|
 I
am so sick of George W. Bush: sick of his petulant preppie
voice, sick of his studied belligerence, and, most of all,
damned sick of his threats. If we don't toe the line and support
his crazed foreign policy of "preemptive self-defense," he
constantly claims, we will reap the whirlwind. As he puts
it in a
recent television ad paid for by the Republican National
Committee:
"It
would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into
this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever
known."
Well,
then, how come we're fighting in Iraq thousands of
miles away from the scene of the terrorists' target? Instead
of kicking
the shit out of Iraqi POWs, why aren't those Army reservists
inspecting each and every crate that comes into this country?
One vial, one canister, one crate yes, and if it gets through,
Georgie boy, we're gonna hold you responsible!
Like
everything else about his Presidency, this line taken from
his State
of the Union address is
a lie. In the speech, you'll remember, he flubbed this
line, pausing uncertainly before the word "vial," and then
pronouncing it as if it were "while." But in the ad, the presidential
pronunciation is perfect, and there is no uncertainty: the
pause has been edited out. "Cut and pasted," according to
Republican officials. Yeah, just like the "intelligence"
they used to justify the Iraq
war.
The
makers of this ad have entitled it "Reality," which they apparently
believe is infinitely malleable, averring:
"Some
are now attacking the President for attacking the terrorists."
This
is a flat-out lie. Critics of the Iraq war are attacking the
President for not attacking the terrorists for ignoring
Osama bin Laden and, instead, going after the tinpot tyrant
of a fifth-rate military power, because, as deputy defense
secretary Paul Wolfowitz put it, it was "doable."
A
President who lied us into war is now hoping to lie himself
back into the White House. This election year, Republicans
are selling fibs and fear, mixed with a generous dollop of
hubris:
BUSH:
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent.
Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions,
politely putting us on notice before they strike?"
ANNOUNCER:
"Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security
in the hands of others. Call Congress now. Tell them to support
the President's policy of preemptive self-defense."
We
must act, even if the threat is nonexistent because of the
potential danger. If "self-defense" consists of necessary
"preemption," then what would happen if we started acting
on this Bushian principle domestically? After all, killers,
robbers, and rapists don't announce their intentions, politely
putting us on notice before they strike. Why not just jail
them before they have a chance to commit a crime? This
principle, if applied within the U.S., would lead straight
to totalitarian rule. Applied abroad, it means perpetual war.
Oh,
but that doesn't factor in the risk of not acting,
which, in the post-9/11 universe we have landed in could be
a fatal error. Given that premise, it is perfectly logical
that we must immediately embark on a campaign of world conquest,
such as not even Alexander the Great dared to dream of. I
am reminded of my old friend and mentor, Murray N. Rothbard,
who foresaw this moment in a 1994 piece entitled "Invade the
World":
"We
must face the fact that there is not a single country in the
world that measures up to the lofty moral and social standards
that are the hallmark of the U.S.A.: even Canada is delinquent
and deserves a whiff of grape. There is not a single country
in the world which, like the U.S., reeks of democracy and
"human rights," and is free of crime and murder and hate thoughts
and undemocratic deeds
. And so, since no other countries
shape up to U.S. standards,
I make a Modest Proposal for
the only possible consistent and coherent foreign policy:
the U.S. must, very soon, Invade the Entire World!"
"Sanctions
are peanuts: we must invade every country in the world," Rothbard
declared and I can hear him laughing, even now "perhaps
softening them up beforehand with a wonderful high-tech missile
bombing show courtesy of CNN."
We've
had many such bombing shows, courtesy of Fox and MSNBC as
well as CNN, since then, and now there's one every night
along with news
of fresh American casualties.
That
is what has the RNC so desperate as to portray Bush's critics
as de facto allies of terrorists. But this strategy could
easily backfire. For the President to constantly invoke 9/11
is to focus on the single greatest failing of his adminstration:
after all, it happened on his watch. Not a single person has
been fired, demoted, or otherwise held responsible for letting
19 terrorists slip through our fingers and deliver a devastating
blow from which we are still reeling.
"It
would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into
this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever
known."
The
only proper answer to this is: go f*ck yourself, Mr. President.
You don't scare me one friggin' bit. Americans will never
be intimidated in this fashion: and, if they are, they will
cease being Americans.
By
raising this volatile issue in the context of a presidential
election, it seems to me that the RNC is ignoring some pretty
good advice regarding glass houses and those who live in them.
It was a Republican administration that dropped the ball on
9/11 which is why the White House is stonewalling
the 9/11 Commission.
And
this injection of neoconservative rhetoric into the campaign
seems potentially dangerous for the President. Does he really
want to make the extremism of the neoconservative ideologues
who dominate his administration the central issue of the campaign?
The RNC, by exhorting their followers to "call Congress" on
behalf of the policy of preemption, is in effect telling them
to demand new wars, more casualties, and fresh invasions.
Syria, Iran, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, and Egypt which of
these are now in the President's sights? That is the question
his opponents need to be asking.
NOTES
IN THE MARGIN
That
none of them are asking it is hardly surprising, considering
the Democratic field. Howard Dean, the alleged "antiwar" candidate,
and likely nominee, flatly
opposes withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, although he
has made some vague noises about the extremism of the policy
and those who made it. Things have gotten so bad that not
even the Libertarians are dependably anti-interventionist:
the Libertarian Party's upcoming national convention features
none other than Neal Boortz, the poor man's
Rush Limbaugh, who fulsomely supports this rotten war
on supposedly "libertarian" grounds. If this fourth-rate radio
ranter is a libertarian, by any coherent definition of the
term, then we truly have entered Bizarro World through a
rip in the space-time continuum, and the plain meaning of
words has not only been changed but inverted.
For
years, I've argued with anti-voting, anti-political libertarians,
who refused to join the Libertarian Party or to launch any
kind of political action on the grounds that such activity
is profoundly immoral, and itself amounts to coercion. This
position always seemed a mite too precious to be true, and
I always suspected that it served as a cover for posturing
pedants content to criticize from the sidelines without having
to lift a finger on behalf of liberty. Today, it still seems
like a suspiciously self-serving argument, but I'm less inclined
to believe in the practicality of political action.
Call
Congress? You mean those cowards who gave George W. Bush a
blank check, and then feigned surprise when he and his neocon
handlers cashed it?
Run
for President? Against candidates with unlimited sums of money
and complete control of the media?
Start
a third party? Impossible, unless laws that effectively ban third
parties by keeping them off
the ballot – are repealed. Given the current state of
ballot access laws, America's third parties are destined to
spin their wheels, going nowhere, until they are either absorbed
into one of the two major parties or else degenerate into
ineffectiveness.
I
can see that this column has veered off into territory I'd
rather not explore right now, except to say that the LP's
invitation to Boortz is an outrage. As a former member, one
who has a sentimental attachment to an organization that I
spent many years helping to build, I am saddened and sickened
by the spectacle of the only consistently anti-interventionist
party in America giving a platform to one of the country's
foremost warmongers. This is a slap in the face to those who
take the LP platform seriously, especially at this crucially
important time.
I
know that many of my readers are Libertarian Party members,
and many are activists who write me angry letters whenever
I diss the LP. I admire their loyalty, and I'm asking them
to do me a favor. Give me a reason to have hope in the Libertarian
Party. Write to the convention committee, and the National
LP headquarters, protesting this decision. Send email to torchess@austin.rr.com
–
Justin Raimondo
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