Read more about The State We’re In in the Cover Story section
The state of the union is one of rising unemployment and a
growing number of people with little or no health insurance; of reckless energy
use and the trashing of the environment. Of a growing disparity between rich
and poor, encouraged by the federal government. Of a mushrooming federal
deficit, and budget crises in states, cities, and school districts across the
country.
                 The
state of the union is that of a nation preparing to go to war to depose the
government of Iraq — and willing to do the same with other countries when it
decides it should.
                 That
is not the State of the Union President Bush outlined last week. But it is the
reality.
                 It is
a troubling time. It would be a troubling time if the nation’s major challenges
were limited to the domestic. But we have the additional dangers of terrorism
and a war with Iraq.
                 And
leading us, with confidence and fierce determination, is — as Bill Keller put
it in a recent New York Times Magazine article
— a truly radical president.
                 For
even the most informed citizen, it’s hard to know what to focus on, as Bush and
his supporters roll out plans to undercut Medicare, privatize Social Security,
invade privacy and weaken criminal-justice protections, exploit wilderness
areas, erode workers’ rights, attack contraceptive and abortion rights, and
punish the poor.
                 Bush’s
new budget, announced on Monday, creates a record deficit that will further
weaken the economy — and according to news reports, it does not include the cost of a war against Iraq.
                 The
president, like Governor Pataki, is engaged in a disastrous game of pass-down,
cutting taxes and forcing local governments to go without vital programs or
pick up the cost themselves — through increased property and sales taxes.
                 (Bush’s
proposed budget, apparently, is just the beginning. On Monday, February 3,
NPR’s Morning Edition carried the pronouncement by Republican leader Tom DeLay
that “the president’s package is a floor, not a ceiling.” DeLay isn’t losing
sleep about the prospects of a federal deficit, either. “The Soviet Union had a
balanced budget,” he said.)
                 Bush’s
budget will do exactly what, in his State of the Union speech, he insisted he
would not do: “pass along our problems to other Congresses, other presidents,
other generations.” Those costs will be not only financial but also human, as
we cut school aid, environmental protection, retirees’ benefits.
Nor is the impact of
the Bush presidency confined to the United States. Bill Keller’s Times Magazine piece, “The Radical
Presidency of George W. Bush,” summed up the record of the past two years:
“Bush has been willing to throw overboard reams of established foreign-policy
doctrine in his enthusiastic assumption of the role of solo superpower,
scrapping the ABM treaty, scheduling the first deployment of antimissile
batteries and enshrining ‘pre-emption’ as the American military doctrine.”
                 And
pre-emption will play out first in Iraq, presumably within a few weeks.
                 The
arguments against the war are by now well known. Yes, Iraq is ruled by a
monster who kills and terrifies his own people. Saddam Hussein’s brutality,
writes Matthew Rothschild in The
Progressive, “is undeniable and grotesque.” But, says Rothschild, “similar
torture techniques are common among such allies as Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, as well as other nations such as Burma.” And in his
State of the Union speech, says Rothschild, “Bush was silent about them.”
                 Washington
did not go to war to depose Stalin or Khrushchev, notes Rothschild. “Is Saddam
crazier than Stalin and more of a threat?”
                 And,
he notes, “the Soviet Union had the wherewithal, as Khrushchev was not shy
about reminding us, to destroy the United States. Saddam doesn’t pose
one-thousandth of that threat.”
                 Nor
is Iraq the only country that currently has “weapons of mass destruction.” In a
Martin Luther King Day address, Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich ticked them
off: “Seventeen nations are seeking, have, or are capable of acquiring nuclear
weapons of mass destruction; 20 nations, biological weapons; 26 nations,
chemical weapons. More than 20 nations have or are at work on missile
technologies to deliver those weapons.”
                 The
US and the world face many dangers. The question is, how do we respond to them?
And what are the dangers and the costs of the Bush policy?
                 The
dangers include loss of lives: Americans’, Iraqis’. An Iraqi attack against
Israel. The use of biological and chemical weapons against US troops. An
increase in anti-American sentiment throughout the world. An eruption of
terrorism aimed at Americans and our allies.
                 The
cost may be staggering, not just in funding the war, but also in the occupation
and rebuilding of Iraq.
                 The
cost should include (though we may
simply walk away after the war) intensive involvement in stabilizing the Middle
East. “If America takes on Iraq, it takes on the reordering of the whole
region,” wrote Michael Ignatieff in the Times
Magazine (“The American Empire,” January 5). “It will have to stick at it
through many successive administrations.”
                 And
the US will have to find a way to bring about peace between the Palestinians
and the Israelis. “Unseating an Arab government in Iraq while leaving the
Palestinians to face Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships,” wrote Ignatieff,
“is a virtual guarantee of unending Islamic wrath against the United States.”
Just over two years
ago, George W. Bush moved from a weak state office to the most powerful
position in the world. Now, backed by conservatives in the Senate and House, he
is using that office to bring about dangerous changes. Most troubling, his fundamentalist
religious beliefs do more than inform his decisions; they embolden him. He
seems convinced that he is on a God-sent mission.
                 “Righteous
purpose is strong stuff,” wrote Bill Keller in his Times Magazine piece, “and it can be highly flammable. It’s worth
remembering that moral certainty led Reagan’s administration into the
culminating scandal of Iran-Contra, the scheme to sell missiles to Iran and
divert the profits to arm anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua. Bush has not
only rehired several of the Iran-Contra intriguers, but he has also reproduced
elements of the climate in which the plot was hatched — obsessive secrecy, a
premium on loyalty, a taste for working through foreign proxies, and impatience
with Congressional oversight.”
                 “In a
democracy,” says a Progressive editorial,
“the fateful decisions of war and peace are not supposed to rest in the hands
of one man. Today, they do…. Lacking intellectual curiosity, [Bush] boasts of
an infallible gut… embraces a huge global mission, and couches it in
fundamentalist language. And he has assigned the Pentagon the primary role in
carrying out this mission.”
                 Well, what to do?
                 1)
Pressure Republicans to resist. While Republicans have control of the House and
the Senate, their Senate majority is slim. And not all Republicans agree with
him on all issues. Some are worried about Iraq. Some are worried about the
deficit.
                 2)
Keep the pressure on moderate and conservative Democrats.
                 3)
Encourage and support progressive Democrats. (Watch especially the Progressive
Congressional Caucus, co-chaired by Kucinich of Ohio and Barbara Lee of
California; http://bernie.house.gov/pc/.)
                 Bush’s
radical leadership is not a partisan issue. It is a crucial matter of national
security, and of the conscience and future of the country.
                 In
his Times Magazine article, Michael
Ignatieff offered John Quincy Adams’ statement that “if America were tempted to
‘become the dictatress of the world, she would be no longer the ruler of her
own spirit.'”
                 “What
empires lavish abroad,” wrote Ignatieff, “they cannot spend on good republican
government at home: on hospitals or roads or schools. A distended military
budget only aggravates America’s continuing failure to keep its egalitarian
promise to itself.”
                 “And
these are not the only costs of empire,” wrote Ignatieff. “Detaining two
American citizens without charge or access to counsel in military brigs,
maintaining illegal combatants on a foreign island in a legal limbo, keeping
lawful aliens under permanent surveillance while deporting others after secret
hearings: these are not the actions of a republic that lives by the rule of law
but of an imperial power reluctant to trust its own liberties.”
                 This
week, Colin Powell leads us in another step toward war, as he addresses the
United Nations Security Council. And then — later this month, early next —
we will begin the battle. But while the attack will be the most dramatic sign
of the changes Bush has brought to the nation, it will be only one sign.
                 This
is no time for silence, or for cowering in the face of complex issues and a
powerful presidency. This is a time for watchfulness. And this is a time for
protest.
Read more about The State We’re In in the Cover Story section
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2003.
