PAUL KRUGMAN: George W. Queeg

[kevinmc]

This is an old one .... but it's a good one.

March 14, 2003

Aboard the U.S.S. Caine, it was the business with the strawberries that finally convinced the doubters that something was amiss with the captain. Is foreign policy George W. Bush's quart of strawberries?

Over the past few weeks there has been an epidemic of epiphanies. There's a long list of pundits who previously supported Bush's policy on Iraq but have publicly changed their minds. None of them quarrel with the goal; who wouldn't want to see Saddam Hussein overthrown? But they are finally realizing that Mr. Bush is the wrong man to do the job. And more people than you would think -- including a fair number of people in the Treasury Department, the State Department and, yes, the Pentagon -- don't just question the competence of Mr. Bush and his inner circle; they believe that America's leadership has lost touch with reality.

If that sounds harsh, consider the debacle of recent diplomacy -- a debacle brought on by awesome arrogance and a vastly inflated sense of self-importance.

Mr. Bush's inner circle seems amazed that the tactics that work so well on journalists and Democrats don't work on the rest of the world. They've made promises, oblivious to the fact that most countries don't trust their word. They've made threats. They've done the aura-of-inevitability thing -- how many times now have administration officials claimed to have lined up the necessary votes in the Security Council? They've warned other countries that if they oppose America's will they are objectively pro-terrorist. Yet still the world balks.......

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/05/paul-krugman-george-w-queeg.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. March 14, 2003. It seems more like three decades ago than 3 years ago.

(Vietnam deja vu?).

One striking thing about this prescient article--with the lives of about 100,000 innocent Iraqis about to be snuffed (according to the British doctors report--the estimated casualties from the initial bombing alone)--it reminds us how much dissent and despair there was, inside and outside of the US government, about the attack on Iraq.

And how it all meant nothing. The dissent of our allies. The dissent in the foreign policy establishment. The dissent of the generals. And, God knows, the dissent of the American people, 56% of whom opposed the war on Iraq from the beginning (Feb. 03).

THIS is what we MUST deal with. How could this awful thing happen, with so much internal and external dissent?

What, specifically, went wrong with our democratic system, that no one could stop this war juggernaut? We need to think practically, and strategically, and assign blame--whether in a "truth and reconciliation" process, or a punitive process--and devise strong remedies.

I think the driver was war profiteers, and the remedy is cutting the military budget by about 90%--down to a true defensive posture. No more wars of choice!

Unthinkable? Why is it unthinkable? What is this huge military machine FOR--except aggressive war? When was the last time it actually DEFENDED us?

Eisenhower warned about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" and of militarism. Now the "military-industrial" complex has gone out of control, and is MANUFACTURING phony wars to feed the beast.

Put aside oil. Put aside Islamic jihadists. Put aside Christian nutballs. Put aside NeoCons. Put aside Israel. I think all of this is neither here nor there to war profiteers and arms dealers. They will create war wherever it's possible--wherever ideology, resource greed, religious conflict, and/or willing fascist warmongers of any kind create potential conditions for war, the war profiteers will be at work, exacerbating conflict and propagandizing for armed conflict. And now, of course, we have the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--big conglomerates with subsidiary interests in armaments and in resources--doing their part. And if we look at our society, we find a general investment in war industries, involving millions of investors, as well as many workers dependent on big military budgets and war. It is an octopus. It touches us everywhere, with many poisonous tentacles.

It's time to end this. Definitively. Our war machine is a standing temptation to fascists, and that will not change until the war machine is dismantled. We may, indeed, need some defensive capability--given that war profiteers and arms dealers rule the world right now. Invasion of the US is hardly a likely possibility--but we wouldn't want to tempt anyone, in this highly over-armed world--by having no defense. But defense is one thing. Funding an aggressive war machine is quite another. My guestimate: 10% of the current military expenditure is all that is needed. As for "terrorists," we've always known that that is a police matter, not a military matter. War MAKES terrorists; it doesn't prevent terrorism. And war makes the warmongers INTO terrorists. That's what the US government has become--with the Bush Junta and its colluders in charge--the biggest terrorist on earth.

How do we dismantle the aggressive war machine?

Priority no. 1: vote counting that everyone can see and understand.

The bloated military machine made George Bush. Not the other way around. But what kept Bush in power? I think it's staring us in the face. In the same month that the Anthrax Congress gave away its war powers to Bush, it passed the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002, appropriating $3.9 billion for the fast-track conversion of our election system to electronic voting run on "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations.

Why is this staring us in the face, and still we can't see it (or many can't)? Because it suited the Corporate Democrats--and War Democrats--to privatize our elections, and conduct them under a veil of corporate secrecy. More Democrats in Congress voted for secret corporate vote counting than voted for the Iraq War Resolution. Secret vote counting has many purposes--not just to shove a war down the throats of the American people, but also to shove Corporate Rule down their throats. Theoretically, as a sovereign people, we have the power to pull corporate charters, dismantle corporations and seize their assets for the common good, or at the least, strongly regulate them in the public interest. Ask Americans, do they want the environment protected, for instance, and about 80% of them will say yes. How to stop them from implementing strong environmental regulation? Most Americans are workers. Ask them if labor should receive a living wage, decent benefits, workplace protection, and the right to form a union. Most will say yes. How to bust the will of the majority on labor rights? Ask most Americans if they favor the outsourcing of US manufacturing and services to cheap labor markets abroad? My guess is that you'd get 80% to 90% saying no. How to do this anyway--outsource all the jobs--a treasonous act?

Have private rightwing Bushite corporations "counting" all the votes under a veil of corporate secrecy. And act dumb when anyone challenges that as unconscionable, unreasonable and mind-bogglingly anti-democratic. 'Oh, dear, we can't undo it now. It's all bought and paid for. It's the way things are. We spent $3.9 billion+ to make it seem like the way things are, real fast.'

And if you expect the new Democratic Congress to do anything meaningful to fix this, think again. The "trade secret" code stays. Oh, they may give us a "paper trail." Good luck getting recounts. And a lousy, stinking 2% audit. Billions more to Diebold/ES&S, to go on putting a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales"--or, really, any percentage they need--for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists, while evading detection. (A 2% audit is exactly what it appears to be: 98% of the votes will never be seen by human eyes.) The American people are thus gravely handicapped as to achieving any real reform. We can out vote the machines, in some cases, if we get mad enough. That's what happened in '06. But with 75% of the American people opposing the Iraq War and wanting it ended, all we could achieve is a 50/50 Congress--packed with "Blue Dog" Democrats (traitor Democrats) to blockade change. Diebold/ES&S control the results of the primaries as well as the general elections. Add this to the control that money exercises, and you don't really have a democracy at all. You have a "military-industrial complex" tyranny.

We need to re-build our democracy from the ground up. We need to START with local registrars, county election officials and state election officials and legislators. That $3.9 electronic voting boondoggle inflicted a lot of corruption. To get around it, probably we should demand, a) a ballot for every vote, and b) COUNT the ballots and post the results BEFORE any electronics are used. We don't have to claw them from their shiny new election theft machines. Just get them to count the goddamned votes. A reasonable demand.

The war was possible because, coming down the line WITH the war, was electronic voting run on secret code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations. The remedy against the antiwar movement was conceived at the same time as the war itself. The OTHER method of election theft--vast, illegal suppression of black and other minority voters--was ALSO winked at by the Democratic Party leadership of that period. You can't tell me that they were not collusive. And the $3.9 billion+ greased the wheels.

This, too, is staring us in the face. Our own party wanted the war, and wanted Bush/Cheney to stay in power, so that they could end up looking "progressive" while Bush/Cheney took us over the cliff to outright fascism. Fascism-lite. Or fascism-brutal. Take your pick. The classic definition of fascism is the cementing of the state with private corporate power. That's what we have. The Democratic Party's support for Diebold/ES&S "trade secret" vote counting is the tipoff. And THAT is the point of vulnerability--because it is the newest method of Corporate predator control, and it is so blatantly unreasonable--and it also shows us the path back to democracy. That is the seat of our power as a people: our right to vote. We must restore its full potency with transparent vote counting. Then and only then can real reform be implemented.