BULLDOZER WITHOUT BRAKES

The architects of the Iraq war are firmly in the saddle. The democrats are smiled at as a “national minority”

By Konrad Ege

[This article originally published in: Freitag 49, 11/21/2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.freitag.de/2004/49/04490701.php.]




The republican election winners are enjoying their triumph. President George W. Bush consolidates his power. Whoever did not join a hundred-percent in the past four years must leave or voluntarily resign. Absolute loyalty seems to be the main criterion for a post in the second term. Colin Powell is gone. He had at least allowed the illusion to the friends of the US abroad that there was “another” voice in the government. Condoleezza Rice, the former security advisor who sang the loudest Amen in the hymn to the Iraq war, will be his heir. The Washington bulldozer now runs practically without any brakes.

Nostalgia was back in fashion last week when Bill Clinton opened his Presidential Library in the pouring rain in Arkansas. Even George W. Bush came and was full of praise for his predecessor in retirement. Clinton showed his appreciation. Bush was a “good man” like the defeated democratic candidate John Kerry. Kerry and Bush saw the world with different eyes. In Washington, Tom Daschle said goodbye. The leader of the democrats in the Senate defeated in the November 2 election appealed to his party to seek a “common center”.

NOTHING CRITICAL ABOUT FALLUDSHA

One seeks in vain for politicians in the Democratic party leadership who understood November 2 as the impetus to a new beginning. Daschel’s successor is Senator Harry Reid who often allied with the republicans – in votes on the Iraq war. Half of the democratic representatives voted for the new budget that prescribes social and environmental cuts. Nothing critical was said about the destruction of Falludsha. Joseph Biden, the number one democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, even found positive words for Bush’s nomination of Alberto Gonzales – former legal advisor in the White House – as the new Attorney General. This is the Gonzales who drafted legal justifications for Guantanamo, described the Geneva Convention as “antiquated” and “quaint” and helped make torture socially acceptable. In 2002 Gonzales issued a memorandum that explained torture is only torture when it produces pain “comparable in intensity with pain from a grievous injury like organ failure, impairment of bodily functions or death.” Gonzales already made a career in Texas as an advisor of Governor Bush. At that time he was responsible for pleas for clemency regarding the death penalty. However the boss didn’t want to hear anything about grace and Gonzales found no reasons for grace.


The architects of the Iraq war are firmly in the saddle. The new CIA director Peter Goss makes a clean break in the CIA where some civil servants raised doubts. He expects government employees to “support the policy of the government.” High-ranking representatives of the agency resigned. The republicans are also consolidating their power in the House of Representatives. They are cautiously abolishing the regulation that official party leaders must resign in the case of criminal proceedings. This protects party leader Tom “The Hammer” DeLay who will soon be indicted for illegal money- and election transactions.

DeLay said broadmindedly he “understands” the “frustration” of the Democratic party that must accustom itself to its status as a “national minority”. In a rightwing publication, the plea for unity is more biting. “A lying traitor lost and a sincere patriot won” in the election, a pensioned admiral wrote in free republic. The people showed up the leftwing media, liberal Hollywood and the CBS newscaster Dan Rather. They belong in hell. Television preacher Jerry Falwell said the moment had come to reanimate his “moral majority” as a “coalition for values and faith”.

According to a CNN poll in the middle of November, 60 percent of Americans had a “positive” opinion of president Bush who proved his manliness. A study of the US Department of Agriculture in November revealed that “twelve million American families” worried about their daily bread for financial reasons. Bush’s blatant effort to confirm European preconceptions of the “cowboy” once and for all triggered little outrage. 3.9 million American families suffer hunger occasionally. The minimum wage in the US has not increased since 1997. However the president plans more tax relief.