DAVE LINDORFF
Counterpunch
Friday November 16, 2007
Now even the New York Times is saying it. In an editorial on Oct. 20, the Times wrote, "Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year." Noting how the Democratic House and Senate had rolled over and given the president permission to massively spy on Americans without showing any probable cause, the Times concluded, "It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues."
There is no question about it. The Democrats, after persuading voters to hand over control of Congress to them last November, have been worse than failures. They have betrayed the trust of the voters.
Although the party clearly has the power to end the Iraq War by simply refusing to approve funds for continuing the mayhem and madness, it has instead given the president every dollar he's asked for to continue it, and then some. Although every leading Democrat admits that the president has been torturing the Constitution, not one member has submitted a bill calling for the president's impeachment, and the one bill submitted calling for Cheney's impeachment, submitted by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, has been pushed off on a siding by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her gang of "leaders." More recently in the Senate, where 41 Democrats could stop any presidential appointment, 53 senators instead approved a new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, who refuses to say waterboarding is torture and illegal, and who, even worse, says that in his view the president has the power to ignore laws passed by the Congress. The Democrats in the Senate had the votes to stop this outrageous nomination, and didn't.
I would go the Times one step further. There is no need to check to see if Democrats won control of Congress. It doesn't matter. The Democrats have simply ceased to be an opposition party. The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt is now simply a collection of incumbent hacks who are looking to their own re-election, and who stand for nothing.
So what is to be done?
Various left-leaning activist organizations, like Democrats for America and Progressive Democrats of America, and pseudo-progressive organizations like Move-On and DailyKos, argue that liberal Democrats need to work within the party to elect more progressive candidates and party officials. But this strategy is doomed for several reasons. First of all, the leadership of the Democratic Party doesn't want real liberals or, heaven-forefend, lefties. It wants candidates who can appeal to the corporations that bankroll both parties. And second, the leadership undermines those liberals who do have a chance of replacing the hacks who currently hold Democratic seats in Congress.
As I have written before, we have seen more than 50 years of betrayal of liberal and left voters and their issues by the Democratic Party, and despite the efforts of would-be reformers, the situation has been getting worse, not better.
The answer, I submit, is to tell Democratic incumbents and party officials that we've finally had it. We are not going to be ignored or walked over or taken for granted any longer.
How to do this? By mass resignations from the Democratic Party, at which it is made crystal clear that there are two reasons for the actions: Congress isn't stopping the war funding, and Congress isn't initiating impeachment hearings.
I am proposing that left and progressive organizations, civil rights groups, Church groups, anti-war coalitions, labor unions and other progressive and liberal groups start organizing mass actions that involve marches to the local board of elections or voter registrar's office, for collective de-registration from the Democratic Party. Here in Philadelphia, we could have a mass march from Independence Hall to the Board of Elections, for example.
This is a strategy that would hit the Democratic Party leadership like a bucket of ice water-or a brick--in the face.
The beauty of the idea is that it will garner enormous press coverage, even if the numbers are relatively small. Thanks to the overall pro-Republican bias of the media, news outlets like AP, CNN and especially Fox TV, will find the idea of Democratic activists marching on voter offices and quitting the Democratic Party irresistible. And as other groups across the country see these protest actions, they will want to join in.
In no time, Democratic incumbents in Congress, at the DNC, and in city halls and Democratic clubs across the country will see their most loyal voting base eroding.
If that should happen, they will be in a panic. Just watch how fast they start impeachment hearings and stop passing war funding appropriation bills!
Now whenever I've suggested this scheme, after the wild applause subsides, there are always those who raise the question about voting for progressive candidates in primaries, and about electing progressives to party office. I agree these are important steps, and that they should be attempted, but mass party quitting doesn't preclude doing them.
In many states, first of all (CA, NH, VA, MA, and SC, for instance), you don't need to be registered in a party to vote in that party's primary. But even in those states like my own Pennsylvania, where you do need to be registered in a party to vote in its primary, it is an easy thing to re-register in time to qualify for the primary. Just check with your voter registrar and learn the deadline. Then, after you've voted, just quit again. The same for party caucuses. Those who are elected to positions like county committeeperson should stay in the party, where they can try (good luck!) to make change.
The important thing is those mass quit events.
The other thing I hear is the argument that people should not be just urged to quit; they should be urged to join a third party.
I disagree. As soon as you start trying to get agreement about joining a third party, you are introducing division into a movement that should be narrowly focused on the two issues of getting the Democrats, now, to end funding for the war and to initiate impeachment hearings. Anything else is a diversion.
Besides, getting significant numbers of progressive-minded people to cut their ties to the Democratic Party offers the potential of creating a new base out of which a genuine mass party of the left might come. The first step though, is for all of us, who have been tethered to the Democratic Party for most of our adult lives, to cut the leash.
If desperate Democratic officials respond by according us the same attention and support that they regularly accord to hedge fund managers and health insurance companies, if they meet our demands to end the war and defend the Constitution, so be it. Maybe we will back them in November '08.
If they don't, then we're free to go somewhere else, or to found a new party.
One thing is clear: If we don't do this, we will no longer live in a democratic state. We will live in a one-party state.
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"It’s Treason: Dems Stay Silent on Bush White House Crimes
Richard W. Behan
Alternet
Friday, November 16, 2007
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
--Article III, Section 3, United States Constitution (emphasis added)
The mainstream Democrats -- represented, say, by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Christopher Dodd -- have not levied war against the United States. Their treason lies instead in committing the second offense: They adhere to enemies of the country, giving them aid and comfort.
The enemies are President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney. Like no other president and vice president in history, these men attacked their country.
It was not our geography George Bush and Richard Cheney invaded. Instead they abandoned and subverted the bedrock institution of our constitutional democracy: the rule of law. By word and deed, Mr. Bush repeatedly and arrogantly sets himself above the law, claiming obedience to be a matter of presidential choice. Mr. Cheney orchestrates, coaches, applauds and iterates.
This cannot stand if the country we know and cherish is to survive. George Bush and Richard Cheney are literally enemies of the state; long before now and by any measure of constitutional justice, they should have been impeached and removed from office.
Abjectly, continuously and stubbornly refusing to hold them accountable, however, the mainstream Democrats adhere to this criminal president and vice president: Nothing they have asked for has been denied, no barriers placed in their way. That is giving them aid and comfort, and that is treason. George Bush and Richard Cheney took the country to war illegally, with a deliberate, carefully designed and executed package of fear-mongering propaganda: lies, distortions and deceptions. No informed citizen entertains the slightest doubt about this.
Lying to the people and the Congress was the most despicable violation of the rule of law by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, but many more followed: torturing prisoners, denying habeas corpus, spying on U.S. citizens, nullifying new laws with "signing statements" and so on and on. The litany of impeachable offenses is long and painful, but the so-called "War on Terror," these men insist, makes all of it acceptable, even necessary. Nearly six years have elapsed since the Bush administration first defeated the rule of law. For most of these years, a Republican Congress saw fit not to intervene, or even to question this behavior, so effective was the administration's propaganda campaign and so firm were the bonds of partisanship. But now the mainstream Democrats control the Congress.
Also during these six years, the truth emerged, and now we can see the "War on Terror" truly for what it is -- an overarching megalie, an untruth of such unimaginable scope and magnitude it recalibrates for an entire nation the perception of reality. (Aryan supremacy was the megalie of Nazi Germany.) No one should be surprised that the threat of terrorism has increased, not diminished, since 9/11: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not even remotely intended to combat it.
We know the Bush administration, when it took office, was indifferent to terrorism, brushing aside explicit warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden; we know the president was planning instead, at least six months before 9/11, to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq; we know of a National Security Council memorandum dated Feb. 3, 2001, concerning the "capture of new and existing oil and gas fields" in Iraq; we have acquired with a lawsuit the maps of Iraqi oil fields Vice President Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was studying a month later; we have learned how the privatized structure of Iraq's postwar oil industry was designed by the Bush administration a year before the war began; we know the administration was negotiating pipeline rights-of-way with the Taliban, unsuccessfully, until five weeks before 9/11; we know the final threat to them was a "carpet of bombs"; we are aware of President Bush twice refusing offers from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden, before and after the carpet of bombs was unleashed; we've read of the five "megabases" in Iraq to house 100,000 troops for as long as 50 years; we've learned the U.S. Embassy compound under construction in Baghdad will be ten times larger than any other in the world; and we know Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum/Amoco are poised to claim immense profits from 81 percent of Iraq's undeveloped oil fields.
Are these the activities and outcomes of a "War on Terror?"
We also know President Bush, a month before 9/11 in August of 2001, notified the governments of Pakistan and India he would launch a military mission into Afghanistan "before the end of October."
Between the dates of the president's announcement and his order to attack, the Trade Towers and the Pentagon were struck by the hijacked airliners. Seizing in a heartbeat this spectacular opportunity to disguise and launch the preplanned invasions, the Bush administration concocted the megalie, and the "War on Terror" was born.
The "War on Terror" is a conscious and ingenious masquerade for the geostrategic pursuit and control of Middle Eastern oil and gas resources. The facts place this beyond dispute. Mr. Bush's claim of "taking the fight directly to the terrorists … and the states that harbor them" was yet one more intentional deception, as subsequent events fully demonstrated. In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of apprehending the terrorists -- Osama bin Laden remains at large -- and in Iraq, when we invaded, there were no terrorists at all. But today both "states" are fitted with puppet governments and dotted with permanent U.S. military bases in close proximity to their hydrocarbon assets.
Only the Bush administration continues to natter about a bogus "War on Terror." Others are more candid:
Republican Sen. Senator Charles Hagel: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America's national interest. What the hell do you think they're talking about? We're not there for figs." (Speaking at Catholic University, Sept. 24, 2007)
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in his book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World: "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil."
Democratic Sen. Jon Tester: "We're still fighting a war in Iraq and people who are honest about it will admit we're there over oil." (Associated Press, Sept. 24, 2007)
Gen. John Abizaid, retired CENTCOM commander: "Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that." (Speaking at Stanford University, Oct. 13, 2007)
The criminal fraudulence of the "War on Terror" is fully documented, but the contemporary press has been derelict in failing to expose the mega-lie and publicize it. The mainstream Democrats are equally derelict in ignoring it. Failing to hold President Bush accountable for his crimes constitutes the most profound obstruction of justice. And failing to contradict his hideous megalie clearly reinforces the president's hand: the mainstream Democrats are now accomplices.
The damage done by the Democrats' treason is equally great in prospect. Without exposing the lie of the war in Iraq and acting upon the exposure, there is no credible and reliable way to stop the administration's insane intention of attacking Iran. The proffered rationales -- and the fraudulence -- are identical, as the Democrats stride toward complicity in yet another illegal and immoral war.
Why can't the mainstream Democrats speak sublime truth to demonic power? Doing so, they claim, would be too "divisive" and jeopardize the party's success in next year's election.
This strategy is politically suicidal. A Democratic sweep in 2008 grows dimmer every day.
The rank-and-file Republicans who continue to believe Mr. Bush's lies about the "War on Terror" will not vote for a Democrat. The rank-and-file Democrats who see through the lies are increasingly enraged by the insipid waffling of their mainstream candidates. And roughly half the American people don't bother to vote at all, repelled by the tawdry attack ads and negativity of bitterly partisan, superficial, sophomoric and issue-avoidance politicking.
If the mainstream Democrats do nothing to change this, they will wind up where they're headed -- disappointed and defeated in 2008 -- and they will deserve it. Only by exposing and acting on the truth about the war can they change any Republican minds, regain the support of disenchanted Democrats and attract the politically inert, indifferent Americans. A new style of politics needs badly to be engaged, one that is dedicated not merely to winning elections, but to a genuine concern for truth, for justice, for the rule of law and for integrity in public service.
The most direct and honorable way of invoking such a style is by impeaching George Bush and Richard Cheney. Never in our history have the high crimes and misdemeanors been so flagrant, and the people of our country know it.
Yes, congressman Kucinich sought with a "member's privilege" motion to initiate an impeachment proceeding on the floor of the House of Representatives. But Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer moved immediately to kill the initiative, only to be thwarted by a Republican trick. Finally, Nancy Pelosi, desperate to avoid a floor debate, managed to have the matter referred to the Judiciary Committee, where Chairman John Conyers has been sitting on the original bill since last April. The giving of aid and comfort to the enemies will, seemingly, continue.
But the mainstream Democrats now face a carpe diem moment of truly historic measure: If they choose, they can foreswear their treason. It was a majority, bipartisan vote that sent the impeachment bill to Judiciary, and that is all the political cover the Democrats need to take the next courageous and necessary step.
For the sake of the rule of law, for the sake of the integrity of the Congress, for the sake of the country's future and incidentally for the sake of a potential Democratic victory in 2008, the politics of truth and justice must be showcased. The Judiciary Committtee must hold hearings immediately, to see if impeachment is in fact warranted -- and polls say the greater part of the country thinks it is.
If the mainstream Democrats will not do this, if their treason continues, then decent and thinking citizens everywhere -- concerned patriots all -- can only weep for their country.
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