Impeach Bush Vol. 3 - War Profiteers and Democrat Pussies

Music by Eminem, Song: Business. WA... Music by Eminem, Song: Business. WARNING - This video contains graphic war photos, expletive language, and violent content which some may find gruesome and offensive.

Condoleeza Rice's transformational diplomacy doctrine is nothing more than an excuse for us to go to war with every country on the planet and pour billions of dollars into the pockets of the financiers that put Bush into office: specifically, the war profiteers such as Halliburton and Blackwater and the major oil companies who want to take the oil from the country once its invaded. The Bush administration personally has no financial incentive whatsoever to impose any diplomatic doctrines.

Sending our soldiers to fight an engineered war for oil company and defense contractors to make money is pure treason, abuse of power, crime against humanity and is rock solid ground for impeachment. It is the reason that the impeachment process was put into place.

Meanwhile, the Democrats in office refuse to impeach Bush and Cheney because Nancy Pelosi won't put it on the table.

April 09, 2007

The imperial overreach

H.D.S. GREENWAY

By H.D.S. Greenway | May 8, 2007

LISTENING TO President Bush's petulant tones lambasting Congress for questioning his war, I had a feeling that what we are seeing in Washington has been going on for close to a thousand years in the political tradition in which America was formed. Rulers reach for more and more power until their parliaments and barons think things have gone far enough and begin clipping regal wings.

This has not been a good spring for the president. Democrats, and even some Republicans, are beginning to think about choking off the war in Iraq; the Supreme Court didn't like his closing down environmental regulations; his Justice Department is under scrutiny as never before for conducting politically motivated purges. The dark prince, Vice President Dick Cheney, mutters repeatedly that the president is all powerful, and that Congress should have little to say about war.

--MORE--

September Could Be Key Deadline in War

Lawmakers Call for Proof of Progress by Fall

By Jonathan Weisman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 8, 2007; A01

Congressional leaders from both political parties are giving President Bush a matter of months to prove that the Iraq war effort has turned a corner, with September looking increasingly like a decisive deadline.

In that month, political pressures in Washington will dovetail with the military timeline in Baghdad. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, has said that by then he will have a handle on whether the current troop increase is having any impact on political reconciliation between Iraq's warring factions. And fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1, will almost certainly begin with Congress placing tough new strings on war funding.

"Many of my Republican colleagues have been promised they will get a straight story on the surge by September," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). "I won't be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq at that point. That is very clear to me."

"September is the key," said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds defense. "If we don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, September is going to be a very bleak month for this administration."

The fixation with September is all the more striking because funding bills that cleared the House and Senate this spring were looking well into 2008 to mandate significant changes. The Senate-passed bill set March 2008 as a goal for withdrawing U.S. combat troops, while the House envisioned combat troops being withdrawn by the end of August 2008. In the ensuing weeks, however, news from Iraq has shown little improvement, while public opinion has continued to harden against the war.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who has taken a hard line in Bush's favor, said Sunday, "By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B."

Democrats were crowing yesterday over what they saw as the clearest signs yet that Republican unity behind the president is beginning to crack. And House Democrats are preparing to up the ante with new legislation that would demand a turnaround in the war by the end of July.

House Democratic leaders are coming together around legislation that would fund the war through September but would withhold more than half of those funds until July, when Bush would have to report on the Iraqi government's progress toward benchmarks such as quelling sectarian violence, disarming militias and sharing oil revenue equitably. Congress would then have to vote in late July to release the remaining funds.

The bill, which could come to a House vote as early as Friday, faces significant obstacles in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) wants to allow the House debate to unfold, in part to see whether the plan will appeal to Republicans.

Some House Democratic leaders are worried that another showdown vote this summer will keep the party's domestic agenda off track. And White House spokesman Tony Snow pronounced the bill "not helpful."

But the new proposal's momentum in the House underscores just how quickly time may be running out on a war that is hemorrhaging political support.

"There were always two debates in the debate over timelines to end the war," said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.). "George W. Bush is hellbent on January 20, 2009, when he walks out of the door, leaving a box stamped 'Iraq' for the next president. The Republicans are hellbent on not going through the next election with Iraq tied to their ankles. All Boehner said publicly was what Republicans have been saying privately for months."

Democrats are ready to rush that process. The new House proposal would immediately provide about $43 billion of the $95.5 billion the administration says it needs to keep the war going through Sept. 30. That infusion would come with language establishing benchmarks of success for the Iraqi government, and it is likely to include tougher standards for resting, training and equipping troops. Binding timelines for troop withdrawals would be dropped to try to win Republican support and avoid a second veto.

The remaining $52.5 billion in the bill would be contingent on a second vote in late July, after the administration's progress report.

Democrats say that is a reasonable time frame for the first assessment of Bush's troop increase, since the last of the additional troops being sent to Iraq will arrive this month.

But Petraeus has said repeatedly that it will be at least another month or two after the troops are in place before it will be possible to assess the impact of those reinforcements and, just as important, of the new U.S. approach that is moving combat troops off big, isolated bases and into dozens of smaller combat outposts across Baghdad. When he visited Washington last month, Petraeus told members of Congress that he will be ready to assess his progress by September.

Not even the most optimistic military officials think Baghdad will be quiet by then, but they think they might be able to discern long-term trends.

Another major test will come in the form of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which under Islam's lunar calendar will begin this year around Sept. 12. In every one of the four years of the war, Ramadan has brought a spike in violence. If the Petraeus approach is not able to break that pattern, it will be difficult for many members of Congress to continue to argue that progress is being made.

September is also the last month of the fiscal year in Washington. Without tangible signs of progress, Congress is likely to demand tougher conditions on war funding for fiscal 2008.

All those factors point to this fall as the deadline.

"There is a sense that by September, you've got to see real action on the part of Iraqis," said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). "I think everybody knows that, I really do."

"I think a lot of us feel that way," agreed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

Staff writer Shailagh Murray contributed to this report.

Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them: A Fair and Balance Look at the Dems and War Funding

May 2, 2007

Yesterday President Bush vetoed the bill Congress sent to him to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because it included deadlines for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, calling it "a prescription for chaos and confusion." Apparently, the authority to create chaos and confusion in Iraq belongs to Bush and Bush alone.

Now the Democrats face a stark choice: to fund, or not to fund the war? That is the question.

And we already have the answer. House Democratic Majority leader Steny Hoyer has said in response to the veto "We are going to fund the troops, we are not going to leave our troops in harm's way without the resources that they need." In all likelihood, Democrats in Congress will pass a bill funding the bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan that requires Bush to certify that the Iraqi government is meeting "benchmarks" to warrant the continuation of the war as well as political support for and financial aid to the Iraqi government. How anyone can spin this as a "course correction" in Iraq is beyond me - Bus has been touting "progress" in Iraq ever since his "Mission Accomplished" speech on May 1, 2003. How the U.S. is losing despite uninterrupted progress in Iraq also remains to be explained.

Anti-war sentiment propelled the Democrats into power last November. Since then they have done zero, zip, zilch, nada to end the war. To cover their asses, Democrats have come up with pathetic excuses as to why they haven't lifted a finger to stop Bush. Basically their argument is: "we can't cut off funding for the war because that would mean depriving the troops of equipment, food, water, and weapons they need to defend themselves. President Bush, the Commander-in-Chief, can veto our bills and there aren't enough Republicans to help us override that veto." The not-so-subtle-subtext is: vote for us in '08. Only when a Democrat is in the White House will we have the power to end the war.

That's a lie. They have the power to stop the slaughter right now. It only takes one Senator to filibuster and kill the war funding bill in the Senate. All it would take is one well-timed, long, boring, verbose speech by a Senator to save the lives of literally thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Senators John Kerry and Joe Biden love to give those kinds of speeches to mostly-empty Senate seats and C-SPAN cameras, so why don't they do it when it counts? Hillary Clinton promises she'll end the war in Iraq if she's elected, but why wait until January of 2009? What about liberal wet-dream Barack Obama? He wants voters to believe that he's different, that he's an outsider to the dirty and corrupt business of Washington politics, why not prove it? Senator Reid says "this war is lost" - so why doesn't he move to end it?

This reminds me of the scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 when members of the Congressional Black Caucus begged a Senator, any Senator, to sign onto their objections regarding the massive disenfranchisement of black voters in Flordia where Bush Jr's bro was governor. Doing so would have prevented Bush and his gang of incompetent neo-con nut-jobs from taking office in the first place. Not one Democratic Senator gave a damn about black voters enough to sign on, even though it would have put a Democrat into office for the next four years. After they were unable to get the support of a John Kerry, a John Edwards, or a single one of their colleagues, Al Gore (who as Vice President also served as the President of the Senate) out-shouted, overruled, and shut down Caucus speakers.

Since taking Congress, the Democrats have passed a non-binding resolution against Bush's surge. Then they voted unanimously for the men Bush picked to implement the surge they voted to oppose, Gen. Petraeus who is the top general in Iraq and Admiral Fallon who heads all U.S. forces in the Middle East. This was "I voted against it before I voted for it" squared.

After that, they passed a war funding bill they knew Bush would veto that had dates for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq. (60,000 out of 140,000 troops in Iraq are combat troops, meaning 80,000 troops would still be in Iraq even if Bush signed the bill into law.)

All of this noise about non-binding resolutions and withdrawal schemes attached to war spending bills is just posturing for the 2008 race for the White House. They want to look like they are doing everything they can to get out of the hole while handing Bush all the shovels he needs to dig deeper. They have a big incentive to keep the disaster in Iraq going until November of next year so that they can repeat their victory of last year. As one Democratic strategist explained to a journalist from the New York Review of Books: "We don't want to own this war. It's Bush's war, and we want him to keep owning it."

It gets worse. After a few minutes of research on Google, I found that the Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committe, David Obey of Wisconsin, included funding for the construction of permanent bases in Iraq in the war funding bill that Bush just vetoed. This is the same guy that called an anti-war military mom a "liberal idiot" for wanting to cut off funding for the war in Iraq on YouTube. His idiotic response to the demand of "liberal idiots" to cut off funding for the war was "we don't have the votes to get it through." Obey didn't have the votes to pass the bill that funded the wars and the construction of bases that Bush just vetoed either, but it didn't stop him from trying.

Of course, Obey's bill doesn't refer to the four enormous military installations that are being built in Iraq as "permanent bases." Over the course of the last few years, they've morphed from permanent bases, to enduring bases, to contingency operating bases. Contingency has a very temporary sound to it - the contingency being that if Iraq unexpectedly runs out of oil, they'll close those bases and the tens of thousands of troops stationed in them can come home.

Both sides of the aisle in Washington are angling to stay in Iraq permanently in one form or another. The difference is that the Republicans are open about it, while the Democrats are trying hard to fool us into thinking they want out of Iraq ASAP.

Fortunately, people are taking action to hold the Democrats to their (false) promises. Student activists in the Campus Antiwar Network held a sit-in at Wisconsin Democratic Senator Herb Kohl's office demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, full funding for veterans health care, reparations to the Iraqi people, banning the use of depleted uranium munitions, and money for jobs and education and not occupation. Militant activism by grassroots activists like this is the only hope for ending this war.

Mike Gravel on CNN Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer

2007-04-30

Edgy Dems Snarl at Their Antiwar Base

May 1, 2007

Fear and Vitriol in the Halls of Congress

By JOHN V. WALSH

Democrats in Congress are growing increasingly hostile toward their antiwar base. David Obey has provided the most notorious example upon a chance encounter with Marine Mom, Tina Richards, in a Congressional hallway. (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS4wHMCc57k). Richards had tried to talk with Obey, her Congressman, for a long time, but he had successfully eluded her until this day. Now she and other antiwar activists were lobbying in the Capitol in an attempt to get "our" Senators and Representatives to cut off funding for the war. Not surprisingly, Obey gave the standard response when Richards asked why he continues to fund the war. "We don't have the votes," he shouted at her. To which the answer is of course: "Congressman, we only want your one vote, and your help in getting the rest. You cannot win if you do not fight." Talk to any Dem politician and he or she will tell that they on your side but the others are the problem. So the votes are not there collectively, but individually everyone is on the side of peace. That is a very strange calculus.

The odious aspect of the encounter was that Obey set about attacking the Marine Mom and the handful of Democrats who, unlike him, refused to vote supplemental funding for the war. "Idiot liberals," was the first outburst, followed by: "The liberal groups are jumping around without knowing what the hell is in the [supplemental funding] bill"; "You're smoking something illegal"; and "If you guys don't stop screwing it up," we will end the war. Finally an aide pulled him away and he waddled through a door and slammed it shut in Richards face. What is wrong here? Why would he treat this worried mother in such a shabby way?

It is not just Obey; he just happened to get caught on camera. When we went to visit Senator Kerry's aide here in MA we got the same response. We were just "a bunch of liberals." Senator Kerry, the aide said petulantly, is trying to do "some good in the world", not just trying to "feel good" like "you liberals." And again from my "liberal" Congressman Capuano, the same thing. Capuano assured us that he was trying to do some real good in the world unlike "the liberals" who voted against the supplemental. Again the anger at the "liberal" groups and the ten Congresspeople (two of them Republicans) who voted against the supplemental out of opposition to the war was ferocious. Why is this?

I submit that these Democrats are running scared. They know that their antiwar base is crucial to winning their next election. Without it they might lose in 2008. In strongly antiwar districts like Capuano's in Massachusetts or Obey's in Wisconsin, there is a real danger of losing their Congressional seats, than which nothing is more important to them. And the few genuine antiwar voices in their party, Dennis Kucinich or Barbara Lee, for example, make then look bad by comparison. They wish these bothersome liberals would just go away. What if a strong antiwar Democrat were to appear in the next primary or what if a Green should run in the general against them in '08? Can they win if their antiwar base is fed up with them and turns elsewhere? And what if they also face a strong Republican opponent, which is Kerry's problem in '08?

The same dynamic showed up in the recent MoveOn town hall meeting, which featured phone presentations and questions for each of the antiwar candidates, meaning Democratic candidates. (Libertarian Ron Paul was not invited, unsurprisingly since MoveOn is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.) A vote was taken afterwards on the favorite candidate of the antiwar participants, and the results were headlined as "Clinton suffers virtual defeat in MoveOn vote on Iraq," or "Clinton Bombs in Liberal Straw Poll.

With 43,000 people responding, the numbers were: Obama, 28 per cent; Edwards, 25 per cent; Kucinich, 17 per cent; Richardson, 12 per cent; Clinton, 10 per cent; with only Biden and Dodd lower. The interpretation is simple. If you are seen as pro-war, your prospects are dim. True to form, having taken the poll, MoveOn quickly disappeared the results from its web site. One can be fairly certain that the Dem hierarchy was displeased with the results for HRC and ordered the whole thing air brushed away. MoveOn dutifully obliged.

The striking thing about the poll is how well Kucinich did. He is the only one in the entire pack who can legitimately claim to be antiwar. Obama and Edwards were ahead of him only because they are widely perceived, or more accurately misperceived, as antiwar. And of course they get tons of sympathetic coverage in the mass media. But their true colors are becoming ever clearer. Recently (4/29) in the Washington Post, the rabid neocon Robert Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, adviser to the McCain campaign and lead proponent of war on Iran, heaped praise on Obama for being an advocate of pre-emptive war and of increasing the army and marines by tens of thousands of troops. ( For his part Edwards is now exposed by Senator Durbin's disclosure that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee knew that the administration was lying in the lead-up to the war on Iraq. Durbin excuses himself from hiding the truth from the public by saying the committee was sworn to secrecy. But that was a time to come forward with the truth and take the consequences--even jail--to stop a war based on lies. And it is even worse to have been on that committee and to have voted for the war. John Edwards was on that committee. John Edwards voted for the war. It turns out that John Edwards did in fact know then what he knows now! Durbin is the second Senator to have outed Edwards in this way, the first being former Senator Bob Graham.

The Democrats are in an awful bind. They have been complicit in this war from the beginning--up to their necks in the death and destruction every bit as much as W. That provides an opening for a new start in American politics. But this means that the Greens and the Libertarians must seize the moment, overcome their dysfunctionality and pose a serious challenge to the two War Parties. The Democrats are on the run; will we go get 'em? Will we live up to the challenge?

John Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com. He encourages one and all to join the many thousands who have signed the petition at WWW.FilibusterForPeace.org. It only takes 41 of the 51 Democratic Senators to bring the war on Iraq to an end. They have the power. Why do they not use it?

The Israel Factor infiltrates Democratic Presidential Candidate debate

May 1, 2007 – It was clearly a set up question. There was nothing random about it. It was a purposeful effort designed and executed by Israel loyalists and protectionists that take their orders, whether they realize it or not, from a complex web of manipulators now correctly identified as the Israel Lobby.

Barack Obama should have expected it. After all, the Chicago Sun Times reported recently that “Obama’s camp is well-aware”[1] of the ongoing Israeli survey called The Israel Factor: Ranking the presidential candidates, and the low marks Obama is getting from the Zionist panelists.

The Israel Factor: Ranking the presidential candidates is a special project published by Haaretz, a leading Israeli daily newspaper. It appears in the section of the newspaper called Rosner’s Domain. Shmuel Rosner is Haaretz’s chief U.S. correspondent, and is based in Washington DC.[2]

Obama’s March ranking in the Israel Factor was 3.88. The scale is 1 to 10: 1 being ‘Worst for Israel’ and 10 being ‘Best for Israel’.

In April, Obama’s ranking jumped to 5.13[3], which placed him ahead of only Republican candidates, Mike Huckabee and Chuck Hagel. Senator Hagel is currently ranked last with a score of 3.75 because he believes that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to Middle East peace. According to the Israel Factor scale, this position makes Hagel the current ‘worst’ presidential candidate for Israel. But what if it makes Hagel the best candidate for the United States? Think about it.

It is not a question of whether the Israel Lobby exists in the United States and influences U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East. Its existence is incontrovertibly evident. The only question that remains unanswered is how to accurately quantify the threat that the Israel Lobby poses to the sovereignty of the United States and the scant remaining liberties and freedoms of the American people. The fact that there is an Israel Factor to consider regarding U.S. presidential candidates and our nation’s presidential elections is all the evidence needed to conclude that the Israel Lobby has crossed well beyond the constitutional threshold of free speech, and has clearly encroached into the realm of espionage.

The impact and overreaching ability of the Israel Lobby to infiltrate and influence U.S. politics was made more evident recently by a particular question asked only to Barack Obama during the April 26, 2007 Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate held at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. This was an Israel Lobby loyalty test and Barack Obama failed it.

The moment I heard the question, I knew it was a set up. As soon as I heard NBC anchor and debate monitor Brian Williams ask it, I said out loud, “You had better say Israel or you’re done Obama!

Here’s the transcript.

Brian Williams: We have to do a little bit of housekeeping here, and that is this. Our NBC stations across the state of South Carolina have been carrying this live on over-the-air and cable television. We’re going to say goodbye to them. We will continue on MSNBC, on cable and the Internet with our conversation.

This brings us into the final half-hour of tonight’s conversation, and we’re going to shift categories now to what we are calling non-Iraq foreign policy.

Senator Obama, what are America’s three most important allies around the world?

Senator Obama: Well, I think the European Union as a whole has been a long-standing ally of ours. And through NATO, we’ve been able to make some significant progress. Afghanistan, in particular, is an area where we should be focusing. NATO has made real contributions there. Unfortunately, because of the distraction of Iraq, we have not finished the job in terms of making certain that we are driving back the Taliban, stabilizing the Karzai government, capturing bin Laden and making sure that we’ve rooted out terrorism in that region. We also have to look east, because increasingly the center of gravity in this world is shifting to Asia. Japan has been an outstanding ally of ours for many years, but obviously China is rising, and it’s not going away. They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we have to make sure that we have military-to-military contact and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region. That’s something I’d like to do as president.

Brian Williams: Senator, thanks. I’ll give up a follow-up. I didn’t hear you mention Israel, and I ask because there is a quote attributed to your name. You said recently, “No one is suffering more than the Palestinian people.” Do you stand by that remark?

Senator Obama: Well, keep in mind what the remark, actually, if you have the whole thing, said. What I said is, nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence and to get serious about negotiated peace and security for the region. Israel has been one of our most important allies around the world. It’s the only established democracy in the Middle East. But the United States has to get engaged in this region, and that’s something that this president has not done. That’s something that I intend to do.

Brian Williams: Time is up, Senator.

Please consider the follow-up question by Brian Williams. It was written on a cue card. It was prepared in advance. It was scripted. Obviously it was anticipated that Obama would most likely not mention Israel as one of America’s top three allies – why would he? The fact is that Israel is not and has never been one of America’s top three allies.

I didn’t hear you mention Israel, and I ask because there is a quote attributed to your name. You said recently, “No one is suffering more than the Palestinian people.” Do you stand by that remark?

And why did MSNBC find it necessary to weave an unrelated, yet factually accurate quote by Obama regarding the current suffering of the Palestinian people into its attempt to measure Obama’s loyalty to the Zionist state? What or who could have prompted the producers and editors at MSNBC to troll in such murky water? Clearly, the Palestinian people are suffering. So why wouldn’t Obama stand behind that statement?

I didn’t hear you mention Israel.

And I ask because there is a quote attributed to your name.

You said recently…

“No one is suffering more than the Palestinian people.”

Do you stand by that remark?

The original question was Senator Obama, what are America’s three most important allies around the world?

In short, Barack Obama answered, the European Union, NATO, and Japan / the greater Far East. These would not have been my answers, but they are good answers all the same.

I didn’t hear you mention Israel.

So what Brian Williams! So what! I didn’t hear you or any of your producers identify the name[s], title[s], location[s], and contact information of the person[s] that suggested, approved, and inserted this treasonous question, on behalf of a foreign nation, into a national presidential candidate debate.

Best for Israel, Worst for Israel - the crisis in America has reached critical mass. Best for Israel or worst for Israel should have no bearing whatsoever regarding who is elected President of the United States. Best for the United States, Worst for the United States is all that should be considered.

Know your enemy, and remember the words of Thomas Jefferson.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.

It’s well past time for some refreshing in this lost Constitutional Republic.

If the Israel Lobby and its media operatives are allowed to continue to infiltrate and frame our political debates and sabotage viable candidates that they deem not the best for Israel, then they have the power to control and censor the political messages heard in the United States. Consequently, the American people will continue to have a tainted and corrupted opinion of their political candidates, and unbeknownst to the casual voter, will cast votes in favor of pre-approved candidates rather than the best candidate for the United States of America

This is the climatic prelude to tyranny. It is unlikely that it can be stopped peacefully. Only the blood of patriots and tyrants will break the stranglehold that grips our nation.

Make no mistake about it – this was a set up prompted by elements and / or operatives of the Israel Lobby. It’s a classic example of how it operates. There was nothing benign about it. You are now a witness.

---

[1] Chicago Sun Times, Obama to offer pro-Israel views at Chicago gathering, Lynn Sweet, March 1, 2007, http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/278222,CST-EDT-sweet01.article, [Accessed April 30, 2007]

[2] Haaretz.com, Rosner’s Blog, Shmuel Rosner, August 28, 2005, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=618587&listSrc=Y&onlyOne=Y, [Accessed April 30, 2007]

[3] Haaretz.com, Rosner’s Domain: A special project, The Israel Factor: Ranking the presidential candidates, April 27, 2007, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerPage.jhtml, [Accessed April 27, 2007]

The Iraq war is over. It is the moment for Democrats to show real leadership

If President Bush's veto is not challenged tomorrow, thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of US troops are certain to perish

Gary Younge
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian

There is no overestimating the popular reverence Americans have for their men and women in uniform. A direct translation of "squaddie", a term steeped in class contempt which betrays as much antipathy and ambivalence as it does admiration in the UK, simply does not exist in the US. Fighting for your country is generally regarded as the ultimate form of public service.

Flight attendants will announce the presence of an active service man or woman to cheers from the rest of the plane. At anti-war demonstrations, protesters wave banners proclaiming "Support the troops, oppose the war." The nation may be irrevocably split on the moral value of any war, but when it comes to backing the people who are executing it, they speak as one.

If such widespread veneration for the military in a democracy is problematic, the reasons underpinning it extend beyond hyper-patriotism. Thanks to the draft during the Korean and Vietnam wars, many Americans have a close relative who is a veteran. The suburban myth that liberals abused soldiers returning from Vietnam has made progressives anxious to be vocal in their support for the military. And, whatever its reputation abroad, since the second world war the US military has been viewed domestically as an instrument of progressive social change. It was one of the first American institutions to formally integrate. Thanks to the GI bill, which gave housing or an education to those returning from the second world war, it was instrumental in creating the postwar middle class.

Finally, in a nation with no safety net, the military is one of the few government-backed means of advancement for the poor. "I was living in a trailer with my grandmother," says Darrell Anderson, 25, who earned a purple heart in Iraq and later went awol. "I was broke and I needed education and healthcare, and if I had to go to war for them that was just what I had to do. Going to the military was my last chance. My last option." If all else fails, you can yomp and shoot your way to the American dream.

So America's support for its military is as deep as it is complex. While that support may coincide with the backing for a given war, it may at times also contradict it. This may be one of those times. The showdown between the Bush administration and the Democratic Congress over the war in Iraq currently hinges on which side can claim ownership of the troops' interests, and harness that public affection to bolster their position.

President Bush has requested more money from Congress for the war. Congress has passed a bill that gives him more than he requested so long as he sets a timetable for withdrawing the troops. Bush has vowed to veto the bill, effectively demanding a blank cheque for the war. The Democrats do not have enough votes to override the veto. Bush cannot get the money without Congressional approval. For as long as the stalemate continues no money can be earmarked for the war, and at some stage the cash will dry up. In these deliberations the plight of Iraqis, who are dying in their scores every day, is subordinated to more local concerns: which side can convince the public that they are standing their ground to protect the troops, and thereby force the other side to compromise before the money runs out.

You would think this would be a slam-dunk for the Democrats. With approval ratings in the 30s, Bush is deeply unpopular. So is his war. According to a Rasmussen poll last week, 57% of Americans support either an immediate withdrawal (37%) or a deadline for withdrawal (20%), while 60% believe that his "surge" has either made things worse in Iraq or has made no difference. As though that were not enough, he will most likely sign the veto tomorrow, on the fourth anniversary of his "mission accomplished" speech.

Not only is Bush weak, but so is his standing with the troops. Since he announced the surge, the US death toll has remained steady at around three a day, while the situation on the ground has deteriorated and the Iraqi government has disintegrated. Last month came the debacle at Walter Reed hospital, where wounded veterans testified to lying in rooms infested with mice and cockroaches, with mould on the walls.

Then last week came damaging testimony relating to two of the "war on terror's" greatest icons. The first, Jessica Lynch, was hailed as the plucky "Rambo from West Virginia" after she was captured in an ambush at Nassiriya early in the war and later rescued by US forces. "I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary," said Lynch at a Congressional hearing.

The other was the family of Pat Tillman, a football star, who forwent a $9m contract to volunteer for the military. According to the defence department Tillman was killed by enemy combatants in Afghanistan in 2004 while leading an attempt to rescue US troops. Five weeks later they admitted he was killed by friendly fire. "We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," said Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide [friendly fire] ... the truth needed to be suppressed."

And so the world Bush occupies - where the war is justified, conditions on the ground are improving, and democracy in the Middle East will flourish - keeps getting smaller. Even those he cast as heroes no longer wish to share the stage with him.

All of this provides ample space for the Democrats to establish an alternative narrative for both supporting the troops and stopping the war. One that says the best way to support them is to remove them from a war they cannot win, and return them home where they will be cared for. An opportunity to represent the people who elected them, implement their mandate, and in so doing fulfil their constitutional duty to check and then balance executive power.

Like most acts of principle, making this move carries significant political risk. But not making it carries the certainty of thousands more dead Iraqis and hundreds more dead soldiers. A CBS-New York Times poll shows only 36% back withholding funds if the president uses his veto. That is where leadership comes in: the Democrats have yet to prove their ability to win people over to a course of action they believe is both justified and necessary. Who knows how many people would support them if they made the case for it. Who knows how many would have opposed the war if they'd been asked. The war is over. To postpone withdrawal is simply to prolong the agony.

Yet it seems the Democrats are set to cave in on their demand of setting a timetable, agreeing instead to "non-binding benchmarks" on the Iraqi government, an impotent body that lacks authority and legitimacy. That would not be compromise but capitulation.

This is only the second time Bush has used his veto. The first was six months ago, to stop a bill on embryonic stem-cell research becoming law. The bill, he said, "would support the taking of innocent human life ... and crosses a moral boundary our decent society needs to respect". Would that he lavished so much care on human life that has evolved beyond a collection of cells. Would that his moral boundaries stretched beyond the green zone. Would that he had an opposition worthy of the name.

g.younge@guardian.co.uk

SUPER-IMPERIALISM: The Shameful Legacy Of Liberal Democrats

April 29, 2007

By Carolyn Baker

It is a war against the globalization of the market, against the destruction of nature adn the confiscation of resources, against the termination of indigenous peoples and their lands, against the growing maldistribution of wealth and the consequent decline in standards of living for all but the rich.

Andrew Kopkind

Professor Michael Hudson, an independent Wall St. financial economist, has written an extraordinary book entitled Super Imperialism: The Origins and Fundamentals Of U.S. World Dominance. I first heard of Michael Hudson when browsing Bonnie Faulkner’s “Guns And Butter” website, and as I listened to him, I knew that I needed to read Super Imperialism for many reasons, not the least of which is that I am not an economist and am only beginning to educate myself on how the money works in the domestic and world economies. For this reason, I have been reluctant to write a review of Hudson’s book; I am still learning, as are many of my readers, about dysfunctional and oppressive economic systems and how they work, as well as learning about how a healthy economy might function to meet the needs of its citizenry without harming them or the ecosystem. That said, as an historian, I believe that in order to fully appreciate the current tyranny of centralized financial systems, it is necessary to understand how they evolved within the past six decades.

While reading Hudson’s book I quickly realized that it is a crucial companion to Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy of books on U.S. imperialism, namely, Blowback, The Sorrows Of Empire, and Nemesis. Johnson’s emphasis is primarily on the military aspects of U.S. imperialism since the end of World War II, with much less focus on American economic imperialism during that era.

In the current milieu of blatant neo-conservative world domination rhetoric and behavior, it is oh so tempting to believe that the Republican Party and political conservatism have been historically at the forefront of an imperialist foreign policy. What is crucial to understand is that from an historical perspective, the economic imperialism engineered by the United States was overwhelmingly the brain child of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Bretton Woods

Hudson takes us back to 1945 when the United States was the most powerful creditor nation on earth, having lent billions to other nations during and after World War II. Today, the U.S. is the most powerful debtor nation on earth, and Super Imperialism describes and documents superbly how such a stunning reversal of economic positioning occurred.

Although corporations and centralized financial systems were the means by which economic imperialism was implemented, …it is not to the corporate sector that one must look to find the roots of modern international economic relations as much as to U.S. Government pressure on central banks and on multilateral organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization….At the root of this new form of imperialism is the exploitation of governments by a single government, that of the United States, via the central banks and multilateral control institutions of intergovernmental capital rather than via the activities of private corporations seeking profit. What has turned the older forms of imperialism into a super imperialism is that whereas prior to the 1960s the U.S. Government dominated international organizations by virtue of its preeminent creditor status, since that time it has done so by virtue of its debtor status. (23-24)

The genesis of this re-positioning was the International Monetary and Financial Conference of 1944 held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire out of which was born the Bretton Woods System of “international monetary management for commercial and financial relations among the world’s industrial states.” It was there that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were established, and as Hudson notes, “The U.S. economy was enabled to draw the finances of other governments into an international cartel directed by its own policy-makers, dominated by U.S. officials and their appointees.” (139)

As I have noted in my recent book U.S.HISTORY UNCENSORED: What Your High School Textbook Didn’t Tell You, the ultimate “cure” for the Great Depression was not the New Deal and its economic programs, but World War II, out of which the U.S. emerged not only as the most powerful nation militarily, but economically as well. A number of modern historians have speculated that one reason Franklin Roosevelt’s administration failed to intervene economically to undercut Hitler’s rise to power was Roosevelt’s ultimate dream: that the U.S. would emerge from war as the most powerful nation on earth economically and militarily, forever precluding, in Roosevelt’s mind, the possibility of another Great Depression. FDR’s dream was realized, making possible the economic supremacy of the United States during and subsequent to the Bretton Woods conference, without which the U.S. could never have achieved the commanding position it assumed at the momentous gathering of nations.

Hudson seems unable to overemphasize the auspiciousness of America’s post-war preeminence:

What occurred after World War II was nothing less than an inversion of the law of nations as it had been evolving for centuries, at least on the part of Europe if not that of the United States. The most basic principle of international law is that nations are equals with regard to their rights and policy-making autonomy. In addition to this legal principle is a basic behavioral law of diplomacy: in a world of nation-states it is unnatural for any nation to abrogate its international position voluntarily….Europe demurred from pressing its self-interest at any point where this conflicted with that of the United States. Exhausted by war, it voluntarily abrogated what had been more than four centuries of imperial ambitions. (265)

To American diplomats the United States simply was living up to its historic destiny as world leader when they formulated their plans for the postwar world at Bretton Woods. In their idealism they anticipated that the breakup of nationhood—at least on the part of foreign countries—would inaugurate a world economy of peaceful interdependence and perhaps even altruism. They did not ponder how alien this concept was to the basic principle of nationhood, that no nation can be expected to relinquish its independence with regard to economic policy-making. Nonetheless, American now asked, and received, European capitulation on every major point of postwar relations. (265)

Pegging international currency to the dollar, backed by the gold standard, the U.S. continued to exert economic supremacy throughout the Cold War era. Although the Bretton Woods system “officially” collapsed in 1971 when the U.S. suspended convertibility from dollars to gold, America’s economic dominance did not subside with abandonment of the gold standard.

In fact says Hudson, “The key to understanding today’s dollar standard is to see that it has the form of gold bullion. While applying creditor-oriented rules against Third World countries and other debtors, the IMF pursues a double standard with regard to the United States. It has established rules to monetize the deficits the United States runs up as the world’s leading debtor, above all by the U.S. government to foreign governments and their central banks.” (35)

Everyone got something as a result of Bretton Woods, but ultimately the cost was untenable. Europe received resources it could have never acquired otherwise and assistance in rebuilding after the World War II, but its war debts remained on the books. Developing nations, particularly the agriculturally backward ones, received resources as well, but the price they have paid has been nothing less than brutal. Hudson states that the United States “simply anticipated that these countries would increase their purchases of American farm products, which they could have produced for themselves if only they had set out to restructure their agricultural sectors.” (186) The World Bank and IMF were “protectionist” in the sense that they protected U.S. investors against foreign commercial nationalism. Any movement by developing countries toward industrial and agricultural self-sufficiency was halted and reversed, leading to increased impoverishment of developing countries since World War II. (187)

Throughout the book, Hudson is perhaps kinder than he should be. Although he does not use the term, what he is superbly describing and documenting in his book is economic warfare far more brutal and merciless than the limited-hangout offered by John Perkins’ Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man on which Catherine Austin Fitts comments:

In the process of providing a colorful account of a 1970s whodunit (complete with low tech strategies devoid of the dazzling technology toolkit that is now an essential part of the economic hit man's weaponry of economic warfare), Perkins delivers to readers the "big lie": he reveals the secret that there is no greater conspiracy. This is simply globalization run amok, he would have us believe. Somehow, this particular conspiracy theory seems charmingly credible as part of a "confession." Perkins admits to what is known and then uses the credibility created by his "limited hangout" to further obscure the reality of who's who in the real governance of global investment and risk management. We are to presume that the investment networks in and around the Harvard Corporation, the City of London, the Vatican and investment managers and bankers for the proceeds of transnational organized crime are simply good-hearted fellows who let things get out of hand.

What the United States never addressed in developing countries, and still is not addressing, are the oppressive and corrupt institutions of those nations that manage inequity in land distribution, tax structures, and the allocation of natural resources. One consequence of refusing to do so was “to draw population from the countryside to the cities in search of employment. But the growth of industrial hiring was insufficient to absorb this rural exodus.” (207)

In recent years, living as I do near the U.S./Mexican border, I have observed firsthand the myriad ways in which this destructive pattern plays out. Hundreds of thousands of dispossessed people from rural Mexico, particularly its southern regions, migrate to Mexican border towns where if they are fortunate, they find jobs in maquiladoras which are overwhelmingly owned and managed by U.S. corporations. Currently, many of these corporations are leaving Mexico and moving their operations to China or Southeast Asia where labor is even cheaper and tax loopholes even sweeter than they are in Mexico. As they do so, they leave behind environmental devastation and a large number of unemployed, dispossessed people who end up on the streets or make desperate attempts to enter the U.S. illegally. Saul Landau’s excellent documentary on these issues, “Maquila, A Tale Of Two Mexicos”, may be watched online.

When super-imperialism is fully understood, the “mystery” of illegal immigration will immediately be resolved. It is as if the international corporatocracy of world dominance functions like a giant broom sweeping the dispossessed into the United States where they are greeted by the domestic corporatocracy and further exploited as wage-slave laborers with all the accoutrements of “the good life, huaraches exchanged for vinyl sandals made in China and corn tortillas supplanted by “happy meals.” One can only wonder what this government’s policy will be when the dire consequences of Peak Oil and climate-chaos drought hit the fan. What then will be America’s border policy? Today, gorging itself on cheap labor, the corporatocracy sucks up taxpayer money to build meaningless border fences that it knows will not deter the illegal workers it needs, but when Walmarts have weeds growing in their parking lots and thousands of meat packing plants have shut down because only the very wealthy can afford to remain carnivorous, we will see how many new immigrants will be allowed to inhabit the U.S. and consume the last drops of its water and oil.

As a result of the mass exodus to cities, food prices have soared in numerous developing countries so that people who have relocated in cities are working primarily to get the money to buy the food they eat. Thus, says Hudson, the World Bank has been “pauperizing the countries it had been designed, in theory, to assist.” (208)

According to Hudson, “Freeing debtor, food-deficit countries from their yoke of obsolete political and social systems therefore must entail not only a re-education of U.S. strategists, but at some point direct political action by the developing countries to thwart their strategies. The ultimate action would be for these countries to withdraw from the World Bank, GATT, and the IMF altogether and to form a new set of development institutions run by themselves and in their own interests.” (209)

Increasingly, Latin American countries, whom Hudson asserts have been intentionally managed and contained by the World Bank and IMF in order to prevent their autonomous departure from the economic control and management of the U.S., are doing exactly what he prescribes. Venezuela has taken the lead in rejecting World Bank and IMF carrot and stick economics, and more recently, Ecuador and Bolivia have joined Hugo Chavez in working to create Latin American self-sufficiency apart from the control of the U.S. Just this week, Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa banned a World Bank official from the nation. Currently, Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil are discussing the creation of a Southern Bank, operated by and for Latin Americans, as an alternative to the World Bank.

The Power of Debt

Today, the United States, through the issuing of treasury bills and various forms of borrowing from other nations, has risen to the status of Planetary Debtor In Chief, and in stark contrast to its position of planetary creditor sixty years ago, it now rules the world economically. Hudson comments:

In sum, the United States is able to rule not through its position as world creditor, but as world debtor. Rather than being the world banker, it makes all other countries the lenders to itself. Thus rather than its debtor position being an element of weakness, America’s seeming weakness has become the foundation of the world’s monetary and financial system. To change this system in a way adverse to the United States would bring down the system’s creditors to America. (386)

But changing that system is indeed what America’s myriad creditors intend to do, and many are strategically working toward economic self-sufficiency in order to walk away from the stranglehold that the World Bank and the IMF have held on them for six decades.

Neoliberalism: The Offspring Of Liberalism

Overwhelmingly, Latin American nations and their leaders are rejecting neoliberalism and speak freely of doing so. One of the most informative and succinct primers on neoliberalism can be found at Corpwatch where Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia explain that:

"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism.

"Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an English economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished.

It is extremely important to understand that the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt which gave birth to the Bretton Woods system were engineered by Democrats, Cordell Hull and Harry Dexter White, the two principal architects of the system and two of the most powerful bureaucrats close to Roosevelt. Further left of center than Hull, White was an avid internationalist and was later accused during the McCarthy Era of being a member of the Communist Party.

During the Great Depression the New Deal unarguably brought economic relief to millions of Americans and their families who otherwise might have starved. It is also true that just as the so-called “reforms” of the Progressive Era under another President Roosevelt (Teddy), were legislated from a fundamental underpinning of social control, the essential intention of the New Deal’s framers was to ward off a revolution in the United States that, left unchecked, could easily have spiraled out of control, driving an increasingly desperate populace into the arms of Soviet-style Marxism.

Since the United States Civil War, reform in America has always been wedded to the principal assumptions of the capitalist economic system, namely, that corporate capitalism, the maintenance of order, and the passage of laws that enforce the predominance of the business class and contain the unruly have-nots, is preferable to any possible alternatives. To succinctly describe this, historian Gabriel Kolko in The Triumph Of Conservatism uses the term political capitalism to define a political system engineered to meet the needs and serve the interests of business. Of the Progressive movement he states that: “Progressivism was initially a movement for the political rationalization of business and industrial conditions, a movement that operated on the assumption that the general welfare of the community could be best served by satisfying the concrete needs of business. But the regulation itself was invariably controlled by leaders of the regulated industry, and directed toward ends they deemed acceptable or desirable.” (3)

The Bretton Woods system was yet another milestone of political capitalism in which, in the name of world peace and “stability”, the United States would dominate the world economically. As with domestic political capitalism, it was motivated by the necessity of restraining the influence of the Communist bloc and managing impoverished nations that were likely to align with it as a result of their fundamental survival needs. The engineers of that system were not ideological conservatives but liberal members of the Democratic Party.

Whereas the Bretton Woods system was constructed largely by New Deal liberals, the resultant policies of the IMF and World Bank have transmuted into the current neoliberal paradigm, bolstered by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) of which Harry Dexter White was a member, embracing an internationalist, globalist perspective which shares more than less in common with the neoconservative ideology of blatant geostrategic hegemony as typified by the Project For The New American Century (PNAC). Differences in rhetoric between the two organizations imply a divergence in policy, yet historical functioning reveals otherwise. The endgame of both is geopolitical dominance politically, economically, and militarily by the United States. Whereas the neoconservative agenda envisions an ever-expanding military to accomplish blatant conquest and subjugation of nations, the neoliberal vision would be realized by the dissolution of nation-states altogether under the economic administration of transnational corporations.

Thus, we should not be surprised by the close ties developed in recent years between the Bush family and the Clintons. The Bush crime family has multigenerational experience in waging super-imperialist economic warfare on the world and on American citizens, and it appears that the Clintons have become two of their most prodigious pupils—their “entrance examinations” being the creation of NAFTA and throwing masses of welfare-dependent individuals into “welfare to work” jobs on which no one in America could survive.

In the current political milieu, no candidate who is not committed to a policy of super-imperialism has the slightest chance of ascendancy to the Presidency of the United States. Echoing her CFR colleagues, Hillary Clinton states, “First, and most obviously, we must by word and deed renew internationalism for a new century.” And Barack Obama chimes in with, “Whether it’s global terrorism or pandemic disease, dramatic climate change or the proliferation of weapons of mass annihilation, the threats we face at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries.”

I am not suggesting that the United States become an isolationist country in the sense that we have nothing to do with all of the other nations with whom we reside on planet earth. What I am declaring is that I support no leader who is unwilling to radically alter the super-imperialist trajectory on which the United States has traveled since World War II. Having said that, I am well aware that no one who would do so could ever be nominated, let alone elected President of the United States.

Inextricably tied to the super-imperialism project is the $4 trillion dollars stolen from the U.S. Treasury in the past decade, the unanswered questions regarding September 11, 2001, the USA Patriot Act, Peak Oil, the privatization of water and other resources, the cesspool of corruption surrounding government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the domination of U.S. money supply and fiscal policy by the Federal Reserve and other centralized financial systems.

Each of these issues is beyond the scope of any president or party to thoroughly remediate. Only one thing is absolutely certain regarding super-imperialism—its collapse. Whether collapse occurs suddenly or gradually, before, during, and after, there will be many opportunities for those of us residing in the belly of the beast to create new economic and social structures. The pivotal question is: Will we be prepared to do so?

Did I watch the Democratic candidates’ debate, April 26? No, I was sitting in a local movie theater watching the film “Shooter” which, in my opinion, rips the mask off the current political landscape and ventures into territory where no candidate anointed by the corporatocracy is willing to travel. “Shooter” is the real deal; presidential debates, yet another distracting soap opera. A line from that film now comes to mind, depicting the essence of super-imperialism: “There is no Sunni or Shia, no Democrat or Republican—only the have’s and have-not’s.”

War on Terror in Campaign 08

BLOG | Posted 04/30/2007 @ 12:20am

Ari Melber

The most significant moment in last week's Democratic presidential candidate debate came during the evening's most simplistic question. Moderator Brian Williams asked for a show of hands on whether the candidates "believe" there is a Global War on Terror, yielding a four-to-four split. It was a silly choice, since Williams was technically asking if the candidates believe that Bush's foreign policy exists, but it could still spark an important discussion. John Edwards was the only one of the "top three" candidates to vote no, which swiftly brought him praise, scorn and ridicule. After saying the U.S. must strongly deal with "dangerous leaders in the world," Edwards emphasized the need to use all the tools of foreign policy, not simply hard military power. His argument was not really a denial of the existence of Bush's Global War on Terrorism, but a nod towards an alternative.

There is really no denying that President Bush has organized U.S. foreign policy around an endless Global War on Terrorism (or "GWOT" in government circles). As he declared in his historic address to a joint session of Congress after 9/11, even if Al-Qaeda is destroyed, Bush envisions a war that "will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." He means that literally. It is a war that targets a tactic instead of an enemy; like declaring war on war, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has noted. Without a defined enemy, of course, it is a war that can creep far from our vital security interests. In 2002, administration officials claimed Bush could invade Iraq without any congressional authorization at all, based on GWOT, and Condi Rice made the same claim about Syria in 2005. The administration invokes the same endless war to justify imprisoning American citizens without trial; suspending habeas corpus; illegally spying on American citizens; and detaining hundreds of people for years without charges in the lawless Gitmo prison. The policy is built on the twin fallacies that the best defense is a reckless offense, and the world wants (and hates) our freedom. In the name of fighting terror, President Bush aims to advance democracy abroad while restricting it at home, treating Congress and the Courts as barriers to national security. The 2005 National Defense Strategy report even argues American "judicial processes" can be a weapon of choice for our enemies.

Yet as everyone knows, GWOT has resulted in a total security failure. A new State Department report shows terrorism is up 29 percent; Bin Laden remains at large; Iraq is in a civil war, draining resources from counterterrorism and Afghanistan; and Gitmo, which has generated no major terrorist convictions, is such a failure that Defense Secretary Robert Gates made shutting it down one of his first priorities in office. Meanwhile, it is only through congressional and judicial oversight, which Bush derides as counterproductive to his endless global war, that the public has learned about critical vulnerabilities exploited by the 9/11 hijackers; false intelligence regarding WMDs; wasteful defense spending; and the failed detention system at Gitmo, to name a few items.

The question is not whether people "believe" these facts. The question is what the U.S. can do to change them.

Any credible presidential aspirant must present a detailed alternative to Bush's Global War on Terrorism. On the merits, it's hard to understand why candidates (in either party) would try to attach themselves to such a discredited policy from a very unpopular president. For too long, the Global War on Terrorism has been presented as little more than a tough slogan that all mainstream figures must support. By daring the candidates to doubt its existence in a show of hands, Brian Williams cracked the door just wide enough for simplistic protest. Now it's up to the candidates to elaborate on their proposed alternatives. And it's up to activists and voters to make sure this consequential issue stays on the agenda.

To that end, some Democratic bloggers are cheering Edwards and pressing other candidates to challenge the GWOT. MyDD's Matt Stoller writes that Edwards' opposition was a welcome "departure from the bipartisan consensus" backing GWOT. Writing on the same blog in 2004, Chris Bowers called on Democrats to abandon the war on terror frame. This argument is not confined to bloggers or liberal critics, either. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, an influential foreign policy adviser to Democrats across the political spectrum, argued in 2005 that while GWOT had "entered the English language" as the "way our highest national priority is described by almost everyone," it was simply "not an accurate description of America's enemy or of what we are engaged in." He called for jettisoning GWOT and adopting a more focused attack on Al Qaeda.

The public should demand leadership and bold policies from these candidates who would be president. So how about a show of hands of voters who believe in this position: Any candidate who cannot outline an effective alternative to Bush's failed Global War on Terrorism does not deserve to be president.

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NOTES AND FURTHER READING

Zbigniew Brzezinski repeated his opposition to GWOT in an essay this weekend.

I elaborated on GWOT in this op-ed about the President's authority under the 2001 authorization of force, coauthored with Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and these remarks at last year's YearlyKos convention.

It's also worth noting that even the Bush Administration has conceded flaws in the GWOT framework, and it briefly experimented with a different concept in 2005. The Christian Science Monitor summarized responses to that effort at the time, and Democracy Arsenal's Suzanne Nossel proposed several alternative priorities.

Brian Williams felt that the NBC organizers were too restrictive with the debate time limits, which forced him to "suppress" his "instincts to challenge candidates on unanswered questions" almost a dozen times.

For a thorough analysis of whether GWOT is a sustainable foreign policy, check out this 2003 report by Dr. Jeffrey Record of the U.S. Army War College.