PAGE 2
THE NEOCONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT
AND THE POLITICS OF FEAR & DIVISION
PAUL CONRAD
BY LESLIE MILLER
“W ar brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War 1,
they went around kicking daschunds on the grounds that
dachsunds were “German dogs. ” They did not, however,
go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE
someone impugns yo u r patriotism fo r opposing this war
(Iraq), turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what
loving your country really m eans."
WHAT GOES AROUND
-M O LLY IVINS
It has been said half of U.S. citizens eligible to vote
either fail to register or do not vote. Many are turned off by (he
two-party system, or feel their vote does not matter, so why
bother? They are looking for a leader to unite the people for
the common good, but all we get is someone like “dubya" who
thrives on hatred and dissension. Gore Vidal said words to the
effect that the American government is a rightwing organization
consisting of two elements: the Republican and Democratic
Parties. One might ask, with Democrats like these, who needs
Republicans anyway?
All these ambivalent and powerless feelings have their
repercussions. With a 50% voter turnout, it means that 26 out
of every 100 people could choose politicians and policies which
74% of the people as a whole (voter and non-voter alike) have
absolutely no control over. George W. Bush and his neocon
servative Congress are prime examples of this political illness.
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He acts as if he is the popular choice when what he has is a far
cry from mandate or approval. He has taken on the mantle of the
majority when in reality he represents a pitiful minority of narrow,
mean, corrupt, and hideously expensive corporate interests.
The majority suffers for the sake of his attitudes and policies.
The wealthiest nation in the world is the stingiest in regard to
its disadvantaged and persons of last means.
More domestic divisions give added power to these
arrogant pretenders. Anyone who dissents is branded a traitor
net
Peter and Janet Weidman
2935 Marine Drive, Suite C
Astoria, O R 97103
BY JACK DENNON
Fear-driven American people accepted the notion that
while we were busy building nuclear weapons for ourselves,
we were justified in slapping Iraq around, killing thousands of
innocent people who lived there, for the purpose, so we were
assured, of preventing Iraq from building nuclear weapons.
Never should we have allowed our government to sally forth
on such a premise.
Discussion of whether the premise was true is actually
irrelevant, for morally competent people should never have
been suckered in by such scare tactics. If possession of nuclear
weapons is a crime, then obviously we are the most guilty people
on the planet.
Dr. Gordon Prather’s “Clumsy Forgeries, Italian-Style," at
antiwar.com, contains a hint — alluding to soccer moms — of a
fundamental principle being ignored. He writes that, “if it is legiti
mate for me to be armed then it is legitimate for you to be armed.
It is quite irrelevant whether ’you’ refers to China, India, Israel,
Iran, Iraq, France, Germany, Russia, what-you-will. Because
comprehension of that fundamental principle evidently escaped
them, the soccer moms and soccer dads of America are now
implicated in the crime that is the invasion of Iraq."
He adds that in Rome, Caesar’s word was law. Presi
dent George W Bush evidently leads an American people now
sufficiently frightened or perhaps preoccupied enough to allow
him to mount that same platform.
A thousand years after Caesar disappeared from the
scene, King John put his seal on the Magna Carta. Since that
day there has existed in the western world legal precedent
holding no man above the law, be he sheriff, senator, president,
or king.
Yet when President Bush signed into law the Defense
Appropriations bill containing Senator John McCain's anti-torture
amendment, he issued a “signing statement" presumably reserv
ing to himself a right to bypass that very law. If the American
people allow him to get away with this calculated move, they
can say goodbye to legal protections with which they have been
blessed.
And if the American people stand idly by and allow
Bush to start yet another war, this time on Iran, they will have
initiated themselves into “Fourth Generation” warfare described
by William S Lind at lewrockwell com. The age of “American
exceptionalism," writes Lind, is drawing to a close; Americans
may learn that history's laws also apply to America.
We approach a precipice and the hour is late. Even now
the American people may have neither the will nor the means
to avert disaster. In a war with Iran we may relearn hard lessons
that the French people learned when they allowed their own
Bush, named Napoleon, to invade Russia; a vainglorious move
that squandered 400,000 French lives. This time, however, it
can be worse because Fourth Generation warfare is conducted
not on a foreign battlefield but rather on a local main street. We
have heard it said; we may now learn wha, it means: What goes
around comes around
Jack Dennon lives in Warrenton
*
and unworthy before the “god given" righteousness of the
neoconservative movement. Bush’s leadership does not seek
‘o bring us together, rather it seems to thrive on political and
religious hatred and misunderstanding If he can keep the
populace at each other's throats, they are easy to control.
It has been revealed recently that Bush ordered illegal
warrantless wiretaps under his own authority. A special court
was set up in response to the Nixon/Watergate fiasco wherein
the President illegally placed his enemies (real and imagined)
under surveillance. This was done specifically to control this type
of abuse of authority by the chief executive. Out of thousands of
secret warrants requested since the Federal Intelligence Surveil
lance Act (FISA) was created, only a handful have ever been
refused. This show’s Bush’s contempt for the system of checks
and balances that are supposed to keep one branch of govern
ment from running amok. I am calling for impeachment proceed
ings to begin immediately.
Senator John McCain presented a bill to Congress
forbidding inhumane treatment and torture of prisoners and
it passed so handily in the House of Representatives and the
Senate that it could not be vetoed by the President. Bush invited
McCain to the White House for a handshake and photo oppor
tunity. When he signed the bill he added to it that torture should
be allowed by executive fiat. Add contempt of Congress to con
tempt of court to further demand impeachment.
Somewhat less recently, declassified NSA (National
Security Agency) documents indicated that the Gulf of Tonkin
incident never happened and therefore the resolution of the
same name passed by Congress, giving President Lyndon B.
Johnson unlimited authority to invade Vietnam, was a fraud.
The military/industrial/congressional complex was determined
to invade, therefore a hoax was perpetrated on the citizens of
the United States to justify ten years of needless killing. Does
this sound familiar in regard to Bush II, WMD, and Iraq?
Many people under the age of 30 did not live through
the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Unlike the Bush administration's
skewed or nonexistent intelligence pertaining to the invasion of
Iraq, President John F. Kennedy went on national television to
show us aerial photographs of nuclear missile installations being
constructed by the Russians in Cuba. Never has the world come
so close to thermonuclear annihilation, yet the American people
stood behind Kennedy because his policy was based on fact
instead of poor intelligence and wishful thinking as was Bush’s
invasion.
It is needless tragedy to have our young men and
women killed in places like Vietnam or Iraq under false pretenses
and lies. Meanwhile Osama bin Laden remains at large and his
al Qaida organization is getting stronger. It is fair to say that
whereas the attack on Afghanistan may have been justified
because the Taliban, al Qaida and bin Laden were using it as
a staging area to plan the 9/11 atrocity, the invasion of Iraq was
a miscalculated and deadly wrong turn in the war on terrorism,
for which President Bush should be sternly held to account for,
at the loss of his office. He has become the major poster boy in
the recruitment of new terrorists worldwide. He has turned many
friends away from us.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Bush’s father went
to the United Nations and secured a resolution to lead a coalition
to remove the Iraqi forces from that beleaguered nation. Even
though there was pressure to go all the way to Baghdad, the
President decided the objective of the resolution was attained.
He stopped short of invading Iraq, and even though some people
say this was a mistake, I say he did the right thing, since the
objective of the UN resolution was accomplished and it showed
his respect for international law. I wish the same thing could be
said for his son. The younger Bush should be brought before the
World Court and tried as a war criminal after he is impeached in
Washington, D.C.
Leslie Miller lives in Sunset Beach, on the shore of
Neacoxie Lake. He is a frequent contributor to the NCTE.
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