An Alleged "Two Party System"

By Ed Ciaccio

 

12/08/07 "ICH"
--- -- The definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting a different result.

 

We must be clear about the following bitter realities: 

 

1. "Every 10 minutes an Iraqi civilian is injured or killed in a
war that George Bush says will not end until he leaves office.
Every 10 hours an American soldier is killed in a war that
George Bush says will not end until he leaves office. Every 10
days $2 billion is removed from the U.S. Treasury and placed in
the accounts of Halliburton, Blackwater and all other war
profiteers that are getting rich off the misery of Iraqis and
Americans by a government that will continue to remove those
amounts or more every ten days as long as George Bush is
President of the United States" (from Sally B. Davidson at
Veterans for Peace, NY). 

 

While Bush and Cheney remain in office, the occupations of Iraq
and Afghanistan will continue.  Bush's recent announcement
of his (probably illegal) "agreement" with the increasingly
unpopular, discredited, U.S.-puppet Maliki regime to continue
Iraq deployment of U.S. troops indefinitely shows Cheney/Bush's
absolute and total contempt for our Constitution and the wishes
of 3/4 of U.S. citizens.  As even Alan Greenspan admitted in his
recently-published book: the Iraq War was largely about oil. 
The U.S. power elite, Democratic as well as Republican, wants
those permanent U.S. bases in Iraq to protect access to, and
control of, "our" oil, especially as China, India, and Europe
become stronger economic and trade threats to U.S.
global hegemony.

 

2. Why do BOTH major parties agree that the U.S. "needs" access
to, and control of, this oil?  Because, implicitly, most
Americans believe that we "need" this oil to live the way we
have become accustomed to living in 2007.  The one, true
religion of all Americans is Consumerism, and we all practice it
daily via TV & radio, the Internet, and in our mega-cathedral of
consumption, the shopping mall.  We need to be honest with
ourselves and face up to how much our consumptive (pun intended)
U.S. lifestyle depends on maintaining our oil and other fossil
fuels addictions, and how complacent, if not comfortable, we are
about expecting that our political and military leaders will
continue to secure these foreign fossil fuels to support our
lavish "American Dream" lifestyle.  Then we need to ask
ourselves how much we are truly willing to cut back, and how we
can make this a part of our activism.

 

3. Therefore, based on points 1 and 2 above, most Congressional
Democrats implicitly support the continued occupations,
regardless of their rhetoric, which is belied by their failure
to stop funding the occupations, or to begin impeachment
hearings of Cheney and Bush.  Oil is also a major reason they
support military threats of "regime change" in Iran, along
with over-concern for Israel's security, regardless of Israel's
hundreds of nuclear weapons (Israel, unlike Iran, is NOT a
signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty), and general lack
of real concern about Israel's inhumane treatment of
Palestinians and its 40-year occupation of Gaza and the West
Bank.  The largely neocon-led "Israel Lobby" is a reality which
we must, sooner or later, confront, especially since it has so
much influence on most members of Congress.

 

4. The leading Democratic Presidential candidates, Clinton,
Obama, & Edwards, all said they will keep some (50,000?) U.S.
troops in Iraq through their first term (till 2013), so we can't
count on them to stop this wasteful madness anytime soon.  That
relatively smaller number of troops, dispersed among the (4?
14?) permanent bases, will be enough to protect "our" oil, but
small enough for Iraq to become as forgotten (except to the
troops and their families) as our 50-year occupation of South
Korea or Germany.  Only Richardson, Kucinich, & Gravel have said
they will begin to bring home the troops immediately, and they
have next to no chance at being the nominee. 

 

5. ALL the presidential candidates, and ALL members of Congress,
get contributions from the "Defense" (War) Industry, to a
greater or lesser extent.  Right now, for example, Hillary
Clinton leads ALL candidates, Democratic as well as Republican,
in the amount of such contributions. See Defense Industry
Embraces Democrats, Hillary By Far The Favorite

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/10/17/defense-industry-embraces_n_68927.html. 
(To find out what each industry contributes to which
politicians, including candidates, go to http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=B02)

 

6. The Senate could easily gather 41 votes to stop funding the
occupations, enough to filibuster it until Bush gives in, or
leaves office.  They need only 41 votes (or abstentions) to
sustain a filibuster against the next supplemental appropriation
for the war. That kills the legislation - completely veto proof
and then Bush must come to them with a bill they find
acceptable. So why don't the Dems filibuster? Democratic Senate
majority Leader Harry Reid has already taken that strategy "off
the table." (see numbers 1, 2, and 3 above again)

 

7. Even if the Democrats did stop funding everything but
withdrawal of our troops, Bush would illegally keep funding the
occupation.  See The Two Biggest Public Secrets, and How Bush
Just Signing Statemented Iraq By David Swanson http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/29076

 

8. So the only sure way to stop the occupation and force
Cheney/Bush to start withdrawing troops is to hold impeachment
hearings.  But Dennis Kucinich's HR 333 to impeach Cheney has
been buried in the House Judiciary Committee for a month now,
and will not be resurrected.  Why is the Democratic "leadership"
keeping impeachment "off the table," even after so much evidence
of high crimes?  Why did Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi take impeachment "off the table" as soon as she was sworn
in as Speaker in January, 2007? See the next point.

 

9. According to Constitutional scholar and Bush administration
critic Jonathan Turley,

a nationally recognized legal scholar who teaches at George
Washington University Law School,

interviewed on the Nov. 28, 2007 Randi Rhodes Show on Air
America Radio, the Democratic Congressional "leadership" has
made a 'pact" with Republicans NOT to impeach Cheney or Bush. 
See "I Can Promise You This: The Democrats Will Never..Pursue
the President Even Once He's Out of Office   http://journals.democraticunderground.com/orleans/136

 

10. So, if the Democrats will NOT filibuster to block occupation
funding, if their leading candidates all agree to keep U.S.
troops in Iraq; if Bush will write signing statements diverting
(actually, misappropriating) funds from other War Department
budget areas to keep his Iraq & Afghan occupations going; if
most Democrats will continue voting for bloated, Cold War-level
War Budgets regardless of our real security and domestic
needs; if Democrats and Republicans will not stand up for what
is left of our Constitution and Bill of Rights as Cheney/Bush
grab more and more executive power; if the "fix" is in so that
Democrats will never impeach Cheney/Bush, where does all this
leave us? 

 

It's about time we cleared our eyes of the fog of an alleged
"two party system" and truly, deep in our bones, realized that,
when it comes to war-funding and foreign policy, the U.S. has
only one War Party, with two branches (to paraphrase Gore
Vidal).  It's true that most Democrats are somewhat more
"liberal" than most Republicans when it comes to
"domestic" issues such as women's reproductive choice,
separation of church and state, affirmative action, teaching
evolution, helping the poor and homeless, health care, funding
education, improving our infrastructure, and caring for the
environment.  These differences are significant and should not
be minimized.

 

BUT, when "national security" and foreign policy (in reality,
expansion and maintenance of U.S. global hegemony and
empire) are the issues, and when the Democrats' record since
1947 is examined, there has always been little significant
difference between them and Republicans, which is what President
Eisenhower warned us about just before he left office.  Now,
consider that "military spending" (WAR-MAKING spending) takes up
well over 50% of the discretionary U.S. budget every year, if
one realistically and accurately includes the military spending
which is part of NASA, the Dept. of Energy (nuclear weapons),
Veterans' Affairs, and debt for all our past wars, those
"domestic programs" cited above stand little chance of EVER
being adequately enough funded to make a real difference.  See
Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm. 
As one of the most tragic examples, Lyndon Johnson's War on
Poverty would have succeeded if the Vietnam War hadn't sucked
funds away from it.

 

The last seven, very bitter but eye-opening years have revealed
a harsh truth which many knowledgeable, insightful Americans
had learned long ago (but which took me a long time to learn):
we cannot count on either party to fulfill their legal and moral
responsibilities to protect and defend our Constitution, nor to
truly work for social and economic justice and a world without
war or want or ecological devastation.  We can, unfortunately,
expect them to continue to feather their own nests while they
endlessly bloviate about how they are representing us.

 

Right now, we DO NOT have a government of, by, and for the
people of the United States.  We have a government of, by, and
for war criminals, by their enablers in the Congress, and by the
corporate media which profits from the status quo.  And it will
continue this way, as long as the current bipartisan power
structure, the Corporate-Military-Congressional-Media Complex (CMCM),
continues.

 

It's the 21st century.  It's time for anti-war, social justice,
environmental, human rights, workers' rights, feminist, gay
rights, minority (racial, cultural, religious) rights, and
immigrant rights groups and populations to join together to work
for a truly better future for all of us and our children and
grandchildren.  As Native Americans put it, we must live with
Seven Generations in mind.

 

Where and when we can work with Democrats or Republicans, we
should, of course.  But we must always be mindful that the
current corrupt system of legalized bribery and
influence-pedaling (lobbying) suits most members of Congress
very well and very comfortably.  Without massive, withering
pressure from all of us, they will never agree to necessary
reforms such as public-only campaign financing; the total end of
all corporate financing & contributions (in spite of at least
two infamous, shameful Supreme Court decisions, corporations are
NOT "persons", so they are NOT entitled to the right of free
speech, which the Supreme Court said equals money); free TV &
radio airtime (on OUR airwaves!) for candidates; popular
election of the President (elimination of the archaic, grossly
inequitable Electoral College); paper ballots with paper records
of votes for recounts; Election Day(s) as a paid but work-free
national holiday or even a two-day weekend; and ending ALL
organizational ("special interest) lobbying of politicians.  In
a true democracy, OUR representatives are responsible to US, THE
PEOPLE, not to corporations nor lobbies. 

 

Once we accept the fact that, paradoxically, we are on our own
together, that "We must be the change we wish to see in the
world," as Gandhi has taught us, that we must rely on each
other, not on monied interests such as political parties which
have everything to gain by keeping the status quo, we can begin
to develop strategies and tactics to make our country our own,
as it never truly has been before.  If marches, demonstrations,
vigils, street actions, and all the old 1960's tactics no longer
work (except to make us feel better in our self-reflective
bubbles), we must accept this, abandon them, and develop
effective new tactics for the 21st century, Internet, personal
media age.  To start with, self-styled "progressive"
organizations such as MoveOn and United for Peace and
Justice must abandon their too-cozy relationship with the
Democratic Party, and "move on" to become truly progressive,
truly non-partisan organizations. Better minds than mine must
devise the tactics needed for these transformations.

 

True progressives practice the precautionary principle: first,
do no harm.  They practice compassion by working to
implement policies which provide for people and people's rights,
not harm them or strip their rights.  They are not slaves to
ideology, unless compassion, the struggle to end inhumanity, is
an ideology.  Our resistance to inhumanity, to the violence of
neoliberal "free trade" economic policies, the violence of
neocon military policies (state terrorism), and the violence of
any and all nature-ravaging policies, must begin with us,
ourselves, then branch out through, and connect to, our
colleagues who share a vision of a better future. 

 

To start with, we must, as James Carroll reminded us, call
things by what they truly are, not by the Orwellian frames
handed us by the power elite to cloud our thinking and acting. 
We have a War Department, as it was called before World War II,
not a "defense" department.  Our huge, bloated Global War
Budget, which is larger than the war budgets of ALL other
countries combined, deprives all of us of needed services and
resources. Violence begets revenge and more violence, not
peace and security.  The "war on terror" is a lie.  Iraq is a
violent occupation by foreign troops (us) sent there for oil and
control; it is no longer a war. Nuclear weapons are genocidal,
not weapons of war.  "Free trade" globalization is theft of
resources and exploitation of powerless people for corporate
profit and control. 

 

As 2007 ends and Election Year 2008 begins, let's keep these
bitter, sobering, but ultimately liberating realizations
uppermost and begin to act on them.