The Empire and Inequality Report, Issue no. 8
by Paul L. Street; January 26, 2007
TO THE NIXON ZONE
zmag.org
Were Americans really expected to sit respectfully in front of their telescreens and watch the Liar-in-Chief’s State of the Empire Address? “The President is entering the hall…he’s shaking hands with some of his friends….He is walking up to the podium. He throws a wink over at the new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi...Vice President Dick Cheney appears to be munching on the leg of an Iraqi child.”
Most Americans didn’t feel the need to see The Worst President Ever Eric Foner, “He’s the Worst Ever,” Washington Post, 3 December 2006) smirk his way through yet another monument to bad-faith in public oratory. They “had other priorities” (as Cheney once said in explaining in why he didn’t do his imperial duty in Vietnam). Bush’s approval ratings are falling into the dreaded Nixon Zone – 28 percent according to the latest CBS poll (see www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/ 22/opinion/polls/ main2384943.shtml).
Sixty-nine percent of the American people think their nation’s (and the world’s) top “elected” official “does not share their priorities.” Two-thirds are opposed to his plan to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq – part of a scheme to broaden the administration’s war on the Middle East.
THE SLAM-DUNK CASE FOR IMPEACHMENT
It’s been hard to get pollsters to tackle the question comprehensively and honestly, but it seems likely that the majority of American voters would now support the impeachment and removal of The Decider Dick Cheney and George W. Bush too. For what it’s worth, the moral and legal argument for impeachment is very strong. Truth be told, it’s a slam-dunk case.
Cheney-Bush violated the United Nations Charter by launching an illegal "War of Aggression" against Iraq without cause. They used fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public. They violated U.S. law and the Constitution by wiretapping the phone calls and emails of Americans without proper warrants. They misused government funds to begin bombing without Congressional authorization and subjected U.S. military personnel and a much larger number of Iraqi civilians to unnecessary injuries and deaths.
They violated U.S. and international law by authorizing the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in dozens of deaths, and keeping prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross. They violated the Constitution by arbitrarily detaining Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans, without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel. They violated the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.
They violated the Constitution by using "signing statements" to defy hundreds of laws passed by Congress. They violated federal law by using paid propaganda and disinformation, selectively and misleadingly leaking classified information, and exposing the identity of a covert CIA operative for purposes of political retribution.
They subverted the Constitution by advancing a "Unitary Executive Theory" giving unlimited powers to the President, by obstructing efforts by Congress and the Courts to review and restrict Presidential actions, and by promoting and signing legislation negating the Bill of Rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. They exhibited gross negligence in failing to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina, in ignoring urgent warnings of an Al Qaeda attack prior to Sept. 11, 2001 and in hiding evidence on the connection between carbon emission and the dangerous escalation of global warming. There’s more.
It is despicable that leading congressional Democrats took impeachment “off the table” in advance of the new legislative session. But we are going to see significant congressional investigations into the administration’s conduct of the Iraq invasion and into the deceptive case (technically illegal) the White House made for occupying petroleum-rich Mesopotamia. Those investigations will require presidential documents that Cheney-Bush will be loathe to relinquish, setting up a constitutional conflict that could conceivably lead to impeachment and removal from office (see Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, “Start Preparing Now for the ‘Coming Cataclysmic Fight to the Death,’” ZNet [January 7, 2007], read at www.zmag.org/content/showarticle. cfm?ItemID=11798).
“PLEASE MR. PRESIDENT, SIR, ADMIT YOUR ‘MISTAKES’ SO WE CAN HELP YOU ‘MOVE FORWARD’ WITH YOUR ‘WELL-INTENTIONED’ ASSAULT ON IRAQ”
The sniveling, power-worshiping instincts of “liberal academia” were on horrifying display in a recent commentary penned by University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone. In a Chicago Tribune editorial published six days after Bush announced his provocative escalation, Stone begged boy king George to admit “grievous mistakes” that resulted in “a[n American] national disaster.”
“If the stakes are as high as the president and others have warned, and the collapse of Iraq would make the world a much more perilous place for Americans in the future,” Stone intoned, “then we must be clear-eyed and determined about the painful choices before us. But before we can get to that point, the president must clear the air and admit candidly that however well-intentioned he might have been, his mistakes – his misjudgments – created this national and international disaster. Only then can we hope to move forward as long as he is in the White House.”
Among the “mistakes” Stone so badly needs to hear Bush admit before he can support the president’s “well-intentioned” effort to “give the Iraqi people a chance to create a democracy” are the erroneous “belief” that Saddam’s Iraq possessed threatening stocks of “weapons of mass destruction” [WMD] (Geoffrey R. Stone, “U.S. Needs to Hear Bush Admit Errors,” Chicago Tribune, 16 January 2007, sec. 1, p. 11)
Where to begin in dismantling Stone’s pathetic effort to speak truth to – and (even more absurdly) get truth back from - power (always a waste of time)?
The hyper-plutocrat and arch petro-imperialist Bush doesn’t admit substantive “mistakes.” He is a full-blown messianic militarist and militant authoritarian who believes that he’s doing God’s will on earth. He laughs at editorials like this.
The WMD claims were not sincere. They were a ruse. They were based on intentionally “cooked” intelligence – “fixed in advance of the [war] policy” (in the famous words of the British intelligence chief in the Downing Street Memo) – and had nothing to do with “bad intelligence.”
Hastily rolled out once the absence of Iraqi WMD became overly obvious to the American citizenry, the administration’s proclaimed desire to promote “democracy” in Iraq is disingenuous cover for an illegal invasion enacted to deepen U.S. control of imperially critical energy resources. The last thing Team Bush wants to see in Iraq is actual national independence and democracy. The substantive attainment of those goals would create a “nightmare scenario” for U.S. foreign policy makers: liberation of the Iraqi people to deal however (and with whomever) they wish with all that strategically super-significant oil that happens to sit under their nominally sovereign soil.
The occupation of Iraq is more usefully and accurately understood as a grave international CRIME than a “mistake.” And the crime has led to some very real imperial and plutocratic accomplishments. It has produced the drafting of a Petroleum Law that will hand much of Iraq’s oil over to U.S. corporations. It has generated an ongoing profit windfall for U.S. “defense” firms (Haliburton, Boeing, Raytheon and the like) and diverted billions of dollars away from real and potential investment in domestic social programs that are sorely needed by non-affluent people in the savagely unequal and significantly poverty-stricken imperial homeland.
Iraq has already “collapsed” under the burden of American assault. The real “national disaster” is being experienced by the Iraqis – 700,000 of whom have died prematurely because of Washington’s criminal war. The U.S.-induced “collapse of Iraq” has “made the world a much more perilous place” FOR IRAQIS in the present, not just “the future.”
Stone should be ashamed of himself.
“THERE MUST BE A LEADER SOMEWHERE”: BOB HERBERT’S HOPE FOR A “SAVIOR FROM ON HIGH”
But so should liberal New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Herbert opened the New Year by denouncing the occupation of Iraq as “an exercise in futility and mind-boggling incompetence” that is being conducted “with no idea of where we might be headed – as if the U.S. had fallen into some kind of bizarrely destructive trance from which it is unable to awaken.” The occupation of Iraq is “a war with no meaning and, it seems, no end.”
“There must,” Herbert bleats, “be a leader somewhere who can shake the U.S. out of this tragic hypnotic state, who can see that it is beyond crazy to continue our involvement” in this “tragic fest of death...If there were politicians here at home with some of the courage of the troops in the field,” Herbert concluded, “we could begin saving lives rather than watching helplessly as the Bush White House continues to sacrifice them. Three thousand [the US GI death tool in Iraq] and counting is enough” (Herbert, “Another Thousand Lives,” New York Times, 4 January 2007, p. A23).
The petro-imperialist ambitions – partly fulfilled already – behind the occupation go completely unnoticed by Herbert. So does the best hope for a meaningful end to “our involvement:” mass popular resistance of the sort that helped bring an end to the Vietnam War (another criminal and imperial assault that liberal “elites” still insist on calling “a [strategic] mistake”).
But this is not surprising to those who follow Herbert closely. In numerous past columns and in a revealing interview at the Kennedy Library in May of 2005 (he told the audience that “once you launch a war, you have to win the war”), Herbert has pined for the lost “leadership” of such criminal, arch-militarist executives as the mendacious Cold War originator Harry (Hiroshima) Truman and Vietnam War initiator and “missile gap” liar John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Admitting that he is “just a big believer in leadership” ala “Jack and Bobby [Kennedy],” Herbert fails to see that social and democratic progress is made from the bottom up by ordinary citizens and activists acting collectively against the interrelated imperatives of Empire and Inequality (See Paul Street, “What About Bob? Reflections on History, Progress, and the Illusions of a Times Liberal,” ZNet [November 26, 2006], read at www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =11486). It is peoples’ movements, not the “leadership” of national “elites” (liberal or otherwise) that the world and the U.S, needs to see reinvented in the U.S. today. As Anthony Arnove noted last fall,” we can’t look for saviors on high to get us out of this mess...We have to do it ourselves” (Tariq Ali and Anthony Arnove, “The Challenge to the Empire,” Socialist Worker Online, October 20, 2006).
Some of the required “courage” will be on display during a massive march against the war scheduled for January 27th in Washington D.C. (for details see www. unitedforpeace.org or call 212-868-5545). People participating in that and other antiwar demonstrations won’t be waiting “helplessly” for Bush to admit his “mistakes” (Stone) and change his course. They aren’t searching for “a leader somewhere” to fix it all from the top down. They’ll be demanding peace, justice and democracy from the bottom up.
(I sure hope Herbert doesn’t think that Barack Obama is “the leader” – the chosen one from the power elite he so pathetically craves: see my forthcoming article “The Obama Illusion” (Z Magazine, February 2007) and my recent review of Obama’s ponderous, power-worshipping campaign book (“The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” [New York: Crown, 2006]) in “Liberal Myopia and Obama’s Audacious Deference to Power,” Z Net Magazine [January 24, 2007, read at www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=11936]).
It was good of Herbert to note (all-too briefly and in passing) that “ordinary Iraqis” are “paying the most grievous price of all” for Bush’s war. It would be nice if Herbert would some day give 700,000 dead Iraqis at least equal victim status with 3,000 dead U.S. GIs when calculating the costs of Bush’s supposedly aimless “death fest.”
THE IMPERIAL LEXICON
The marvelous left intellectual Edward S. Herman reminds us that U.S. imperialism relies on “Orwellian language” as well as “guns, tanks, missiles, and bombs.” The distortion of words and phrases to put the use of state violence “in a good light” is “an essential tool of [U.S.] state managers” seeking to subvert democracy and kill hope at home and abroad. Here are some of my contributions, specifically tailored for the ongoing assault on Iraq, to the “Doublespeak Dictionary” of American “State Terrorism” (Herman, “Doublespeak,” Z Magazine [December 2006], pp. 24-26):
“Terrorism,” Literal Definition: the use of violence and/or the threat of violence to achieve political ends. Imperial/Orwellian/Iraq War Usage: refers to violent and officially inexplicable resistance to an inherently benevolent U.S. occupation. Does NOT refer to the American Empire’s use of massive state violence (and the threat thereof) to sustain an illegal, mass-murderous and imperialist occupation:
“Democracy,” Literal Definition: majority rule based on the principles of one-person, one vote and equal policy-making influence for all people regardless of class, race or other social distinctions. Imperial Usage: the basic goal and purpose behind all U.S. policies and actions, no matter how authoritarian and regressive those policies and actions may be. Does NOT accurately describe any aspect of the struggle of Iraqi people to end the illegal occupation of their country – an invasion opposed by their own popular majority and even by the majority inside the occupier state.
“Freedom,” Literal Definition: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice of action; liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another: Independence; a political right; franchise, privilege.” Imperial Usage: the basic goal and purpose behind all U.S. policies and actions, regardless of actual impact on assaulted, restricted, oppressed and subordinated others. Does NOT apply to the motivation and aim of people and nations opposing U.S. domination. Anyone who resists American imperial dominance is an enemy of “freedom” (sometimes called “liberty”) and its twin U.S. goal “democracy.”
“Sacrifice,” Literal Definition: to suffer loss of, give up, renounce, injure or destroy, especially for an ideal, belief, or end. Imperial/Iraq War Usage: the fleeting emotional discomfort that some rich Americans may feel when they learn that a large number of mostly working-class Americans have died in the enforcement of an illegal invasion designed to increase the wealth of the privileged few (without requiring that the sons and daughters of the wealthy “serve” on the fields of imperial conquest). Does NOT refer to people who die resisting American assault and resource-theft. Does NOT require any cessation in the granting of massive tax cuts to the already super-opulent few in the industrialized world’s most unequal and wealth-top-heavy state (the U.S.).
“Support the [U.S.] Troops,” Literal Definition: to promote the interests or cause of the [U.S.] troops; to uphold or defend those troops as valid or right; to argue or vote for the troops; to COMFORT the troops. Imperial/Iraq War Usage: the sending of heavily brainwashed, mostly young and disproportionately working-class Americans into a distant maelstrom to engage in the perilous work of subjugating an understandably outraged and heavily armed populace. Does NOT refer to efforts to end the illegal occupation and bring the U.S. troops out of harm’s way in accord with the GI’s wishes.
“Surge,” Literal Definition: a swelling, rolling or sweeping forward like that of a wave or a series of waves…a transient sudden rise of current in an electrical circuit. Imperial Usage: a dangerous escalation and regional broadening of a provocative and illegitimate invasion.
“Interfere,” Literal Definition: to interpose in a way that hinders or impedes; to enter into or take part in the concerns of others. Imperial Usage: refers to any and all efforts to hinder or impede a U.S. occupation (i.e., O.I.F.). Does NOT refer to U.S. efforts to hinder or impede the independence and autonomous action of other nations (e.g. Iraq) or to widespread U.S. involvement in the internal affairs of other states.
“International Community,” Imperial Usage: the United States. Does NOT refer to the actual international community.
“Free Market Economy,” literal translation: an economic market operating by free competition. Imperial usage: the heavily state-subsidized, government-protected and corporate-state-dominated U.S. economy; the basic inspiration behind U.S. efforts to use expensive, taxpayer-financed state violence, bribery and interference to increase U.S. corporate and state control of global markets and resources.
“Good intentions,” Imperial Usage: the basic benevolent motivation behind U.S. policy. Does NOT refer to the motivation behind those who resist U.S. policy.
“Victim,” Literal Translation: one that is acted on and adversely affected by a force or agents; one that is subjected to oppression, hardship, or mistreatment; one that is tricked or duped. Imperial Usage: refers mainly to Americans killed by foreign “terrorists” on U.S. soil (i.e. the 9/11 dead) or overseas. Does NOT generally refer to innocent Arab civilians killed by inherently “liberating” U.S., Israeli or British bombs, missiles, and bullets. Does not refer to American citizens and troops who were tricked or duped by the Bush administration and dominant U.S. media into supporting (and even enlisting in) the war on Iraq.
“Failed States" [a recent Imperial Invention]: foreign states “that generally cannot provide security for their citizens or their territory, and are corrupt and illegitimate in the eyes of their civilians and tend to give rise to terrorists.” Imperial Usage: refers to states targeted for U.S. intervention and sanction. Does NOT refer to the U.S. even though the U.S. state fails to provide adequate security to its citizens, is corrupt and illegitimate in the eyes of its citizens and has given rise to a massive global state-terrorist operation called the American Empire, correctly identified by Martin Luther King, Jr., as “the leading purveyor of violence in the world.”
“Foreign Fighters,” Imperial/Iraq War Translation: people from outside a U.S. occupied nation who assist resistance to U.S. invasion of that nation. Does NOT refer to U.S. forces engaged in the foreign invasion and occupation of that nation.
To be continued (send suggestions to me at the e-mail address given below)...
“NO GOOD OPTIONS”?
The conventional American “mainstream” wisdom claims that the question of “what to do about Iraq” is enormously complex and involves agonizing choices, all of which are dreadful. “There are no good options.” How many times have we heard that phrase in recent months?
But how complex is it all really and are there really “no good options”? Here is what a civilized United States – a U.S. that actually cared about democracy, human rights, international law, and the people of the Middle East and the world – would “do about Iraq.” It would stop talking about the occupation of Iraq as a “mistake” and start speaking accurately and honestly about O.I.F as a CRIME: a great international transgression for which the U.S. must make reparations and be held legally and morally accountable. It would end its military invasion and occupation and work with international agencies and other states (within and beyond the region) to guarantee Iraqi security with an international peacekeeping force. It would dismantle all permanent U.S. military installations in Iraq. It would abolish all laws/rules opening the Iraqi economy to foreign and predominantly U.S multinational corporate exploitation. It would renounce all U.S. designs on Iraqi petroleum reserves. It would convert a massive portion of the sum it currently spends on militarily attacking Iraq to the provision of basic health, social, and infrastructural services and reconstruction in Iraq. It would work with Iraqis and international agencies to assist and enable the holding of genuinely free and fair Iraqi elections devoid of U.S. pressure.
It would pay massive reparations for the staggering damage it has inflicted on Iraq over many years and indeed decades, not just during the current open military assault. In determining the nature and scope of these reparations, it would inquire into and then responsibly tend to the needs of the victims. It would work with international authorities to investigate, prosecute, try, and sentence the top guilty parties behind the invasion in accord with the well-known Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and numerous national and other international legal and policy instruments.
Those in my opinion are reasonable alternatives. You start by ceasing and desisting from illegal aggression. You begin by calling off the assault. You move to meeting others needs and accepting responsibility. You offer your criminal “leadership” up for accountability. You acknowledge, apologize, and pay for what you have done – the hundreds of thousands you have killed and maimed, the water systems and food supplies and roads you have destroyed and polluted, the resources and opportunities you have stolen, the exodus you have forced, etc.. You contribute to healing as best you can. You ask for help from international others and empower those others in proper accord.
Doing the right (the left) thing along these lines is in obvious concurrence with elementary principles of civilized internationalism. It is also very much in lines with reputable surveys of U.S. public opinion on foreign policy. Under current U.S. political, institutional and ideological conditions, however, it is nearly impossible to have a reasonable and relevant public conversation about these basic alternatives.
As Noam Chomsky observes, radicals “commonly hear that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: ‘they present solutions and I don’t like them.’” (See Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy [New York, NY: Metropolitan, 2006], p.262).
DOG THE WAG?
According to the New York Times yesterday morning, Bush’s “State of the Union” Address was going to seek to “re-energize his domestic agenda by striking a bipartisan and ambitious tone as he faces further isolation on his Iraq policy.” Chief White House counselor Dan Barlet claimed that “the power of the ideas [to be presented in the address would] require people to take notice and take seriously important domestic initiatives. There will be key signals to the American people that despite disagreements over the war, other work can be done” (Jim Rutenberg and Robert Pear, “Bush, At Low Point in Polls. Will Push Domestic Agenda,” New York Times, 22 January 2007 A1).
Maybe, it seemed, the Bushies were going to try to turn “wag the dog” – the timeworn Executive Branch strategy of diverting the populace and Congress from unpleasant domestic issues with urgent foreign policy matters – on its head.
Too bad for Bush that his radically regressive and plutocratic domestic agenda (hardly “conservative” in any meaningful dictionary sense) is just as unpopular as his foreign policy with the U.S. citizenry.
This makes sense. The Bush agenda simply represents an extreme form of the intimate historical connection between Empire abroad and Inequality (and repression) at home in the U.S. Among his many unintended accomplishments, Bush has highlighted like few presidents before him the relationship, inseparable and mutually reinforcing, between savage U.S. domestic inequality and “homeland” repression, one the one hand, and American imperialism, on the other.
Bush did not in fact let domestic issues eclipse foreign policy in his address. Having hinged his crippled legacy on his militarist crusade in the Middle East (an imperial record that has fulfilled Osama bin-Laden’s wildest dreams), he naturally shined his brightest spotlight on what he continues to call “the decisive ideological struggle of our age” – his war on the Middle East. He placed predictable emphasis on what he claims will be the terrible consequences of a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq – “chaos” in that nation (imagine!) and across the Middle East, with “terrorists” and other “extremists” getting a hold of the region’s oil wealth. He threw in four or five shots at his next target (he hopes) – Iran. He surprised some commentators by displaying the great extent to which he is willing to defy public opinion by still (after everything!) trying to justify O.I.F. as part of his (terrorist) “war on terror” and by waving the bloody flag of 9/11.
“GOLD-PLATED INDIFFERENCE”
For what it’s worth, the big domestic policy “idea” proposed in Bush’s address was to make health insurance premiums tax deductible. Bush wants the federal government to “treat health insurance more like home ownership.” As he explained in his latest Saturday radio address, “the current tax code encourages home ownership by allowing you to deduct the interest on your mortgage... We can reform the tax code, so that it provides a similar incentive for you to buy health insurance.”
As the smart liberal economist Paul Krugman explains in a column titled “Gold-Plated Indifference,” this proposal shows no understanding whatsoever of what it’s like to be one of the more than 45 millions Americans who lack health coverage. “Going without health insurance,” Krugman notes, “isn’t like deciding to rent an apartment instead of buying a house. It’s a terrifying experience... The uninsured don’t need an ‘incentive’ to buy insurance; they need something that makes getting insurance possible.” Furthermore, “most people without health insurance have low incomes, and just can’t afford the premiums. And making premiums tax-deductible is almost worthless to workers whose income puts them in a low tax bracket. Of those uninsured who aren’t low-income, many can’t get coverage because of pre-existing conditions... Again, tax deductions won’t solve their problem” (Krugman, “Gold-Plated Indifference,” New York Times, 22 January 2007).
But just as its naïve to think that Bush seeks democracy in Iraq, it would be flatly foolish to think that Bush has any interest in solving poor peoples’ problems. He was only half-joking when he referred in 1999 to the nation’s super-wealthy few as “my base.”
“The Empire and Inequality Report” is a bi-weekly news and commentary letter produced by veteran radical historian, journalist, and activist Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com), a noted anti-centrist political commentator located in Iowa City. U.S. Street is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), and Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, and Policy in Chicago (Chicago, 2005). Street’s next book is Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (New York, 2007).
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