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I think you will enjoy this new article from Virtual Citizens titled "The Empire and Inequality Report".

TO THE NIXON ZONE

Were Americans really supposed to sit in front of their tele-screens 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,” like Cheney and Vietnam.  Bush’s approval ratings are falling into the dreaded Nixon Zone – 28 percent according to a CBS poll.[1]

Sixty-nine percent of the American people think Bush “does not share their priorities.” Two-thirds are opposed to his plan to send over 20,000 more troops to pacify Baghdad. 

THE SLAM-DUNK CASE FOR IMPEACHMENT

Though pollsters and the MSM avoid the issue, a majority of American voters now support the impeachment and removal of The Decider(s).  The moral and legal argument for impeachment is strong – a slam-dunk.

Cheney-Bush violated the United Nations Charter by launching a "War of Aggression."  They used fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public.  They violated U.S. law and the Constitution by intercepting phone calls and emails of Americans without warrants. 

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 American citizens, 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 chemical and radioactive weapons, including white phosphorous and depleted uranium.

They violated federal law by targeting the public with disinformation, 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" declaring unlimited powers to the President, by promoting and signing legislation negating the protections of the Bill of Rights and right of Habeas Corpus.

They exhibited gross if not willful negligence in failing to assist people of New Orleans and the Gulf coast before and after Hurricane Katrina.  They installed industry hacks and fiction writers to positions of power who rejected the notion of global warming and the problems with CO2 emissions.

Though Pelosi disgraced herself, “impeachment is off the table,” we shall see significant congressional investigations into the administration’s conduct of the Iraq invasion and occupation.  Those investigations will require documents that Cheney-Bush will be loathe to relinquish, setting up a constitutional conflict that could conceivably lead  to impeachment and removal from office.[2]

BUSH, ADMIT YOUR MISTAKES SO WE CAN HELP YOU MOVE FORWARD WITH YOUR WELL-INTENTIONED ASSAULT ON IRAQ

The sniveling and power-worshiping of the elite-based MSM were on display in a recent commentary from University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone.  In a Chicago Tribune editorial published days after Bush announced his provocative escalation, Stone begged 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 then we must be clear-eyed and determined about the painful choices before us.  [First], 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 needs to hear Bush admit, before Stone can support the president’s “well-intentioned” effort to “give the Iraqi people a chance to create a democracy” is the erroneous belief that Iraq possessed threatening stocks of WMDs.[3]

Aside from the fact that Cheney-Bush knew that Iraq had no WMDs, no links with al-Qaeda, etc., the hyper-plutocrat and arch petro-imperialist Bush doesn’t admit to “mistakes” (bring ‘em on).  Bush is a messianic sociopath who believes that God told him to bomb Iraq.

WMD claims were not sincere – so said Paul Wolfowitz.  Remember intelligence was cooked – facts were fixed around the policy, as noted in the Downing Street Memo.

More relevant to today, the last thing Team Bush wants is actual independence and democracy in Iraq.  Iraqi freedom would create a “nightmare scenario” for U.S. policy makers.  A free Iraqi people would sell their oil in euro, just like Saddam did.

The occupation of Iraq is best understood as a crime – intentioned and successful.   The new Iraqi regime permits foreign corporations to own her petroleum and pay less in royalties than companies in Texas.  The crime diverted billions from America’s domestic needs, infrastructure, health care, transportation, housing, and handed it to “defense” firms Haliburton, Boeing, Raytheon and the like.

Stone should be ashamed of himself.

BOB HERBERT’S HOPE FOR A “SAVIOR FROM ON HIGH”

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert should also cry mea culpa.  Herbert denounced 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.”  The occupation of Iraq is “a war with no meaning and, it seems, no end.”[4] 

Herbert bleated, “There must be a leader somewhere who can shake the U.S. out of this tragic hypnotic state … in this tragic fest of death ...  If there were politicians here at home with some of the courage of the troops in the field we could begin saving lives … as the Bush White House continues to sacrifice them.  Three thousand [the US GI death tool in Iraq] and counting is enough”[5]

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 and revolt by the troops (Sir, No Sir).

I hope that Herbert doesn’t think that Barack Obama is “the leader” – the chosen one from the power elite he so pathetically craves.[6]  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.”[7]

Though it was good of Herbert to note 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.” 

“NO GOOD OPTIONS”?

Wisdom among the elite and deferment crowd claims that the question of “what to do about Iraq” is complex and involves agonizing choices, all bad. 

But how complex is it, if there are “no good options”?  A United States that cared about democracy, human rights, international law, and people would do some things about Iraq.  It would stop talking about the occupation as a “mistake” and define it as a CRIME. 

It would end its occupation.  It would dismantle all permanent U.S. military installations in Iraq.  It would abolish all laws/rules forcing the theft of Iraqi resources to multinational corporations.  It would convert what it spends on destroying Iraq into the provision of basic health, social, and infrastructural services and reconstruction in Iraq. 

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 tend to the needs of the victims.  It would work with international authorities to investigate, prosecute, try, and sentence guilty parties in accord with the Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and other international legal and policy instruments.   

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said with Vietnam, the first step is a unilateral cease fire.  You begin by calling off the assault.  You hand over your criminal “leadership.”  You acknowledge, apologize, and pay for what you have done – the hundreds of thousands you have killed and maimed, the water systems, food supplies and roads you have destroyed, the resources stolen, the exodus forced, etc.  You contribute to healing as best you can. 

Doing the left thing is in concurrence with elementary principles of civility.  It is also in line with U.S. public opinion.  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.”[8]

DOG THE WAG?

According to the New York Times, 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 counsel, Dan Barlet, claimed that “the power of the ideas 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”[9]

Too bad for Bush that his radically regressive and plutocratic domestic agenda (hardly “conservative”) is just as unpopular as his foreign policy with the U.S. citizenry.  The Bush agenda simply represents an extreme form of Empire abroad and Inequality (and repression) at home.  Among his many accomplishments, Bush has highlighted 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 legacy on his militarist crusade, Bush shined his light on what he calls “the decisive ideological struggle of our age.”  Predictably Bush placed emphasis on what he claims will be the terrible consequences of a precipitous  withdrawal from Iraq – “chaos” there (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 – Iran.  He surprised some commentators by displaying the great extent to which he is willing to defy public opinion by still trying to justify O.I.F. as part of his terrorist “war on terror” and by waving the bloody flag of 9/11.

How and why should any of us be surprised by the delusions and criminality of Bush?

***

“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 in Iowa City.  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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Sources

[1] see www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/ 22/opinion/polls/ main2384943.shtml.     

[2] see Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, “Start Preparing Now for the ‘Coming Cataclysmic Fight to the Death,” ZNet, January 7, 2007, at: www.zmag.org/content/showarticle. cfm?ItemID=11798).  

[3] Geoffrey R. Stone, “U.S. Needs to Hear Bush Admit Errors,” Chicago Tribune, 16 January 2007, sec. 1, p. 11 

[4-5] Herbert, “Another Thousand Lives,” New York Times, 4 January 2007, p. A23. 

[6] see Paul Street, “The Obama Illusion” (Z Magazine, February 2007 (forthcoming); see Street’s review of Obama’s 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, at: www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=11936]). 

[7] Tariq Ali and Anthony Arnove, “The Challenge to the Empire,” Socialist Worker Online, October 20, 2006.  

[8] See Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (New York, NY: Metropolitan, 2006), p.262.

[9] Jim Rutenberg and Robert Pear, “Bush, At Low Point in Polls. Will Push Domestic Agenda,” New York Times, 22 January 2007 A1.

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