By Jack A. Smith
Since Sept. 11, the U.S. left has been warning that the Bush administration was exploiting the tragedy to pursue a right-wing agenda at home, including restraints on civil liberties, and a policy of war and empire-building abroad.
Now, as the nation prepares for next month's commemoration of the first anniversary of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the full implications of Washington's war on terrorism are emerging.
As the pieces begin to complete the puzzle, it appears the left may have underestimated the extent to which the Bush administration would be able to gravitate to the far right. It may likewise have misjudged how far to the center and center-right the Democratic Party was drifting during its dozen or so years as captive to the Democratic Leadership Council. This has rendered the Democrats virtually neutralized in the face of George Bush's most dangerously reactionary domestic, foreign and military maneuvers.
What follows is an analysis of Bush administration initiatives, first in domestic affairs, then in foreign and military matters. In combination, these proposals and programs constitute a serious challenge to democracy in America and to peace in the world.
Domestically, the Bush administration is using the war on terrorism as a pretext to construct a national security state with considerably increased police and military powers accompanying sharp abrogations in democratic liberties. President Bush's principal means of obtaining public support -- which remains relatively high -- has been to greatly exaggerate the threat of terrorism, applying a veneer of red, white and blue hyperpatriotism to all his programs, and to lie about his motives and goals. Unwilling to appear one whit less patriotic and God-fearing than the Commander-in-Chief, the opposition party has been supportive of several ultra-conservative administration initiatives, such as the USA Patriot Act, though it has been sharply critical recently on the economy and corporate scandals in hopes of gaining congressional seats in November. Here are a few of the Bush administration's less savory stated goals or programs:
(1) For nearly 125 years, the U.S. has safeguarded the supremacy of civilian rule with the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the armed forces from a role in domestic civilian law enforcement and in other areas of civil life. In recent months, however, the White House has been orchestrating a review of this tradition in the name of insuring "wartime" domestic security against "the terrorist enemy." Lawyers in the Justice and Defense Departments have been instructed to analyze the pros and cons of the 1878 law in view of today's security requirements. On July 17, the New York Times reported that Air Force Gen. Ralph Eberhart, designated chief of the newly formed Northern Command, "said he would favor changes in existing law to give greater domestic powers to the military to protect the country against terrorist strikes." The general, who was obviously under White House instructions to make this statement, was directly quoted as saying, "We should always be reviewing things like Posse Comitatus and other laws if we think it ties our hands in protecting the American people." Of course, the formation of the Northern Command itself is an aspect of the militarization of American society.
(2) The Justice Department recently decided to remove certain restraints imposed on the FBI in the mid-'70s by Congress in an effort to halt decades of unbridled spying on left and progressive organizations and individuals during the agency's COINTELPRO period. Likewise, Congress just permitted the termination of similar restraints against the CIA, imposed as recently as 1995. For example, CIA station chiefs were no longer allowed to hire murders, crooks and others of similar disrepute as informants and agents unless they received case-by-case approval from headquarters. This "guideline" was officially rescinded July 18.
(3) The House on July 26 approved -- and the Senate is expected to do so with some changes in September -- the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which transfers seven different agencies into one super department. Included are the Coast Guard, Customs Service, Border Patrol, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration and the border inspection division of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The well-funded Homeland Security Dept., in combination with powers already (or soon to be) granted to the Justice Department, the Northern Command, the possibility of a weakened Posse Comitatus Act, and enhanced security and police authority at the state and local level, portends the establishment of a domestic policing apparatus unparalleled in American history. In this connection, the House bill exempts private corporations involved with the Homeland Security office from Freedom of Information laws, protecting them -- and their storehouse of industrial knowledge and information about the nation's infrastructure -- from public scrutiny. This latter may face a challenge from the Democrat-controlled Senate, as undoubtedly will provisions allowing the new department to virtually ignore union and civil service protections (see article, Unions Ambushed, below).
(4) The USA Patriot Act, passed by a hysterical and cowed Congress in October, curbs political dissent under the guise of protecting the country from domestic terrorism; greatly broadens the government's ability to conduct secret searches without judicial review, subjects immigrants to draconian treatment including indefinite detention, military tribunals, disclosure of attorney-client confidences and the like; and creates a national DNA database.
(5) The Justice Department is about to launch a pilot project in 10 cities called the Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), which is part of the USA Freedom Corps and Citizens Corps that President Bush called for in his State of the Union address. The program is designed to deputize a million or more strategically placed workers as voluntary spies on their fellow citizens. Especially sought are truck drivers, employees of utility companies, postal workers and others similarly situated to observe and report "suspicious" activities as they make their rounds. The White House sought to insert the TIPS system into the Homeland Security Department, but House Republicans -- under pressure from the libertarian and small-government sector of the right wing -- eliminated it. The Senate may do the same. In any event, the Justice Department intends to proceed with the program, which is due to start in late summer or early fall. (The government website for the two corps and TIPS is www.citizencorps.gov/)
(6) Already on the books, but not yet implemented, are scores of Executive Orders -- not subject to congressional oversight -- signed by various Presidents over the years. All they await is a national emergency of sufficient magnitude for a sitting President to invoke them. Such orders include the right for the government to seize and control the communications media; the right to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision; the authorization for the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons; and the right of FEMA "to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institutions" in a national emergency. A national emergency does in fact exist -- President Bush declared it so by proclamation Sept. 14 -- although the various executive powers have not been invoked.
(7) Space considerations preclude more than a brief mention of such additional threats to traditional civil liberties as the following: The CIA is poised to play an unprecedented role in domestic surveillance and investigations; issuance of a national identity card of one type or another remains a future possibility (this was included in the Homeland Security bill but eliminated, mainly by the Republican House leaders); the Bush administration evidently has established a "secret government" in the aftermath of Sept. 11, about which the public knows little; mass roundups of immigrants after the terror attacks may be a prelude to eventual roundups of citizens in times of national emergency.
In foreign and military matters, the world's only superpower, under the direction of the Republican government with the support of its Democratic "opposition," obviously seeks to extend U.S. hegemony throughout the world and appears to conceive of itself as the center of an American empire answerable only unto itself. Here is a portion of the Bush administration's international record in the last several months, almost entirely with the acquiescence of the Democrats. None of these actions has been the subject of national political debate or a discourse between the government and the governed:
(1) The Pentagon has been ordered to prepare for the command to launch a preemptive war against Iraq, although that country is innocent of complicity in the Sept. 11 events and absolutely no evidence has been presented to substantiate White House allegations that the regime of President Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction and is prepared to use them to attack the United States.
(2) Several additional countries have been targeted for possible future attack -- especially North Korea and Cuba, which have been accused without a hint of evidence of likewise possessing weapons of mass destruction intended to cripple the United States.
(3) The U.S. not only militarily ousted the government of Afghanistan, but selected the new "democratically elected" government as well; meanwhile, Washington is using the war in Afghanistan to secure permanent military bases throughout Central Asia -- an obvious threat to China -- and in preparation for a move to gain control over massive oil deposits in the southern sector of the former USSR.
(4) In Israel and Palestine, President Bush has openly joined with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the suppression of Palestinian aspirations for independence and self-determination.
(5) The Bush administration has arrogated to itself the right to launch first-strike nuclear weapons against any country it pleases (after unilaterally demolishing the ABM treaty).
(6) In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Pentagon has increased its involvement in the Colombian civil war, while the White House supported the recent foiled anti-democratic coup in Venezuela, is attempting to secure the victory for the right-wing candidate in Bolivia's election in early August, and has stipulated it will veto legislation easing the travel ban and/or sanctions against Cuba.
(7) Diplomatically, the U.S. government has decided that it is powerful enough to disregard the will of the United Nations and the desires of a great majority of countries as it turns its back on the new International Criminal Court and dozens of treaties and proposals to prevent an ecological catastrophe, create a more secure and democratic world order, and relieve growing poverty in the former colonized world.
All of these dangerous right-wing domestic, foreign, and military initiatives are predicated on the supposition that the United States is involved in a war. In fact, the U.S. is not at war in any rational sense of the word. Three symbolic buildings (military and financial) in two major cities were destroyed or damaged by a handful of fanatics belonging to a relatively small terror network, causing some 3,000 tragic deaths. There were any number of ways to respond to the outrage of Sept. 11 that would have been more successful in undermining the terrorists than the measures Washington has taken, not the least being to critically examine the underlying roots of the widespread antagonism throughout the world to the policies of the U.S. government of the last 50 years. Reasonable security measures and reliance on international policing to close down the network were in order -- but the war against Afghanistan was a travesty that produced little, if anything, in terms of crushing Al Qaeda.
As for the administration's war plans against Iraq and other countries, they will do nothing to dispatch terrorism and everything to extend Washington's political, economic and military empire. The repressive apparatus being put into place at enormous expense throughout the nation will do far more to subvert the liberties of the American people and the good things about U.S. society than it will protect the masses of people from a few terrorists.
The Bush administration has traveled farther to the right these last 20 months than its most severe critics predicted. A large part of the reason was Sept. 11, which resurrected a swiftly decaying presidency with a vengeance. Another part was the failure of the Democrats to function as an opposition party (this at least exposes the two-party system as the one party with two somewhat different faces that it always was, but it is little consolation at this stage). Another part, of course, was the weakness of the international left, which virtually imploded with the USSR and the global socialist movement over a decade ago, and without the existence of which the U.S. now feels free to bully the world.
Considering that the majority of the American people, due to a lifetime of governmental, societal and media manipulation, are in thrall to the notion that the U.S. is engaged in a major patriotic war worthy of a $400 billion defense budget and a $60 billion homeland defense effort, arbitrary wars and the suspension of some civil liberties, what is to be done to reverse the rightward trend?
There's no easy solution, of course. There are some remaining liberal Democrats and Greens that progressives will vote for in Congressional elections, and visiting the voting booth in November may be useful in such cases. But no one thinks supporting a few liberal or Green candidates can impede Bush's endless wars strategy or his quick-march to the right.
The working people of the United States have the power to stop the wars and halt the rightward trend. But they have to become aware of what's really going on despite a maze of propaganda from official sources, and get organized into opposition. That's where the left and progressive movements can make a strong contribution, if they are willing to reject sectarianism, abjure red-baiting, and unite in action for a common objective despite differences in outlook.
Progressive and left forces are small and extremely distant from the levers of power, but that's often been the case -- and yet there have been times when the broad left has made important advances. The movement against the Vietnam war, which also began under difficult circumstances, is a classic example. While not large, our forces are experienced, fairly savvy, and dedicated. Our real strength, in these circumstances, is through intense activism with a strong, radical and uncompromising demand for peace, social justice, civil liberties and equality, reaching masses of people through rallies, marches and public meetings, in letters to the editor and discussions with family, friends and fellow workers, in strengthening the left's media, in volunteering time and money for good causes, and joining organizations that are willing to speak truth to power with deeds as well as words.
If the left and progressive movements do not work together on a mission of accelerated activism to beat back the Bush attack, who will?