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Video: Alternative
Views
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
Views
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Monday, September 30, 2002
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More on America's Shameful Lack of Universal Health Insurance
New Census Report Shows Health Uninsured Continues to Rise
The number of Americans without health insurance climbed by 1.4 million last year to 41.2 million as fewer people received medical coverage from employers, according to U.S. Census estimates released Monday...The sharp increase from the year 2000, reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, serves to intensify congressional efforts to help the uninsured afford coverage. ... Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the increasing number of uninsured "should be a loud wake-up call for Congress and the president. "These new figures make it even more imperative for us to deal with the worsening tragedy of the uninsured,"
Where, pray tell, is Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism?" I notice that Bush's home state, Texas, is among the states with the highest rate of the uninsured. Where was Compassionate Conservatism while he was governor of that State? Yes, I know that the Dems and their opponents can't agree on how to achieve health coverage. The Republicans want the private sector to do it. The Dems want a governmental approach. The is one driving motive, however, that definitely is lacking: National commitment among the population at large.
Last week, we posted this report on a consortium of states joining together to do something about health insurance coverage: A recent government-sponsored study in California concludes that government-operated universal health care would cost less than the present system. Studies in Massachusetts also show big savings.
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Sunday, September 29, 2002
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Why? Because We Can
Great satire by Maureen Dowd in NYT of Bush's policy of preemptive strikes, regime change, and anticipatory self-defense that I critiqued in detail yesterday in BlogLeft
Why? Because We Can
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Independent News
Gigantic anti-war protest in London, only Bush gang really wants a war in Iraq
Independent News
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Contradictions of a Superpower
Slate's columnist, Robert Wright, takes a second look at the recently issued Presidential document, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America
Initially, Wright notes, the focus of reporters was on two controversial doctrines: first, "preserving overwhelming American military superiority indefinitely" then, "pre-emptively attacking nations deemed threatening rather than relying on traditional deterrence." Other content, "like fostering peace, prosperity and democracy around the world," largely went unmentioned.
But the narrow focus of the press may have done the president a favor. The more broadly you view the new national security strategy, the clearer its contradictions become...
Nobility is a nice feature in a president, but not as nice as wisdom. Declaring yourself global sheriff would in any age be generous, since you're bearing a burden that should be shared by all who benefit from global civilization. But in an age when hatred abroad morphs easily into mass murder on your own soil, the line between generosity and martyrdom begins to blur.
And if you do insist on being chief law enforcer in such an age, you should at least try to make sure that the world believes the laws are fair and fairly enforced. Yet the Bush administration, with its limited regard for both international law and world opinion, is making America not just sheriff, but judge, jury and executioner. This strategy could lead to a number of outcomes, but national security isn't among the more likely.
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Firing Back From Iraq
Another analytical piece in today's NYT adds fuel to Friedman's cautionary account of "Day 3" associated with a unilateral attack on Iraq:
The Iraqis could not have missed the testimony of three retired four-star American generals who issued a series of cautions in testimony to Congress this week.
Among them was Gen. John P. Hoar, who noted that Mr. Hussein appeared to be preparing for a defense of Baghdad. General Hoar said he feared a "nightmare scenario" of six Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and six additional tank divisions ringed by several thousand antiaircraft guns.
"The result would be high casualties on both sides, as well as in the civilian community," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "U.S. forces will certainly prevail, but at what cost? And at what cost as the rest of the world watches while we win and have military rounds exploding in densely populated Iraqi neighborhoods?" he asked.
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Tom Friedman's Take on George Bush's "Wild and Crazy Unilaterlist Rhetoric"
Last week I posted an item on Tom Friedman's visit to Tacoma and his interview on the local PBS outlet. His theme then was the wrong-headedness of "a war of choice". For Friedman, at least Afghanistan was "a war of no choice": because of 9/11, "millions of Americans would have volunteered to fight there". Today, in his NYT Op Ed, Friedman articulates his cautionary analysis of Bush's scheme to attack Iraq. He labels it "a war of choice":
The success of any war in Iraq all depends on what happens on Day 3. That is, on Day 1, the U.S. military will topple the Iraqi regime. On Day 2, the Iraqi people will throw rice on U.S. troops for liberating them. Everything depends on what happens on Day 3 — when, having broken Iraq, we own Iraq [and thus would have an obligation to engage in "nation-building," a doctrine that, during a debate with Al Gore in the last Presidential campaign, Bush declared he definitely wanted to avoid.] ...
Bottom line: Iraq is a war of choice, not a war of no choice, and it is a war of choice that will require a lot of nation-building if it is to produce a more peaceful Iraq. If the Bush team can enlist the backing of the U.N. and key allies, there is a real chance that such an operation can be successful. If the U.S. can't do that, it should keep Saddam in his box through deterrence and wait for a better strategic environment. Because launching a war of choice in Iraq, with an ambivalent U.S. public and no allies, could make for a frustrating, dangerous and endless Day 3.
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Saturday, September 28, 2002
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Will the Real Trent Lott Please Stand Up
Today's Washington Post has this piece by Minnesota Senator Mark Drayton on Republican Senator Trent Lott's changing positions on invading Iraq:
After Saddam Hussein bounced U.N. inspectors in January 1998, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said on Feb. 12: "I had hoped that we could get to the point where we could pass a resolution this week on Iraq. But we really developed some physical problems, if nothing else. . . . So we have decided that the most important thing is not to move so quickly but to make sure that we have had all the right questions asked and answered and that we have available to us the latest information about what is . . . happening with our allies in the world."...
In 1998, Lott was Majority Leader, because the Senate was in Republican control. Now, as Minority Leader, and in the party of a President driven by a thirst for war, Lott has made a "180" turn, and chastises the Democratic Majority leader for dragging his heals on passage of a resolution to justify attacking Iraq.
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A Citizen Endorses the 'TIPS' Program
Letter in Bellingham (WA) Herald 9/28/02: "Reader set to turn himself in for suspicious activity"
Thanks for printing the picture of Bellingham's new U.S. Government TIPS sign with the 800 number that tells how we should spy on each other and report suspicious and dangerous people. I've decided to report myself as suspicious. I have an interest in atomic weapons and one July Fourth, upon tying six firecrackers together and lighting it off, I commented to those around me: "Let's get a couple packages, tie them together and make an atomic bomb." And "Dr. Strangelove" is my favorite movie!
While I was an undergraduate, I had friends in the Cosmopolitan Club from Iran, Iraq, Japan, Canada, Venezuela, Bolivia and Turkey.
Further, I have souvenirs from travel in a Muslim country. I also have a history of the Third Reich and biographies of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin and some books on China - including Mao's "Little Red Book." Such titles might not bother U:S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, of course, as those dictators didn't just urge people to spy on their neighbors, but required it. I also have a relative living in the woods of Montana who is a member of a national group that promotes firearms and dangerous weapons. He's a member of the, well, let's not disclose it here, but it has three words in the name and starts with National.
Worse, I have learned a great deal about explosives, how to blow up buildings, hate, terrorism and; indeed, war and aggression in a publication that I get daily - The Bellingham Herald.
[A Citizen of Bellingham (Wa)]
Bellingham (WA)
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Agency disavows report on Iraq arms -- The Washington Times
Conservative Washington Times posts a DEVASTATING critique of the LIES that Bush administration has circulating regarding Iraqi possession of WMD; surprisingly, the article opens with an attack on GWB himself....
Agency disavows report on Iraq arms -- The Washington Times
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Preemptive Strikes, Permanent War, and the New American Empire: An Orwellian Nightmare
In a speech to West Point cadets on June 1, 2002 George W. Bush proclaimed a new “doctrine” that the U.S. would strike first against enemies. It was soon apparent that this was a major shift in U.S. military policy, replacing the Cold War doctrine of containment and deterrence with a new policy of preemptive strikes, one that could be tried out in Iraq. U.S. allies were extremely upset with this shift in U.S. policy and move toward an aggressive U.S. unilateralism. In an article “Bush to Formalize a Defense Policy of Hitting First,” David E. Sanger wrote in the New York Times (June 17, 2002) that: “The process of including America's allies has only just begun, and administration officials concede that it will be difficult at best. Leaders in Berlin, Paris and Beijing, in particular, have often warned against unilateralism. But Mr. Bush's new policy could amount to ultimate unilateralism, because it reserves the right to determine what constitutes a threat to American security and to act even if that threat is not judged imminent.”
After a summer of debate on the necessity of the U.S. going to war against Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, on August 26, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney applied the new preemptive strike and unilateralist doctrine to Iraq, arguing: “What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness… Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network or murderous dictator or the two working together constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action.” Cheney was responding to many former generals and high-level members of the earlier Bush administration who had reservations against the sort of unilateralist U.S. attack against Iraq that hawks in the Bush administration were urging.
Indeed, Bush and others in his circle regularly described Terror War as World War Three, while Donald Rumsfeld said that it could last over fifty years, as long as the Cold War, and Dick Cheney, speaking like a true militarist, said it could go on for a “long, long time, perhaps indefinitely.” Such an Orwellian nightmare could plunge the world into a new millennium of escalating war with unintended consequences and embroil the U.S. in countless wars, normalizing war as conflict resolution and creating countless new enemies for the would-be American hegemon.
On September 20, 2002 it was apparent that the hawks’ position in the Bush administration had triumphed, at least on the level of official military doctrine, when the Bush administration released a document signaling some of the most important and far-ranging shifts in U.S. foreign and military policy since the end of the Cold War. Titled “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” the 33-page report outlined a new doctrine of U.S. military supremacy, providing justifications for the U.S. to undertake unilateral and preemptive strikes in the name of “counterproliferation.” This clumsy and totally Orwellian concept was offered as a replacement for the concept of nonproliferation and in effect would legitimate unilateral destruction of a country’s presumed weapons of mass destruction. The document, in effect, renounced global security, multilateralism, and rule by international law that had informed U.S. thinking since World War Two and that appeared to be a consensus among Western nations during the era of globalization.
The Bush administration’s language of “preemptive strikes, “regime change,” and “anticipatory self-defense,” is purely Orwellian, presenting euphemisms for raw military aggression. Critics assailed the new “strike first, ask questions later” policy, the aggressive unilateralism, and dangerous legitimation of preemptive strikes. Israel, Pakistan, Russia, China, and lesser powers had already used the so-called “Bush doctrine” and “war against terrorism” to legitimate attacks on domestic and external foes and there were dangers that it could legitimate a proliferation of war and make the world more unstable and aggressive. As William Galston states:
A global strategy based on the new Bush doctrine of preemption means the end of the system of international institutions, laws and norms that we have worked to build for more than half a century. What is at stake is nothing less than a fundamental shift in America's place in the world. Rather than continuing to serve as first among equals in the postwar international system, the United States would act as a law unto itself, creating new rules of international engagement without the consent of other nations. In my judgment, this new stance would ill serve the long-term interests of the United States. [William Galston, “Perils of Preemptive War,” The American Prospect (Vol. 13, Issue 17, Sept. 23, 2002).
The Bush administration doctrine of preemptive strikes could indeed unleash a series of wars that would plunge the world into the sort of nightmare militarism and totalitarian sketched out in George Orwell’s 1984. The Bush policy is certainly highly barbaric, taking the global community to a Darwinist battleground where decades of international law and military prudence were put aside in perhaps the most dangerous foreign policy doctrine that had ever appeared in U.S. history. It portends a militarist future and era of perpetual war in which a new militarism could generate a cycle of unending violence and retribution, such as was evident in the Israel and Palestine conflict.
Around the same time that the Bush administration was pushing its new strategic doctrine and seeking to apply it in a war against Iraq, a 2000 report circulated titled “Rebuilding American Defense: Strategies, Forces and Resources for A New American Century.” Drawn up by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC) for a group that now comprises the rightwing of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, the document clearly spelled out a plan for U.S. world hegemony grounded in U.S. military dominance of the world and control of the Persian Gulf region and its oil supplies. Its upfront goals were a “Pax Americana” and U.S. domination of the world during the new millennium. The document shows that core members of the Bush administration had longed envisaged taking military control of the Gulf region, with the PNAC text stating: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
[ An article by Neil Mackay, “Bush planned Iraq ‘regime change’ before becoming president” (The Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002), widely circulated through the Internet, called attention to the sort of lunatic global strategic vision that informed Bush administration policy. The 2000 plan is available at http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf. ]
The PNAC document argues for “maintaining global U.S. pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” The vision is long-ranged urging U.S. domination of the Gulf “as far into the future as possible.” It also calls for the U.S. to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars” as a “core mission.” U.S. American armed forces would serve as “the cavalry on the new American frontier,” with U.S. military power blocking the emergence of other countries challenging U.S. domination. It would enlist key allies such as Britain as “the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership,” and would put the U.S., and not the UN, as leader of military interventions or peacekeeping missions. Moreover, it envisages taking on Iran after Iraq, spotlights China for “regime change,” and calls for the creation of “U.S. Space Forces” to dominate outer space, and positioning the U.S. to totally control cyberspace to prevent “enemies” from using the Internet against the U.S.”
The frightening marriage of the Bush administration and the Pentagon’s “revolution in military affairs” with a new doctrine of unilateralism and threats of permanent war poses renewed threats to global security and world peace. The Bush administration had even before September 11 undermined multilateral frameworks for controlling arms, and maintaining global peace and security through the regulation of chemical, biological, nuclear, and other weapons of mass destruction. Its pursuit of what is in effect a unilateral military policy in Afghanistan and against terrorism completely controlled by the U.S. threatens to create an era of intensifying warfare.
The outcome of the U.S. military intervention against Iraq and other states in the “axis of evil,” or that possess weapons of mass destruction, is far from certain and will perhaps play itself out for years in sharpening conflicts between the West and radical Islam, and if the Bush administration pursues its military ambitions might isolate the U.S. as a rogue nation attempting to manage an Empire constantly under attack. While technological revolution and the postmodernization of war are probably inevitable, it is clear that in today’s increasingly dangerous world, there must be multilateral agreements to control weapons proliferation and to enforce collective global peace and security. The challenge to progressive forces is to envisage a world without terrorism and militarism. Such a world will require that a global campaign against terrorism emerge that uses multilateral intelligence, police, judicial, financial, and if necessary military forces to fight against terrorist networks, criminalizing terrorism as a global crime. Global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are world-wide problems demanding multilateral solutions. Unilateralist militarist adventures must be renounced along with terrorism, and global forces must evolve that solve problems through diplomatic and political means, while employing the military as a force of last resort.
It is doubtful that the human species can survive the dual forces of terrorism and militarism. The challenge we now face is to establish and institutionalize peaceful means to resolve conflict, to criminalize and reduce the global force of terrorism, and to renounce unilateralist militarism as a dangerous force giving rise to more problems than it can ever hope to solve. The Bush administration military doctrine of preemptive strikes and covert and overt plans for world domination threaten to plunge the world into an Orwellian nightmare of perpetual wars, creating conditions for totalitarian government and a life that is nasty, brutish, and short for most of its citizens. Only understanding the clear and present dangers of Bush administration doctrine and organizing to oppose them will guarantee the future and survival of the human race.
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An excellent critique of Bush administration preemptive strike doctrine
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U.S. Goal Is Wider Access to Iraq Sites (washingtonpost.com)
a big battle is going on in the UN over draft resolutions concerning US arms inspection. As the British Independent piece post last night indicates, the Bush administration wants to get Iraq to give up its "worst" weapons within six months and wants a two month review in which they would be attacked if they did not comply AND a resolution authorizing force anytime the Iraqis do not cooperate. BUT France, China, and Russia are all opposing these draconian US provisions that are basically an authorization for war so compromise or deadlock is possible. The question remains whether the Bush administration will simply attack unilaterally if the UN deadlocks or doesn't accept its terms. This would seriously isolate the US and create a dangerous situation...
U.S. Goal Is Wider Access to Iraq Sites (washingtonpost.com)
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Salon.com Politics | Give 'em hell, Al
Gore finally speaks out and many are energized; I think his speech this past week attacking Bush on Iraq inspired Daschle to make his empassioned attack and is beginning to organize Democrats to seriously oppose Bush
Salon.com Politics | Give 'em hell, Al
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Frank Rich in today's NYT
The Jack Welch War Plan
What's truly frightening about Mr. Ashcroft is his incompetence. Even as we learned this week that the Justice Department's prosecutors are so sloppy that they mistakenly turned over 48 classified F.B.I. reports to Zacarias Moussaoui, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that the attorney general may have blown our chance to get useful Qaeda information out of Mr. Moussaoui by mismanaging his prosecution.
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Sanger Writing in Today's NYT
David Sanger, NYT's correspondent for presidential affairs, writes about how the administration is taking liberty with "revisionist" interpretations of historical events to justify their aggressive policies toward Iraq.
It was only the latest example of how history, definitions and defense doctrines are being twisted to fit the Iraq debate. In its rush to convince Congress and the United Nations of the need to act quickly, the Bush administration has bandied about some very different concepts — pre-emption, preventive war and Ms. Rice's "anticipatory self-defense" (a phrase Webster never used) — as if they were the same thing. Experts in the field say they are not....
"There's a standard distinction here, and a very important one," said Michael Walzer, whose 1977 work "Just and Unjust Wars" has remained a staple of undergraduate courses on international conflicts. "Condoleezza Rice says we don't have to wait to be attacked; that's true," said Professor Walzer, now at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. "But you do have to wait until you are about to be attacked."
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More ammunition for Doug's last post
More ammunition for Doug's last post is in this morning's NYT.
Edward Kennedy's speech yesterday evidently proved to be a catayst for the senate Dems, because now even Michigan's Carl Levin is entering the fray.
At least one high-ranking Democrat, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, said he planned to offer an amendment to the administration's proposed resolution on Iraq that would support military action only in conjunction with a United Nations force. ...
"It's still a go-it-alone approach that lets the U.N. off the hook," said Mr. Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "We want the U.N. to be credible, so we should tell the world why it is so important that we act in concert." Having done so, he said, the United States could then come back and authorize unilateral action if the United Nations still fails to act.
Mr. Levin is planning to introduce language in the Senate that would authorize military action as part of a broader United Nations force.
DK comments: as I note above, I think that Gore's speech was catylist for a lot of Democrats to come out and take principled on Bush's Iraq policy and his policies in general. It was amazing to behold the ferocity of Republican attacks on Gore this week, Election 2000 is not over and people have not forgotten....
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Friday, September 27, 2002
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Independent News
In regards to saber rattling of Bush administration over the past few weeks and bloodlust of their rightwing for war, it is somewhat surprising that they have backed down somewhat on their aggressiveness and have accepted a six-month restraint period from the UN, although they do call for a two-month review which would allow an attack if Iraq was judged to have blocked inspections in anyway and are also holding out for resolution that would legitimate military force at any time. The US is receiving fierce opposition in the UN from France, Russia and China and so have be blocked in their desire to get carte blanche UN legitimation for a US attack. Of course, the Bush administration could manufacture a pretext for an immediate military strike at any moment but it now looks like a combination of growing international pressure, and growing domestic oppositions from Dems and fears of the public, may postpone an Iraq strike for a whole. The US has received fierce opposition in UN to getting approval for immediate strike and there is growing global and US opposition....
Independent News
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Fragments from yesterday's Phil Donahue show (pt 4)
[For links, go to part 1]
DONAHUE: Next-the next three are magazine folk, Kristol, Lowry and Peretz. Tell me.
MATTHEWS: Peretz is an old neo-conservative, very tough on Middle Eastern politics, incredibly right-wing on so many issues.
Bill Kristol, a very smart guy, was chief of staff to the former vice president, Dan Quayle, extremely influential.
Rich Lowry’s a young guy. He works for Bill Buckley, who I cannot believe subscribes to this war-like point of view. I think Bill Buckley’s a traditional conservative. He recognizes the limits of government here at home and the limits in the American role overseas.
What amazes me, Phil, is every night on television, arguing with people, having a hard time finding traditional conservatives who really question why the United States is going over and getting involved in a Mideast war when we should be back over here. This attitude that-that a conservative movement, which Barry Goldwater championed, and Ronald Reagan — did not believe in overseas conquest.
And this new crowd that has moved into the Republican Party, these neo-conservatives, have grabbed the mind of the president. They have moved him in this direction, and they use 9/11 over and over again as an excuse for every kind of...
DK comments: I just read through the postings of the Donahue-Mathews exchange and found them highly interesting. I was sharply critical of Chris Mathews in Election 2000 as he constantly trashed Gore and let Bush off the hook. Interesting, he admitted in the exchange that Ray posted, that "as much as I like him [I wish] he had read more books before he met this crowd."
The exchange focuses on "this crowd," all of the hawks in the Bush administration and elsewhere that are leading us to disaster. It was a very good survey of these rightwing extremists but it let Cheney and Rumsfeld off the hook, who are leading this gung ho, mostly chickenhawk, pack of armchair warriors, and Bush who is enabling them and largely following them.
However, I have been impressed that Chris Mathews, who I was severely critical of in GRAND THEFT 2000, has raised more objections about the sanity and potentially catastrophic consequences of an Iraq invasion than other TV commentators who I have seen. Still, his style is objectionable, shouting down and cutting off those with whom he does not agree and as Richard points out the MS-NBC format of having snippets of argument and then cutting to ads is horrible, which is one of the reasons I rarely watch these shoutfests, although I tune in occasionally to see what they are up to. Anyway, thanks to Ray for posting the Donahue-Mathews exchange which I found both revealing and informative.
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Fragments from yesterday's Phil Donahue show (pt 3)
[For links, go to part 1]
DONAHUE: From the media-- George Will and Mike Kelly, and then, of course, we are familiar with Bill Bennett.
MATTHEWS: Of course.
DONAHUE: Make-make a brief profile...
MATTHEWS: All those guys are total hawks. We have [George] Will on tonight. He’s a very smart guy. Mike Kelly’s a good guy. I like him. I agree with him on Clinton. Bill Bennett’s a smart guy. They are hawks down the line. They want this war. And you can bet, in any other war-like situation, they will be with the hawkish side.
DONAHUE: All right.
MATTHEWS: I guess a lot of us came out of the ’60s, Phil, believing we’d learned a harsh lesson in Vietnam. And the lesson was nationalism is the strongest force in the world. And when you find yourself up against nationalism, you’re going to lose. When we fought the communists ideologically in Eastern Europe, we had nationalism on our side. Lech Walesa was against the communists. He was against the Russians. The same with the people in Hungary and in East Germany. They were all against the domination by Russia.
But when you become the dominant power that goes into a region and says, “We’re going to take over your country and make it the kind of country we would like,” you confront nationalism. My big fear-we go into Baghdad and all the people stand up to us not because they don’t like democracy and certainly not because they like Saddam Hussein, but because we’re a bunch of foreigners from another country, coming in and telling them what to do and taking over their country. And most people would become patriotic, at that point.
And that’s what I worry about, a war that’s bloody, and we’re fighting good people in the streets of Baghdad because they believe they’re defending their country against intruder. And I don’t want to be the intruder.
To be continued
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Fragments from yesterday's Phil Donahue show (pt 2)
[For links, go to part 1]
DONAHUE: We are speaking with Chris Matthews, who has more to say. Who are these ideologues that are driving this war? Who’s got the closest voice to the president’s ear? We’ll talk about that, a rogue’s gallery of folks who are driving this war, from Chris Matthews in just a moment.
DONAHUE:. Well, Chris, let’s go down this list, which you shared with...You call them ideologues.
MATTHEWS: Right.
DONAHUE: You-you are suggesting that these people want to get Saddam, no matter what, no matter how many...
MATTHEWS: Right.
DONAHUE: ... inspections-get Saddam.
MATTHEWS: Oh, I think it’s about getting him ideologically. This weapons of mass destruction is a useful tool to make the case for going to war, but these are the people that never liked the Vietnam war ending. They supported the war to the last minute. They got no message out of what most of us got out of that war, which is stop trying to make American values inflicted on people by war. It’s not going to work. We have to live with the fact that some parts of the world aren’t going to see things the way we do, and we got to live with them. And this crowd I’m going to now identify doesn’t see things that way.
DONAHUE: All right, let’s...
MATTHEWS: In an almost Napoleonic way, they believe we should go around the world, find governments we don’t like, knock off those governments, put in the government we feel comfortable with, and stick around as gendarmes to make sure those people do what we want them to do.
DONAHUE: This is not...
MATTHEWS: They’re a strange group of people, by the way.
DONAHUE: This is not far from Ann Coulter: “We should go kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
MATTHEWS: Well, she did say that, I guess. And these people believe it.
DONAHUE: War drum-beaters-let’s go through the-the gallery here.
MATTHEWS: Right.
DONAHUE: Go ahead. You’re on.
MATTHEWS: Well, I guess, of the intellectuals, the smartest of them all is Richard Perle, who’s sort of the godfather of what are called the neo-conservatives. A lot of them come from Democratic backgrounds, but they’re very hawkish.
They loved Scoop Jackson, the late senator from Washington state, who was a hawk to the end and a great man, many people believe. Perle is now head of an advisory committee which advises the Pentagon under-under Donald Rumsfeld. He wants to go to war in the worst way. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, is another incredible hawk, and not just in the area of the Middle East.
These guys are very tough on North Korea, on China, on Castro. They want to have a strong front against all of those people. Gaffney’s one of them. I get along with all these people. They are fine people, but they are hawks, and they’re never going to be satisfied with this country at peace.
DONAHUE: These..
MATTHEWS: They want our country, in an almost Orwellian trend of war after war after war, to have grabbed every country in the world and have made it the kind of country we want. They don’t like despotism. They’re willing to go in those countries and overthrow the leaders to get what they want.
DONAHUE: Let’s talk about the vice president’s office.
MATTHEWS: Well, this guy, Scooter Libby, all I know is he’s a bit of a far-righter. He’s extremely influential. He’s a hawk.
DONAHUE: And Gerson...
MATTHEWS: I never forgot that the day that Colin Powell, speaking for the country, was meeting with Yasser Arafat in the office of Cheney under Scooter Libby’s deliberate supervision, the vice president was speaking with Bibi Netanyahu, a man of the Israeli right. This crowd wants hard-right policies adhered to by this president, and this president has bought them hook, line and sinker.
DONAHUE: And [Mike] Gerson? What’s the source of his power, just...
MATTHEWS: I mean, he writes the president’s speeches. I think sometimes the president writes-gives words out like “axis of evil.” All of a sudden, we have a hit list of countries-Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Then the list gets lengthened further by the undersecretary of state, Bolton, and that includes now Libya, Syria, Cuba, and lately they added the Sudan to it, so-the Sudan. So we find ourselves poised to do attack so many countries.
We had Michael Ledeen, one of these ideologues, on the show recently, and he’s talking about a war path that begins in Iran-in Iraq, rather, goes to Iraq-from Iraq to Iran, and then onward through the Middle East, to countries we don’t like. It’s a scary crowd. They want war.
DONAHUE: Well, I got three...
MATTHEWS: And this president, who came to office with a promise that we were going to honor “humility” in our foreign policy, has bought their act. I sometimes wish that George Bush, as much as I like him, had read more books before he met this crowd.
To be continued
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Fragments from yesterday's Phil Donahue show on msnbc (pt 1)
Donahue was joined by another msnbc pundit, Chris Matthews. On a personal note, I must admit that I had more or less ignored the new all-news cable outlets, except for CNN in crisis moments, i.e., 9/11. Lately, however, I have become a sometime follower of some msnbc shows. I especially like the laid back style of Jerry Nachman. No, in my aged state, I haven't become a tv fanatic. I like instead to get my news from a variety of sources, especially the endless vareity of newspapers et al on the Internet. One of the payoffs of Jim Lehrer Newshour and msnbc, and maybe other programs, is that very soon after the broadcast, transcripts of the discussion are put on the Web:
(1) MSNBC (2) Jim Lehrer Newshour
This post is the first of several on the program. (To put the text of the whole program on one page would make the single posting too large. further, the date of this show is 9/26/02, and you have to scroll down towards the center of the file to find the part with Matthews.) In the program's format, Donahue sort of asked questions, and in response, Matthews gave mini analyses of each of the politicos currently on the scene in Washington DC.
DONAHUE: Both sides crying foul. Now there’s talk that this word battle could delay the congressional vote on the resolution to attack Iraq. Joining me now, our very own host of “HARDBALL.” Here he is now, Chris Matthews.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST, “HARDBALL”: Thanks, Phil. How are you?
DONAHUE: Now, please explain this for us, please. I thought Daschle wanted to hurry up with this resolution on Iraq. Now there are members of the conference saying, hold on a minute. Sort it out for me, please.
MATTHEWS: Well, the Democratic strategy, as it’s become obvious, is to try to get this war issue over with next week sometime, so that they can devote three or four weeks to basically selling their wares politically-going to the senior citizens of the country with prescription drugs and things like that, focusing on Social Security worries. Attacking the Republicans for talking about privatizing part of your Social Security benefit. In other words, reaping the benefit of a weak economy, politically.
However, Al Gore came along this week and said, no, this is an issue we want to fight about. And we shouldn’t decide it before the election. So Al Gore threatens the Democrats with the two things they fear most: a continued discussion of the war when they want to focus on Democratic issues and the identification of the Democratic Party with the anti-war position, which they certainly do not want to see happen.
DONAHUE: So because they’re afraid of the war, we will not get-we may not get business done as it should be done in the Senate?
MATTHEWS: That’s right. I think the Democrats-it’s a hard time to figure. You know, Phil, you watch these guys as much as I do. Lieberman is clearly a hawk on this war. And his conscience, in the deepest part of his soul, supports this war. You put him on sodium pentothal, he’d be for this war.
I think the same is probably true of Dick Gephardt the House Democratic leader, [is hawkish]. But I have to say that I have no idea at this moment where Daschle stands, as an American, as a politician, as a leader. I have no idea where he stands.
John Kerry, I believe, would not like to see us go to Iraq at this point. I think if he has to vote for it, I think it will be political. I don’t think he believes in it. And maybe Edwards is probably an opportunist, and hasn’t a strong feeling one way or the other. He’ll probably go with the president, too.
But I think the debate is being put off. I think we ought to have a real, national debate about whether it’s good for this country, conservative and liberal, to be going to war with an Arab country, taking over that country, building up perhaps hundreds of millions of haters around the world.
And let’s not forget, 9/11, the message of 9/11 is that the greatest weapon of mass destruction is hatred. The willingness of 19 guys to give their lives to kill thousands of us. That is the weapon of mass destruction we have to most worry about.
And we will be creating hundreds of millions of [muslim peoply who hate us] if we go to war with Iraq, I think. That is the risk. I can’t read the future. But when we talk about the risks of Saddam Hussein, I would I say, yes, there are risks.
Put those risks alongside the probability that if we go into Iraq we will create hundreds of millions of new haters, tens of thousands of new potential recruits, and suicide bombers and American killers. And I don’t like that other column any more than I like the first calm.
To be continued
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