LOTT'S
DICTUM
Poor
Senator Lott fell all over himself in assuring Russert that
of course we wouldn't stand for any gay-bashing in the Russian
media: why, we might even withdraw our economic aid, "and
now that's just one example of what we could do." On Iraq,
Lott is more forthcoming:
"I
think we should be prepared to take very aggressive action..
. . But one of the things that really concerns me is we also
have a growing dependence on Iraq for our oil supplies. We're
now getting something like 700,000 barrels a day from Iraq
at a time when we're trying to keep Saddam Hussein, you know,
in the box. There's talk about sending him more oil-producing
equipment, we're getting more oil. He's threatening to cut
off the oil at a time when he is clearly continuing his efforts
to have weapons of mass destruction. We're becoming more dependent
on his oil and he has the temerity to threaten us that he
would cut it off. The combination of these things is very
alarming, and I think we need to work with the administration
to aggressively address these problems."
BEYOND
BIZARRE
It
is not very surprising to see the Leader of the Senate Republicans
jumping up and down on the prostrate body of the Iraqi nation,
bellowing about how "aggressive" he is – but his rationalization
for it, that we are in dire danger because Iraq is selling
us too much oil, is beyond bizarre. At a time when
the price of gasoline is barreling past two bucks a gallon,
the Senator, whose gas tank is filled courtesy of the US taxpayer,
seems blissfully unaware of the sheer stupidity of such a
stance. It is only recently that Iraq was allowed to sell
any oil at all, to anyone, on any terms: now they are barely
managing to pump out 700,000 gallons a day with the antiquated
and broken-down equipment that hasn't been blown to smithereens
in US bombing raids.
THE
WAR ON IRAQ AND THE BIPARTISAN CONSENSUS
Those
raids, by the way, continue to this day. If we ceased our
relentless attempt to reduce Iraq to a smoldering pile of
ruins, and stopped killing 5,000 Iraqi children under the
age of five per month with our murderous sanctions, they would
be shipping 3 million barrels per day – more than making
up for the artificially created oil "shortage" and lowering
prices back down to the level set by the market. But Lott
would rather gouge the American consumer than be seen as backing
off from the decade-long US jihad against Iraq: on that question,
Republicans and Democrats are unanimous.
WHOSE
TEMERITY?
Lott
complains about the very limited relaxation of draconian sanctions,
and denounces Saddam for having "the temerity to threaten
us he would cut it off." So Saddam is evil for selling us
the oil in the first place, but damned, also, when he threatens
to hold back. What's up with that? Being a US Senator,
Trent Lott is quite used to having it both ways: in Lott the
Lawmaker's world, even the laws of logic are subject to amendment
or even outright repeal.
RUSSERT'S
HAND-PUPPET
Again,
none of this is too surprising: we are, after all, talking
about a man who virtually embodies the conservative wing of
the GOP, and watching his performance as Tim Russert's hand-puppet
last Sunday reminded me not only why I hate the Republicans
but also why they call it the Stupid Party. Russert asked
him about a spending bill authorizing "moneys [sic] for the
operation in Kosovo and also new moneys [sic] to fight narcoterrorists
in Columbia [sic!]. Will that be allowed to pass through the
Senate quickly?" Lott's reply should sink the hopes of those
conservative Republican voters and grassroots activists who
opposed Clinton's dirty little war:
"Well,
I'm for it. It should have already passed. I said at the beginning
of the year to the president and to the leadership of our
committees, we should do it quick and clean. We should address
the situation of where the funds have already been spent in
Kosovo. I am for it, trying to help fight the Colombian drug
war. I've met with President Pastrana twice. And I also think
we've got a commitment to some of the disasters around the
country, but as usual, the bill has been slow and it's been
growing. The president asked, I think, for around $4.4 billion;
now it's up to $9 billion and headed even higher, and it's
beginning to interfere with other things. So I think we should
do our regular appropriations bills much earlier, and put
those funds in those appropriations bill. But I'd be willing
to do it clean. It's not a question of should we do it; it's,
you know, exactly how and where.
RUSSERT:
"But it will pass relatively easy?"
SEN.
LOTT: "It will."
SHAMELESS
IN WASHINGTON
Along
with the Waco massacre, Ruby Ridge, and the Whitewater/Lewinsky
scandals, the Kosovo war was seen by conservative Republicans
in Congress and at the grassroots as a projection of the President's
depravity, his ruthlessness, his outrageous hubris. When the
smoke cleared and the bombed-out television stations and murdered
civilians were visible through the fog of war and propaganda,
many reacted as they did on learning of the Starr Report's
revelations – they felt ashamed of their own country,
truly mortified (if only momentarily) to be Americans. While
politicians in general seem to lack any sense of shame, Lott
also seems lacking in even a modicum of political acuity or
common sense. Foreign aid is deeply unpopular, and the Kosovo
intervention was not supported by the majority during the
war, and is even less popular now. Why is the Senate Majority
leader defying his base and depriving his party of a winning
issue in what may turn out to be a pivotal election year?
UNDER
A FALSE FLAG
While
it is true that the Republicans in Congress made a big noise
about their ostensible opposition to the war, they wound up
giving Clinton more than enough money to carry out what they
had just argued was a dangerous and foolhardy mission. Back
then, they tried to justify their stance, arguing that, whatever
one thought of Clinton's war, it was necessary to back up
our troops once they were committed. (Never mind that Congress
had abrogated its constitutional duty, and permitted the President
to act unilaterally; they didn't stand up to Truman, and have
sat on their hands in wartime ever since.) But now that the
mission is already proven a failure, one that is generating
a renewed and even more serious war danger, what is the Republican
argument for continuing to beef up our military presence in
the Balkans?
TURNABOUT
They
key to understanding the Republican turnabout on Kosovo is
the addition of funds for intervention in Colombia to the
legislative package. These two items are bundled together
because a deal has been struck between the Republican and
Democratic wings of the War Party. The latter will get billions
in tax dollars for meddling in the affairs of Europe, in exchange
for a massive "anti-drug" military program to benefit the
makers of helicopters and other such equipment as much as
to prop the government of Colombia's Andres Pastrana. Each
party has its own favored quagmire in which to sink our troops
and treasure, and that is how our bipartisan foreign policy
of globaloney and perpetual meddling works: instead of just
one war at a time, we will be treated to two. So much for
the theory that democratic countries are less warlike.
A
HORSE RACE
I
hate the Republican Party because it has rejected the wisdom
of such GOP
giants as Senator Robert A. Taft, who warned against the
dangers of global intervention, and replaced it with the reckless
warmongering of Senator Lott. The national leadership of the
GOP is now engaged in a horse race with the neo-Wilsonian
Democrats to see which presidential candidate is the most
militantly internationalist.
A
PARTY OF HYPOCRITES
I
hate the Republican Party because it is a party of hypocrites
who have developed the art of double-talk beyond anything
ever seen before. While Senator Lott is saying that Iraq is
pumping too much oil, GOP House Whip Tom DeLay is declaring
that OPEC is not pumping enough and bloviating
over "the Clinton-Gore gas crisis." According to the Conservative
News Service, "members of OPEC oil-producing nations meeting
in Vienna on Tuesday appeared set to raise oil production,
but not enough to satisfy the Republican Party." While DeLay
accurately describes the Clintonian energy policy as "kowtowing
to environmental extremists," what he does not mention is
that the oil shortage should really be called the "Clinton-Gore-Lott-Hastert
gas crisis" – since both parties, in both houses of Congress,
have consistently collaborated in supporting the sanctions
that keep Iraqi oil off the market. DeLay complains that OPEC's
decision to increase production will not make up for the 2.5
million barrel shortfall. I wonder if he even knows that,
before the Gulf War, Iraq was shipping 3 million barrels a
day – more than enough to drive the price way, way down.
CLOSER
TO HOME
With
the Republicans and the Democrats functioning as "two wings
of the same bird of prey," as Pat Buchanan puts it, with both
parties really two versions of the same War Party, one would
think that any real threat to the national security of the
continental United States would not go unnoticed. The frightening
irony is that you would be wrong. It seems that an appetite
for overseas adventurism, whether it be in the blood-soaked
fields of the Balkans or the jungles of South America, is
no guarantee against a threat much closer to home. Indeed,
it seems that the globalists of both parties are afflicted
with a condition analogous to farsightedness – they seem
almost blind to the threat emanating from the US-Mexican border.
The headline in the Arizona Daily Star said it all:
"Mexican troops enter N.M., shoot, go free"! We
are being invaded – but neither Trent Lott, who wants
to invade Colombia, nor the President of the United States,
who has launched more military expeditions than Alexander
the Great, is anywhere to be seen. The Daily Star report
has to be read to be believed:
"About
10:30 p.m., two Mexican military Humvees entered the United
States in the desert south of Sunland Park, N.M, just west
of El Paso. The two vehicles split up, and one followed a
Border Patrol vehicle. The Border Patrol agent eventually
stopped his vehicle in front of the Humvee. The agent and
soldiers both disembarked, with weapons drawn. Sunland Park
police arrived, and eventually the agent was able to persuade
the eight soldiers and their captain that they were in the
United States. The nine put down their weapons and turned
themselves in to the agent. Meanwhile, the second Humvee pursued
a Border Patrol agent on horseback, who ordered them to stop.
But the soldiers continued drawing closer, telling the agent
to stop, and the agent fled to the safety of a hiding place
in a wash. As he escaped, that agent heard a gunshot."
WHO
LOST NEW MEXICO?
How
is it that we went to war with Serbia, a country that never
violated US sovereignty, but our leaders say nothing when
Mexican soldiers start chasing down our Border Patrol and
taking pot-shots at Americans on American soil? This was no
mix-up. The Mexicans knew where they were, and what they were
doing: they followed a Border Patrol vehicle, and openly
challenged American law enforcement personnel with weapons
drawn. Never mind Kosovo and Colombia – we need
to yank our troops out of the Balkan quagmire and put them
on the American side of the Rio Grande. So that next time
the heirs of Santa Ana decide to engage in a little active
irredentism, instead of chasing down a Border Patrol officer
on horseback, they'll be face to face with an armored division
or two. Madeleine Albright is worried that future generations
will wonder "who lost Kosovo?" and the Republicans are getting
ready to ask "who lost Colombia and the war on drugs," but
if this goes on the real question will be: who lost the American
Southwest?
SUPERPOWER
BLUES
All
this guff about the world's Sole Superpower, the would-be
"hegemon" of the earth, is the kind of hubris that brings
down empires, and America is no exception. What this incident
reveals is the inner weakness of this supposed "superpower,"
which cannot even guard its own borders: it exposes the corruption
that permeates the imperial heartland – even while American
centurions push the boundaries of the empire ever outward.
The following dramatizes the crisis percolating on our southern
border in the starkest possible terms:
"The
[Mexican] soldiers in the Humvee then saw a second mounted
agent, whom they pursued until they became stuck in sand.
As some soldiers worked to free the vehicle, others began
walking back south, and the agent shone a flashlight on them.
One of those soldiers then fired another shot. The remaining
soldiers freed the Humvee, and all returned to Mexico. That
left the Border Patrol agents with nine soldiers who had not
fired the shots, so they questioned them for a few hours before
sending them back to Mexico on the order of El Paso Sector
Chief Luis Barker. The other soldiers were never apprehended."
DUAL
LOYALTY ALONG THE RIO GRANDE
According
to Arizona Daily Star, the craven release of Mexican
lawbreakers-in-uniform was deemed necessary by officials because
"it helped preserve relative peace in a tense border zone."
As Border Patrol official Paul M. Berg put it: "If the soldiers
had been detained longer, these tensions would have increased
along the border, not only in El Paso, but also throughout
the United States" side of the border. "This would have put
the lives of many agents at risk." The unspoken but clear
implication is that the US government has lost control of
the southern borderland, many of whose inhabitants owe as
much emotional and political allegiance to Mexico as to the
US – if not more. The uncontrolled immigration –
both legal and illegal – that has changed the demographic
profile of the American Southwest raises the question of whether
the US is vulnerable to the claims of Mexican irredentism.
But the danger is more immediate than the growing question
of dual loyalty among the large immigrant population. . .
.
ON
THE TAKE
If
we are going to go all the way to the jungles of Colombia
to fight the drug war, why haven't we awakened to the daily
incursions of the drug lords onto US territory – helped
along by their invaluable allies, the Mexican police? Mexico
is a country where virtually every public official up to the
President and every law enforcement agency is on the take,
with daily reports of corruption at the highest levels. As
the Daily Star reports:
"Often
when an incursion arises, [Border Patrol agents'] first suspicion
is that the soldiers or police officers were guiding a drug
load. That suspicion is based on dependable intelligence,
said Ron Sanders, former chief of the Tucson sector, who retired
last year. The question that arises in the agents' minds,
Sanders said, is: 'Are they trying to arrest the drug smugglers
and put them in jail, or are they trying to shake them down
and take the drugs for their personal gain?'"
THE
INVASION OF AMERICA
As
the US gets ready to invade South America in the name of a
phony "war on drugs," the Mexican authorities and the Mexican
Mafia (or do I repeat myself?) have launched a counter-invasion
into the American Southwest – and so far have encountered
no resistance.
MEXICO
– A ROGUE NATION?
Oh,
the bitter ironies of history! Why, just about a year ago,
the Senator from Arizona who was also a presidential candidate
was blustering in front of the TV cameras that "we're in it,
so we've got to win it." Well, we're certainly in it
– a war for control of our own borders – but apparently
the US lacks the will to win it. Wasn't it John McCain who
demanded a ground invasion of Yugoslavia, on the grounds that
American values and honor were supposedly at stake? How is
it, then, that the Senator's own region of the country has
been invaded by the armed soldiers of a foreign country –
and we have yet to hear a peep out of the great military leader
and rising star of the War Party? We must liberate Kosovo,
we are told – but what about your neighboring state of
New Mexico, Senator? Before we engage in "rogue state rollback"
as far away as Iraq and North Korea, as you propose, why not
start with Sunland Park, New Mexico, and surrounding areas
– where we are under sustained attack from a "rogue nation"
directly on our southern border?
THIS
JUST IN
Oh, how quickly they turn: we
have a
report, just in, that Lott "promised Tuesday to try
to block a $9 billion that includes money for US activities
in Colombia and Kosovo, dampening prospects that Congress
will provide the money quickly." The key words here are
"try" and "quickly" – the question
is, how hard will he try to block it, and how quickly will
Clinton get the money, anyway? Both parties have been piling
on "extras" into this bill, to the point where it
has practically doubled in size from the original $5 billion.
Naturally Republicans have larded the "emergency"
spending request with all kinds of goodies for their military
contractor buddies, while the Democrats have added on $253
million more to the package. The money would be for HIV care,
summer jobs for teenagers, and a whole host of pork barrel
items. Lott is under tremendous pressure from conservative
budget-cutters, like Phil Gramm, as well as from opponents
of the Kosovo intervention.
A
DELAY, NOT A REPRIEVE
This is a delay, but not a reprieve:
Gramm and other budget hawks don't object to the bill on any
principled foreign policy grounds, but simply because it is
too expensive. As a result, the bill will likely survive in
something much more like its original form: $5.2 billion on
an "emergency" basis for Kosovo and Colombia. The
good news is that, now, the chances of it being rushed through
without debate or time for opponents to lobby are almost nil.
There is still time before the US jumps, simultaneously, into
two quagmires at once – but not much. Keeping track of
the manipulations and machinations of Trent Lott is, in itself,
a full-time job, and this is one slippery character who merits
some very close watching. Just be sure to let him know how
you feel about this issue. I won't bother directing you to
his rather messed-up website: it looks as though the Senator
is not quite ready for the Dot-com Era. But you can phone
or fax him at the following numbers, whatever your view of
the Kosovo-Colombia "aid" package: 202.224.6253,
or 202.224.2262 (fax).
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