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If there really were a Democratic party
By Rich Procter
Let’s fantasize for just a second and pretend — I know this
is stretch, but stay with me — that another political party existed
in the United States, besides the radical-right Corpro-Republicans. As
long as we’re visiting La-La-Land, let’s call this political
party the “Democrats.” If there really were such a thing as
the Democratic Party:
1) BUSH WOULD HAVE TO PAY A PRICE FOR BEING “FUND-RAISER IN CHIEF.”
Gosh, remember those dear dead days of the Clinton Administration, when
outraged Republicans would scream about Clinton’s “shakedowns”
of donors? Remember when “the Lincoln Bedroom was for sale”?
Now Bush is out there grabbing every corporate fat cat in America by the
ankles and shaking him till the fillings in his teeth fall out. Bush is
going to raise 200 MILLION DOLLARS from the folks he’s giving “no-bid”
contracts to, so they can (bwaa haa haa) “re-build” Iraq: from
the folks who are pillaging the environment: from the folks who are raking
in record profits and thumbing their nose at the poor, stupid taxpayers,
since their “corporate headquarters” is a mail box in the Bahamas.
If there really were a Democratic Party, this party would park itself
outside every Bush fundraiser and create a media event that would point
out two things Bush is the biggest fundraising whore in history, and whenever
he’s fundraising, HE’S NOT RUNNING THE COUNTRY. Isn’t the
President supposed to be, you know, working? Gee, seems like there’s
plenty on his plate to deal with Iraq, deficit, Middle East. Shouldn’t
he be in the White House? Ya think?
2) THE BUSHIES WOULD BE CRUCIFIED BY UNRELENTING, HIGHLY PUBLICIZED INVESTIGATIONS.
Just because we’ll never have our Kenneth Starr to turn Bush’s
life into a living hell doesn’t mean the Democrats (if they existed)
couldn’t investigate Bush, and give the press handy “electronic
press kits” with the results of these investigations. If the Democrats
really existed, they’d have “hit teams” out there creating
these investigative “press kits” on the Bush-Enron connection,
on the Bush-AWOL story, on the Bush-Deficit Scandal, and most importantly,
on the BUSH LIES THAT STAMPEDED US INTO WAR IN IRAQ, and needlessly killed
thousands of people.
The wingnuts, god bless them, never let a little thing like the truth
dim the volume of their Mighty Wurlitzer. If the Democrats existed, they
might learn from the Republicans KEEP THE PRESSURE ON. ATTACK EVERY NEWS
CYCLE. NEVER LET UP. And these Democrats would have the added advantage
of having the truth on their side!
3) 10,OOO BILLBOARDS ACROSS AMERICA WOULD SCREAM “BUSH LIED, SOLDIERS
DIED.”
Each billboard would carry a picture of one of our servicemen who perished
in this needless war. The Democrats shouldn’t sponsor this effort
themselves; they need one of those great Orwellian names the Republicans
love so much, like “American Patriots for Truth and Justice.”
4) ELECTRONIC BILLBOARDS IN EVERY MAJOR CITY WOULD BE TOTING UP “YOUR
GRANDCHILD’S SHARE OF THE BUSH DEFICIT.” We’d all see those
numbers ratcheting upward in real time. Local Democratic candidates would
have a great visual to stand in front of, for campaign commercials. And
the biggest billboard would have to be right in front of Tom DeLay’s
re-election headquarters.
5) SENATORS WOULD GLEEFULLY FILIBUSTER BUSH’S WINGNUT JUDGE CANDIDATES.
Instead of being defensive and answering questions about subverting “the
will of our President,” the Democrats would use these radical right
wing, way-out-of-the-mainstream nutcase Judges as a primary fund-raising
tool.
They would CELEBRATE filibustering them, and turn Orrin Hatch’s words
on him DAILY “BRING ME MODERATES!” At every press conference
and in every sound-bite, these (fantasy) Democrats would say, “No
more Scalia-Thomas true believers! No more racist troglodyte homophobic
megaphones for the radical right! We won’t be mugged again!”
6) EVERY VOTING MACHINE WOULD LEAVE A PAPER TRAIL.
How tough is this one?
We’re dealing with a group of deluded radical wingnuts (Ashcroft,
DeLay,
Santorum) who believe that their allegiance to the Church of Falwell
transcends their duty to the American Constitution. Do you doubt for one
second that these self-righteous yahoos are going to think twice about
hiring a 15-year-old hacker to jigger the software in new cyber-voting
machines, to make sure they win? Like they probably already did in 2002?
7) THE BUSHIES WOULD BE SCARED TO DEATH TO HOLD THEIR CONVENTION AT GROUND
ZERO IN SEPTEMBER 2004. Imagine this visual as Bush is being “anointed’
in the Republican Political Convention Television Spectacular, 2 MILLION
PROTESTERS are in the streets of New York, yelling “OVER OUR DEAD
BODIES.”
HOW DARE THEY POLITICIZE this tragedy? But they will, because there’s
no organized political party with the courage to stop them.
I’m always amazed when Republicans warn Democrats they’d “better
not” attack Bush, because he’s so popular. He’s popular,
because the Democrats don’t have the guts to attack him in that aggressive,
partisan, effective way PERFECTED by the radical-right wingnut division
of the Republican Party. If the Democrat Party existed, they’d learn
from these guerrilla tactics, and ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. Bush is sooooooooo
vulnerable on so many fronts, the Democrats could take him down easily.
If they existed.
Source: The Smirking Chimp
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The specter of Vietnam
By Howard Zinn
The war in Iraq is different in so many ways from the war waged by the
United States in Vietnam that we wonder why, like the telltale heart beating
behind the murderer’s wall in Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the drumbeat
of Vietnam can still be heard.
The Vietnam war lasted eight years, the Iraq war three weeks. In Vietnam
there were 58,000 US combat casualties, in Iraq a few hundred. Our enemy
in Vietnam was a popular national figure —Ho Chin Minh. Our enemy
in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was hated by most of his people. One war was
fought in jungles and mountains with a largely draftee army, the other
in a sandy desert with volunteer soldiers. The United States was defeated
in Vietnam. It was victorious in Iraq.
The elder President Bush in 1991, after the first war against Iraq, announced
proudly: “The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert
sands of the Arabian peninsula.”
But is the “Vietnam syndrome” really gone from the national
consciousness? Is there not a fundamental similarity —that in both
instances we see the most powerful country in the world sending its armies,
ships and planes halfway around the world to invade and bomb a small country
for reasons which become harder and harder to justify?
The justifications were created, in both situations, by lying to the American
public. Congress gave Lyndon Johnson the power to make war in Vietnam
after his administration announced that US ships, on “routine patrol”
had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Every element of this claim was
later shown to be false.
Similarly, the reason initially given for going to war in Iraq —that
Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” turns out
to be a fabrication. None have been found, either by a small army of UN
inspectors, or a large American army searching the entire country.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had told the nation: “We know
for a fact that there are weapons there.” Astonishingly, after the
war, Bush said on Polish TV, “We’ve found the weapons of mass
destruction.”
The “documents” Bush cited in his State of the Union address
to “prove” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction turned
out to be forged. The so-called “drones of death” turned out
to be model airplanes. What Colin Powell called “decontamination
trucks” were found to be fire trucks. What US leaders called “mobile
germ labs” were found by an official British inspection team to be
used for inflating artillery balloons.
Furthermore, the Bush administration deceived the American public into
believing, as a majority still do, that there was a connection between
Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida terrorists who planned the attack on 9/11.
Not an iota of evidence has been produced to support that.
Both a Communist Vietnam and an Iraq ruled by Saddam Hussein were presented
as imminent threats to American national security. There was no solid
basis for this fear in either case; indeed Iraq was a country devastated
by two wars and ten years of sanctions, but the claim was useful for an
administration bringing its people into a deadly war.
What was not talked about publicly at the time of the Vietnam War was
something said secretly in intra-governmental memoranda —that the
interest of the United States in Southeast Asia was not the establishment
of democracy, but the protection of access to the oil, tin, and rubber
of that region. In the Iraqi case, the obvious crucial role of oil in
US policy has been whisked out of sight, lest it reveal less than noble
motives in the drive to war.
In the Vietnam case, the truth gradually came through to the American
public, and the government was forced to bring the war to a halt. Today,
the question remains whether the American people will at some point see
behind the deceptions, and join in a great citizens movement to stop what
seems to be a relentless drive to war and empire, at the expense of human
rights here and abroad.
On the answer to this question hangs the future of the nation.
Howard Zinn is a historian and author of ‘A People’s History
of the United States’.
Source: TomPaine.com
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