Nader has apparently come around on the Iraq sanctions issue, at long last. I also noticed in his acceptance speech a reference to thousands of US troops in Europe and Asia that could be demobilized because those countries have the ability to defend themselves (though this would seem to contradict the recent ravings about China by his trade deputy, Lori Wallach, who is now trumpeting Public Citizen's ties to the VFW and others). And in an interview on PBS the other night, he said he would stress as prez negotiations to stave off the use of violence - giving as examples the pre-WW2 situation with Japan and Germany. But when he talked about the Pentagon, he prattled on (as below) about lower level defense employees pining to improve efficiencies imposed on them by the top brass - again complete avoidance of the nature of US militarism. TS
Doug wrote: Tim Shorrock mentioned Nader's silence on foreign policy. He's come around on the sanctions issue, hasn't he? But here's a weird passage from his acceptance speech:
> Much of our foreign policy is driven by unsatiable corporate
>pressures to sell military hardware to both the Defense Department
>and directly to foreign dictators. This happens even if it goes
>against the interests of our country, taxpayers and the principle of
>prudently allocated public budgets. Weapons manufactures foist
>weapons systems onto the Pentagon, working through a PAC-greased,
>supine Congress. Lower level Pentagon analysts are left to fume in
>private, powerless to stop the waste and distortions of our policies.
To claim that weapons sales drive U.S. foreign policy is pretty weird, but then Ralph wouldn't let Tim write about the CIA in Multinational Monitor. Ralph seems able only to understand malfeasance, not the normal operations of capitalism and/or imperialism (words I'm sure he'd frown at, just like he does at the word "patriarchy," which is just "sociological gobbledygook.") And sure there's a lot of legal corruption in the arms-buying process, but they don't buy the stuff only for that reason - if you want to rule the world, you've got to have the army to enforce it. A phrase like "distortions of our policies" assumes that there's some inner core of goodness being corrupted by a bad process.
Doug