Examine a post election scenario. The Democrats have unseated Republicans from both Houses of Congress. Does anyone expect them to deliver what their voters need?
The majority desperately need an anti-imperial program. To pursue the reconstruction of the U.S. infrastructure and generate a reasonable health and education plan, the Democrats would drastically reduce military and “security” spending. This would require a redefinition of U.S. interests throughout the world. Try to picture Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitting the un-admissible: “We must transform our country from an aggressive world empire into a republic that plays by the rules that its forefathers laid out: The Constitution and the UN Charter.”
Unlikely as this scenario seems, look at the alternative. If liberal Democrats do not speak out forcefully and demand national attention on the theme of empire, the current imperial thrust will prevail, whether in the current Bush form of “exporting democracy” or a more temperate Clintonian version where the U.S. Air Force bombs -- like in the former Yugoslavia -- but no troops go into combat. The continued imperial policies, albeit no U.S. politician will admit to empire, will continue to cause “disobedient” third world countries to suffer U.S.-initiated wars or “messes” like the current ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Look for more confrontations with “the axis of evil” or other lurking enemies. By uncritically accepting a New World Order (post Soviet policy) in which the United States would become the hegemonic world power, Congress also accepted as a fact that the U.S. military would become the permanent world order-keeper. Presidents could invoke the UN or NATO or coalitions of the willing, but Congress had better shell out the hundreds of billions yearly to maintain the mighty military. Thus far, liberal Democrats have contributed little but hand wringing to a needed critique of this disastrous policy.
The Bush Republicans, however, dug their own grave with scandalous shovels. Their reversal of political fortune derives not from the clever Democrats’ alternatives; rather, Republican propensity for theft (illustrated by the Abramoff payoff-lobbying outrage, and the cases of convicted Congressmen Randy Duke Cunningham of California and confessed felon Bob Ney of Ohio) and kinky sex (the Mark Foley underage page drama) and its cover-up by House leaders.
George Bush’s dramatic failure in Iraq has also contributed to the Republican demise. The horrendous loss of life and accelerated destabilization of an already volatile region should have brought forth a critique of the policy. After all, U.S. citizens for generations will bear the costs.
But leading Democrats have argued that although Bush might have misled the country into war, the issue now is how best to manage that mistake without immediately withdrawing U.S. forces.
The imperial axiom underlies the comments of Senators Hillary Clinton (NY) and Joseph Biden (DE). Clinton told Larry King in 2004 that she didn’t regret voting for war in Iraq. Her critique of the Bush Administration centered on their lack of imperial realism. In October 2006, Rahm Emanuel, leading the Democrats’ Congressional comeback, offered to NPR listeners the “creative alternative” put forth by Biden: divide Iraq into 3 parts as the formula for peace. This could have been done 100 years ago by the British Colonial Office!
Politicians from both parties refuse routinely to recognize the elephant in the American living room, the empire. They fund the massive military machine that has troops in some 800 bases around the world and periodically invades smaller nations. Instead of ridiculing its demands for ever more tax money, Congress ratifies its demands for ever newer and bigger weapons.
By not questioning the imperial assumption, the military sets the political agenda: its $650 billion plus budget, counting Iraq and Afghanistan outlays plus intelligence, amounts to more than double what the entire rest of the world spends on so called Defense.
Yet, all that money didn’t defend us. So, Congress funded Homeland Security to protect our homeland without inquiring as to why Defense couldn’t do the job with all that money.
A brave Member who might dare question the massive “defense” outlays or the dubious premises that underlie it, would face an assault: weak, cowardly, un-American, maybe pro-terrorist and, from the all-pervasive Israeli lobby, anti-Semitic as well. How could democratic and virtuous Israel defend itself if the United States would cut off the $3 plus billion yearly military aid?
For forty years, the Cold War hid an imperial elephant. Using the “commy threat,” Washington punished disobedient regimes – those rejecting the U.S. economic model. The CIA smashed governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). They hit in Cuba, from 1959 on and, most dramatically, they destabilized and helped overthrow the socialist government of Chile 1970-73.
These few examples of many military and covert interventions occurred while the U.S. economy moved into remote nooks and crannies of the world. The military protected those “investments.” Now, the unacknowledged imperial state continues to fatten itself from the collective American kitchen. It has soiled the living room rug and is destroying the national furniture. The infrastructure decays because the military mammoth absorbs the lion’s share of the budget. How else, argued Thomas Friedman, could U.S. cultural and economic influence spread throughout the world? McDonald’s needs McDonald Douglass. (The Lexus and the Olive Tree)
Instead of exposing this monster, the Democrats insist they can manage it better than the bungling Bushies. Some liberals know better but won’t admit empire exists.
The Republicans, since the late 1940s, have assumed aggressive “defense-security” postures and placed Democrats on the defensive. This spinning game – we’re strong and they’re weak – began when Truman launched the Cold War.
In 1947, conservative Republicans seemed reluctant to undertake a long term international conflict whose costs would remain illusive and involved an alliance with those untrustworthy Europeans. Sensing the direction of the political wind, the right wing Ohio Senator Robert Taft, the Deacon of conservative Mid West Republicans, signed on to the “Soviet threat” and immediately moved to the right of the Democrats. Since Truman had “scared the hell out of the American people,” with bogus stories of impending Soviet invasions of Western Europe, the Republicans then claimed that the frightened public should trust them more than Democrats who “coddled Communists,” in the words of Joe McCarthy.
By accepting the Republican framing of tough v. weak -- on communism or terrorism -- the Democratic Party failed “to draw upon what is most vital in its own history” -- class issues, not empire. The “New Democrats,” as Thomas Frank characterizes the Rahm Emanuel types, “now, enlightened and entrepreneurial” cannot “muster the strength to deliver some Rooseveltian stemwinder against “economic royalists.” (NY Times September 1, 2006)
In the 2000 and 2004 elections, “New” advisers told Gore and Kerry to eschew traditional issues that sparked voter interest in the Party. After all, the experts said, Clinton won twice by adopting free-market economics, rather than declaring it the enemy of working people and the middle classes. Indeed, the “working class” disappeared from the Democrats’ political vocabulary.
Now, the Democrats have an opportunity given to them by Bush’s failures. The Hurricane Katrina refugees stand as a reminder of an AWOL president in times of need and a man on the job in times of greed.
Although Democrats have underachieved, they rightfully wear a smirk or sneer when they speak of George W. Bush. When my father spoke of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he used reverent tones for the man who had helped the country endure the depression with a New Deal. FDR’s compassion for the poor took shape in legislation and shaped a tradition that Democrats stood by during Truman’s fair deal – less substantial, but still repeating the rhetoric of care and concern for the poor whose lives had become unbearable because of the Great Depression and the cruel practices of the plutocrats.
Lyndon Johnson promoted the Great Society, which Congress enacted to create jobs and help the disadvantaged. That ethos that had defined for voters the essence of the Democratic Party went into retreat. Al Gore reduced once epic programs to: “I’m going to put social security in a lock box.”
Bush Republicans have now given greed a bad name. They have injected corruption with growth hormones. Thanks to their vices, the Democrats can pose again as the Party of the people. But they will need a program to afford them legitimacy.
The Republicans proved themselves to the major stockholders. Clinton outdid them. But Democrats can’t again make a comeback by copying Republicans. Nativist and populist rhetoric with barely disguised racism now challenge free trade policies. Sermons with anti free market rhetoric and anti-immigration and anti-globalization themes will play well in communities hard hit by job losses and pay cuts. Will Democrats admit that free trade has become the pillar of modern empire, the axiom on which transnational profits are calculated?
Frank says “Democratic leaders must learn to talk about class issues again.” The Republicans hired intellectuals and academics to frame the key issues from their perspective. Now, the Democrats need the imagination to attack the very empire their forefathers helped construct.
As the pain of losses from Iraq and Afghanistan penetrate the body politic and the economy, Democrats will either stake out class roots again or prove that U.S. politics has gone from the corrupt to the ridiculous. Are the bookies even offering odds on the class option?
Published by Progreso Weekly
