Thanks
R
At 03:48 PM 10/20/2001, you wrote:
>Terrorism Meets Reactionism
>
>by Michael Parenti
>
>When almost-elected president George W. Bush announced his war on
>terrorism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, he also was
>launching a campaign to advance the agenda of the reactionary Right at
>home and abroad. This includes rolling back an already mangled federal
>human services sector, reverting to deficit spending for the benefit of
>a wealthy creditor class, increasing the repression of dissent, and
>expanding to a still greater magnitude the budgets and global reach of
>the US military and other components of the national security state.
>Indeed, soon after the terrorist attacks, the Wall Street Journal ran an
>editorial (September 19), calling on Bush to quickly take advantage of
>the "unique political climate" to "assert his leadership not just on
>security and foreign policy but across the board." The editorial
>summoned the president to push quickly for more tax-rate cuts, expanded
>oil drilling in Alaska, fast-track authority for trade negotiations, and
>raids on the Social Security surplus.
>
>More for War
>
>Bush himself noted that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
>Pentagon offer an opportunity to strengthen America. As numerous
>conservatives spoke eagerly of putting the country on a permanent war
>footing, the president proudly declared the first war of the
>twenty-first century against an unspecified enemy to extend over an
>indefinite time frame. Swept along in the jingoist tide, that gaggle of
>political wimps known as the US Congress granted Bush the power to
>initiate military action against any nation, organization, or individual
>of his choosing, without ever having to proffer evidence to justify the
>attack. Such an unlimited grant of arbitrary powerin violation of
>international law, the UN charter, and the US Constitution--transforms
>the almost-elected president into an absolute monarch who can exercise
>life-and-death power over any quarter of the world. Needless to say,
>numerous other nations have greeted the presidents elevation to King of
>the Planet with something less than enthusiasm.
>
>And King of the Planet is how he is acting, bombing the already badly
>battered and impoverished country of Afghanistan supposedly to get
>Osama bin Laden. Unmentioned in all this is that US leaders have
>actively fostered and financed the rise of the Taliban, and have long
>refused to go after bin Laden. Meanwhile, the White House announces that
>other countries may be bombed at will and the war will continue for many
>years. And Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz urges that U.S.
>armed forces be allowed to engage in domestic law enforcement, a
>responsibility that has been denied the military since 1878.
>
>Under pressure to present a united front against terrorism, Democratic
>legislators are rolling over on the issue of military spending.
>Opposition to the so-called missile defense shield seems to have
>evaporated, as has willingness to preserve the Anti-Ballistic Missile
>Treaty. The lawmakers seem ready to come up with most of the $8.3
>billion that the White House says it needs to develop the missile
>defense shield and move forward with militarizing outer space. Congress
>is marching in lockstep behind Bush's proposal to jack up the military
>budget to $328.9 billion for 2002, a spending increase of $38.2 billion
>over the enacted FY 2001 budget. Additional funds have been promised to
>the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the
>Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other skulduggery units of the
>national security state.
>
>Having been shown that the already gargantuan defense budget was not
>enough to stop a group of suicidal hijackers armed with box cutters,
>Bush and Congress thought it best to pour still more money into the
>pockets of the military-industrial cartel. (Incidentally, the next
>largest arms budget is Russia's at $51 billion. If we add up the defense
>allocations of all the leading industrial nations, it comes to less than
>what the United States is already spending.)
>
>Many of the measures being taken to fight terrorism have little to do
>with actual security and are public relations ploys designed to (a)
>heighten the nation's siege psychology and (b) demonstrate that the
>government has things under control. So aircraft carriers are deployed
>off the coast of New York to guard the city; national guardsmen
>dressed in combat fatigues and armed with automatic weapons patrol the
>airports; sidewalk baggage check-ins and electronic tickets are
>prohibited supposedly to create greater security. Since increased
>security leads to greater inconvenience, it has been decided that
>greater inconvenience will somehow increase security or at least give
>the appearance of greater security.
>
>Then there is that biggest public relations ploy of all, the bombing of
>hillsides and villages in Afghanistan, leaving us with the reassuring
>image of Uncle Sam striking back at the terrorists. To stop the bombing,
>the Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden to a third country to stand
>trial, but this was rejected by the White House. It seems that
>displaying US retaliatory power and establishing a military presence in
>that battered country are the primary US goals, not apprehending bin
>Laden.
>
>Lost in all this is the fact that US leaders have been the greatest
>purveyors of terrorism throughout the world. In past decades they or
>their surrogate mercenary forces have unleashed terror bombing campaigns
>against unarmed civilian populations, destroying houses, schools,
>hospitals, churches, hotels, factories, farms, bridges, and other
>nonmilitary targets in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, the Congo,
>Panama, Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia,
>Iraq, Yugoslavia, and numerous other countries, causing death and
>destruction to millions of innocents. Using death squad terrorism US
>leaders have also been successful in destroying reformist and democratic
>movements in scores of countries. Of course hardly a word of this is
>uttered in the corporate media, leaving Bush and company free to parade
>themselves as the champions of peace and freedom.
>
>In time, the American people may catch wise that the reactionaries in
>the White House have not the slightest clue about how they are going to
>save us from future assaults. They seem more interested in and are
>certainly more capable of---taking advantage of terrorist attacks than
>in preventing them. They have neither the interest nor the will to make
>the kind of major changes in policy that would dilute the hatred so many
>people around the world feel toward US power. They are too busy handing
>the world over to the transnational corporate giants at the expense of
>people everywhere. And as of now, they have no intention of making a 180
>degree shift away from unilateral global domination and toward
>collective betterment and mutual development.
>
>Reactionary Offensive on the Home Front
>
>Several bills pending in Congress are designed to expand the definition
>of terrorism to include all but the most innocuous forms of protest. S
>1510, for example, treats terrorism as any action that might potentially
>put another person at risk. The bill gives the Feds power to seize the
>assets of any organization or individual deemed to be aiding or abetting
>terrorist activity. And it can be applied retroactively without a
>statue of limitations. A telephone interview I did with Radio Tehran in
>mid-October, trying to explain why US foreign policy is so justifiably
>hated around the world, might qualify me for detention as someone who is
>abetting terrorism. Other bills will expand the authority of law
>enforcement officials to use wiretaps, detain immigrants, subpoena email
>and Internet records, and infiltrate protest organizations. In keeping
>with the reactionary Rights agenda, the war against terrorism has
>become a cover for the war against democratic dissent and public sector
>services. The message is clear, America must emulate not Athens but
>Sparta.
>
>One of the White Houses earliest steps to protect the country from
>terrorist violence was to cut from the proposed federal budget the $1
>billion slated to assist little children who are victims of domestic
>abuse or abandonment. Certainly a nation at war has no resources to
>squander on battered kids or other such frills. Instead Congress passed
>a $40 billion supplemental, including $20 billion for recovery
>efforts, much of it to help clean up and repair New Yorks financial
>district.
>
>Bush then came up with an emergency package for the airlines, $5
>billion in direct cash and $10 billion in loan guarantees, with the
>promise of billions more. The airlines were beset by fiscal problems
>well before the September attacks. This bailout has little to do with
>fighting terrorism. The costs for greater airport security will mostly
>likely be picked up by the federal government. And taken together, the
>loss of four planes by United and American Airlines, the impending
>lawsuits by victims families, and higher insurance rates do not of
>themselves create industry-wide insolvency, and do not justify a
>multibillion dollar bailout. The real story is that once the industry
>was deregulated, the airlines began overcapitalizing without sufficient
>regard for earnings, the assumption being that profits would follow
>after a company squeezed its competitors to the wall by grabbing a
>larger chunk of the market. So the profligate diseconomies of free
>market corporate competition are once more picked up by the US
>taxpayerthis time in the name of fighting terrorism.
>
>Meanwhile some 80,000 airline employees were laid off in the several
>weeks after the terrorist attack, including ticket agents, flight
>attendants, pilots, mechanics, and ramp workers. They will not see a
>penny of the windfall reaped by the airline plutocrats and shareholders,
>whose patriotism does not extend to giving their employees a helping
>hand. At one point in the House debate, a frustrated Rep. Jay Inslee
>(D-Wash.) shouted out, "Why in this chamber do the big dogs always eat
>first?" Inslee was expressing his concerns about the 20,000 to 30,000
>Boeing workers who were being let go without any emergency allocation
>for their families. Sen. Peter G. Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) expressed a
>similar sentiment when casting the lone dissenting vote in the Senate
>against the airline bailout: "Congress should be wary of
>indiscriminately dishing out taxpayer dollars to prop up a failing
>industry without demanding something in return for taxpayers." It
>remained for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to explain on behalf
>of the Bush warmongers why the handout was necessary: "We need to look
>at transportation again as part of our national defense."
>
>The post-September 11 anti-terrorism hype is serving as an excuse to
>silence any opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
>Refuge. Our nation needs oil to maintain its strength and security, we
>hear. Against this manipulative message, the environment does not stand
>much of a chance. Likewise, US Trade representative Zoellick enlisted
>the terrorism hype in the White Houses campaign to surrender our
>democratic sovereignty to corporate dominated international trade
>councils. In a Washington Post op-ed (September 20) Zoellick charged
>that opposition to fast track and globalization was akin to supporting
>the terrorists. House Republican leaders joined in, claiming that trade
>legislation was needed to solidify the global coalition fighting
>terrorism. Here was yet another overreaching opportunistic attempt to
>wrap the flag around a reactionary special interest.
>
>Actually it is the free trade agreements that threaten our democratic
>sovereignty. All public programs and services that regulate or infringe
>in any way upon big-money corporate capitalism can be rolled back by
>industry-dominated oligarchic trade councils. Corporations can now tell
>governments---including our federal, state, and local governments---what
>public programs and regulations are acceptable or unacceptable. The
>reactionaries do not explain how giving private, nonelective,
>corporate-dominated trade councils a supranational supreme power to
>override our laws and our Constitution will help in the war against
>terrorism.
>
>Looting the Surplus
>
>The bailout to the airline industry is only part of the spending spree
>that the White House has in store for us. Bush now endorses a stimulus
>of $60 billion to $75 billion to lift the country out of recession by
>recharging business investment. He also has called for an additional
>$60 billion tax cut which, like previous tax reductions, would give
>meager sums to ordinary folks and lavish amounts to fat cats and
>plutocrats. Where is all this money for defense, war, internal security,
>airlines, rebuilding lower Manhattan, tax cuts, and recharging the
>economy coming from? Much of it is from the Social Security surplus
>fund which is why Bush is so eager to spend.
>
>It is a myth that conservatives are practitioners of fiscal
>responsibility. Rightwing politicians who sing hymns to a balanced
>budget have been among the wildest deficit spenders. In twelve years
>(1981-1992) the Reagan-Bush administrations increased the national debt
>from $850 billion to $4.5 trillion. By early 2000, the debt had climbed
>to over $5.7 trillion. The deficit is pumped up by two things: first,
>successive tax cuts to rich individuals and corporations---so that the
>government increasingly borrows from the wealthy creditors it should be
>taxing, and second, titanic military budgets. In twelve years, the
>Reagan-Bush expenditures on the military came to $3.7 trillion. In eight
>years, Bill Clinton spent over $2 trillion on the military.
>
>The payments on the national debt amount to about $350 billion a year,
>representing a colossal upward redistribution of income from working
>taxpayers to rich creditors. The last two Clinton budgets were the first
>to trim away the yearly deficit and produce a surplus. The first Bush
>budget also promised to produce a surplus, almost all of it from Social
>Security taxes. As a loyal representative of financial interests, George
>W., like his daddy, prefers the upward redistribution of income that
>comes with a large deficit. The creditor class, composed mostly of
>superrich individuals and financial institutions, wants this nation to
>be in debt to it--the same way it wants every other nation to be in debt
>to it.
>
>Furthermore, the reactionary enemies of Social Security have long argued
>that the fund will eventually become insolvent and must therefore be
>privatized (We must destroy the fund in order to save it.) But with
>Social Security continuing to produce record surpluses, this argument
>becomes increasingly implausible. By defunding Social Security, either
>through privatization or deficit spending or both, Bush achieves a key
>goal of the reactionary agenda.
>
>How Far the Flag?
>
>As of October 2001, almost-elected president Bush sported a 90 percent
>approval rating, as millions rallied around the flag. A majority support
>his military assault upon the people of Afghanistan, in the mistaken
>notion that this will stop terrorism and protect US security. But before
>losing heart, keep a few things in mind. There are millions of people
>who, though deeply disturbed by the terrible deeds of September 11, and
>apprehensive about future attacks, are not completely swept up in the
>reactionary agenda. Taking an approach that would utilize international
>law and diplomacy has gone unmentioned in the corporate media, yet 30
>percent of Americans support that option, compared to 54 percent who
>support military actions (with 16 percent undecided) according to a
>recent Gallup poll. Quite likely a majority of Americans would support
>an international law approach if they had ever heard it discussed and
>explained seriously.
>
>In any case, there are millions of people in the US who want neither
>protracted wars nor a surrender of individual rights and liberties, nor
>drastic cuts in public services and retirement funds. Tens of thousands
>have taken to the streets not to hail the chief but to oppose his war
>and his reactionary agenda. Even among the flag-waivers, support for
>Bush seems to be a mile wide and an inch deep. The media-pumped
>jingoistic craze that grips the United States today is mostly just that,
>a craze. In time, it grows stale and reality returns. One cannot pay the
>grocery bills with flags or pay the rent with vengeful slogans.
>
>My thoughts go back to another President Bush, George the first, who
>early in 1991 had an approval rating of 93 percent, and a fawning
>resolution from Congress hailing his unerring leadership. Yet within
>the year, he was soundly defeated for reelection by a garrulous governor
>from Arkansas. Those who believe in democracy must be undeterred in
>their determination to educate, organize, and agitate. In any case,
>swimming against the tide is always preferable to being swept over the
>waterfall.
>
>
>-------------------------------------------
>Macdonald Stainsby
>Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion.
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>----
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> --Bertholt Brecht