIP

Stan Goff
The Petraeus Report

William Blum
When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It.

Manuel Garcia
Forgetting 9/11

Debbie Nathan
Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time

September 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Fakery of General Petraeus

Iain Boal
Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse

Michael Dickinson
Osama on 9/11

Guerry Hoddersen
Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken

Bill Hatch
Irish Politics in Old Time California

Gary Leupp
The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti

Website of the Day
Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th"

September 10, 2007

Uri Avnery
A Big Victory Against the Wall

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus's Closet

Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen
Screwing Up In Iraq

David Michael Green
Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee

Pius Adesanmi
A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick

Betty Schneider
How to Deal With Sex Offenders

 

September 8 / 9, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Will the US Really Bomb Iran?

Saul Landau
The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars

Ray McGovern
Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq

Matthew Abraham
Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul

Alan Farago
The Governor and the Growth Machine

Christopher Brauchli
Grand Old Party Animals

Rannie Amiri
Battle of the Camps

Fred Gardner
Will Snoops Get Stopped?

James L. Secor
B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale

Missy Comley Beattie
Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now?

Ben Tripp
Still in the Clover

Francis Boyle
The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show

Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato
Jason Bourne vs. James Bond

Website of the Weekend
Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above


September 7, 2007

Robert Fantina
Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality

John Ross
Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain

James Brooks
The Occupation Within

Russell Mokhiber
Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability

Joshua Frank
The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy

John Walsh
On the Green Party

Mark Brenner
New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices

Mike Ferner
"I Will Salute No More Forever"

Website of the Day
Help Save Osny Zachary's Life

 

September 6, 2007

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand

Allan J. Lichtman
When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ...

Norman Solomon
The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman

Yifat Susskind
Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast

Catherine Fenton
Why I Am Going to the Protest

Laura Santina
Can the War Machine be Contained?

Farzana Versey
Fission Kashmir

Yves Engler
Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay

Kelly Overton
Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist?

Michael Simmons
One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb

Website of the Day
Dams and Genocide in Guatemala

 

 

September 5, 2007

Stan Goff
The End Begins

Michael Dickinson
Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer

Matthew Abraham
Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment

Patrick Cockburn
The Basra Debacle

Dave Lindorff
Beware the Wounded Beast

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Are the Fanatics?

Clifton Ross
Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity

Elizabeth Schulte
Katrina's Forgotten Refugees

Joseph Grosso
Labor Day in New York City

Ben Terrall
Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco

Website of the Day
A Guide to Narco Dollars

 

September 4, 2007

Jean Bricmont
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran

Patrick Cockburn
Cut and Run in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime

Tom Kerr
Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row

Gary Leupp
The Case of Jose Maria Sison

Sonja Karkar
The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine

Heather Gray
The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham

Fidel Castro
The Super-Revolutionaries

Jackie Corr
Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand

Sunsara Taylor
Katrina and the Progress of the System

Website of the Day
Colombia Journal

 

September 3, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Brits Flee from Basra

Eamon McCann
Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes

Joshua Frank
The End of the Green Party?

Chris Floyd
Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph

Marjorie Cohn
A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans

Walter Brasch
The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq

Matt Reichel
Redefining the American Dream

Website of the Day
Don't Get Fooled Again

 

September 1 / 2, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Entrapment Snares Larry Craig

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo

Saul Landau
The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five

David Keen
An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror

Patrick Cockburn
The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services

Diana Johnstone
Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket

George Longstreth, MD
& Karen Longstreth, RN
The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank

Linda M. Woolf
A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights

Ralph Nader
Wrapping the World with Advertising

Fred Gardner
The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD

Ben Tripp
Enquiry in America Today

David Michael Green
American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut

Missy Comley Beattie
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance

Michael Dickinson
Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana

Paul Krassner
Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark

Ron Jacobs
A Sports Nation of Millions

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z

 

 

 

 

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October 5, 2007

Can They Sink Any Lower?

The Democrats and Iran

By LEE SUSTAR

Voting to declare one of Iran's security forces a "terrorist organization." Authorizing yet more funding for Bush's war on Iraq. Declaring that U.S. troops might occupy Iraq until at least January 2013.

Sounds like the posturing of one of the whatshisnames running for the Republican presidential nomination. But these are the policies and political positions of the Democratic Congress and its leading presidential contenders.

At a debate on September 25, the top three Democratic presidential candidates--Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards--all refused to declare that they'd have pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of their first term, if elected.

"I think it would be irresponsible" to promise a pullout by January 2013, Obama said. "I cannot make that commitment," said Edwards. For her part, Clinton, typically, dodged a direct answer: "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."

Earlier that day, a majority of Senate Democrats supported a measure sponsored by Sens. John Kyl and Joe Lieberman declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization--and calling on the U.S. government to "combat, contain and roll back the violent activities" of Iran.

Thanks to the Democrats, the referendum--which at least some observers likened to an authorization for war--won by an overwhelming 76-22 margin. Clinton voted yes; Obama, in what is becoming a habit, skipped the roll call.

To top it off, tacked onto the measure at the last minute was a resolution expressing support for the partition of U.S.-occupied Iraq into ethnic and sectarian cantons--a ratification of the process of ethnic cleansing that has driven millions of Iraqis from their homes and claimed the lives of untold numbers.

Not quite one year after they took control of Congress, thanks to a huge antiwar vote in the 2006 congressional elections, the Democrats have not only failed utterly to stop the war on Iraq--they've caved in one confrontation after another with the White House. Party leaders who once claimed they would force the Bush White House to "change course" have come to resemble their loser of a presidential candidate in 2004, John Kerry.

When criticized by opponents of the war, the Democrats respond in almost a single voice that they don't have the votes to override a Bush veto--or even win a procedural voice to end debate in the Senate and come to an up-and-down vote on controversial legislation.

That's blatantly dishonest--as insider journalists Jim VandeHei and John Harris pointed out in the online Beltway gossip publication The Politico.

"There is a lot more Democrats could do to change, or at least challenge, the politics of the war in Washington, even if they do not have the numbers to impose new policies on President Bush," VandeHei and Harris wrote.

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could force a vote a day over Iraq. She could keep the House in session all night, over weekends and through planned vacations. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) could let filibusters run from now till Christmas rather than yield to pro-war Republicans...[A]ntiwar lawmakers can hardly say they have done everything possible to challenge the war and bring attention to their cause."

The Democratic contenders to replace Bush in 2009 aren't doing anything more. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson, the candidates all propose not to end the occupation of Iraq, but to downsize and repackage it to make it more militarily and politically sustainable for the long term.

As Financial Times commentator Gideon Rachman--in an article titled "Many contenders but just one voice"--wrote: "On a whole range of issues that remain very controversial even among close American allies in Europe and Asia, there is a broad American consensus [spanning] Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards on the Democratic side to Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson among the Republicans.

"All of the main candidates want to build up the American military rather than shrink it (Senator Clinton wants to add 80,000 troops to the Army). They all agree that the U.S. has the right to take pre-emptive military action in the 'war on terror.'...They are all strong supporters of Israel. And they are all talking tough on Iran.

"Even on Iraq--despite the bitter rhetoric--the mainstream Democratic and Republican positions are closer than either side would care to acknowledge. President George W. Bush announced last week that troops will start withdrawing later this year. The 'surge' is over. But none of the main Democratic candidates endorses the antiwar left's call for an immediate and complete pullout. So the debate comes down to an argument about the scale and pace of troop withdrawals."

The leaders of the Democrats are more and more openly converging with an imperialist consensus for U.S. policy in Iraq and beyond that the bipartisan Washington establishment can live with.

The Democrats' base, on the other hand, is as bitterly opposed to the war as ever. The frustration and disillusion with the party that claimed to be against the war has been expressed in small protests by figures like Cindy Sheehan, who have called the Democrats out. But the more general response has been demoralization.

* * *

THAT KIND of attitude among the party's most dedicated supporters could even put the party's 2008 prospects at risk--an election that has looked like a slam dunk for the Democrats, no matter who is nominated for president.

"So nothing can go wrong for the Democrats?" wrote New York Times columnist Frank Rich. "Of course it can." Rich points out that the Washington insiders who have already anointed Hillary Clinton as the next president "are the same political pros who predicted that scandal would force an early end to the Clinton presidency and that 'Mission Accomplished' augured victory in Iraq and long-lasting Republican rule."

In both 2000 and 2004, the Democrats had every opportunity to give voters a reason to be for their presidential candidate--and they failed miserably. The electoral strategy of positioning its candidates just barely to the left of the Republicans convinced at least some voters of what didn't seem possible--that George Bush was not only worth having a beer with, but he was more honest than John Kerry.

Now, after a brief period earlier this year in which the Democrats appeared willing to challenge the Bush White House, the old strategies of retreat, concession and surrender have returned.

This isn't merely because the Democrats are following a bad electoral strategy. The Democratic Party is the second party of American capitalism and is fundamentally committed to the interests and priorities of the U.S. ruling establishment.

When it comes to foreign policy, while there may be disagreements about tactics, the Republicans and Democrats agree on the aim of protecting U.S. power around the globe--as is increasingly clear from the debate in Washington these days.

But the anger among ordinary people that made itself felt in the 2006 elections--over the war specifically, and falling standards of livings for worker more generally--hasn't gone away.

Pressure from its base--as well as another disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan--may yet prod the Democrats back to the left. In any case, the hatred of Bush and the Republicans runs so deep that even the Democrats' prowar policies may not overly harm their election chances, even if the voters are well to the left of the candidates on Iraq and other issues.

What's certain right now, however, is that opponents of the war can't wait on a Democratic president taking office in 2009 to try to revive antiwar organizing. Those opposed to the war will have to rely on their own activism to force a change in U.S. policy--and the time to begin is now.

Lee Sustar writes for the Socialist Worker. He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net






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