Of Donkeys And Elephants

The world has to live with the President, so it is in our interest to have a President who can work with the world as opposed to alienate it, the current incumbent being a prime example of the latter possibility. The Republicans and the Democrats offer two starkly differing views of America and the foreign policy she chooses to exert. Recent history easily highlights the differences. Remember when Clinton was President? It seems like so long ago, but man times were good back then. In fact times were so good that the only real problem the United States was concerned with was what the President was doing with his cigars behind closed doors. How far have we come in these four short years? Bush II has completely reworked the World Order, and some argue has used the tragedy of 9/11 as a catalyst to push the Republican agenda. Paul Krugman of the New York Times reported in December of 2001: “Literally before the dust had settled” over the World Trade Center disaster influential Republicans signalled that they were “determined to use terrorism as an excuse to pursue a radical right-wing agenda.” In his most recent book, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, Noam Chomsky discusses how “(t)hose at the center of powers relentlessly pursue their own agenda, understanding that they can exploit the fears and anguish of the moment.”The fears and anguish of the moment being the 9/11 attacks, he goes on to detail how the powers that be will often institute measures that deepen the resentment others feel for the United States “if that advances the goals of power and privilege. They declare that it is unpatriotic and disruptive to question the workings of authority – but patriotic to institute harsh and regressive policies that benefit the wealthy, undermine social programs that serve the needs of the great majority, and subordinate a frightened population to increased state control.” This is exactly what happened. The Patriot Act was passed shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Ralph Nader has called the Patriot Act “the greatest single assault on civil liberties in the country’s history.” Amnesty International has decried that the “USA PATRIOT Act undermines the human rights of Americans and non-citizens, and weakens the framework for promoting human rights internationally. Even in times of crisis, it is important to preserve constitutional freedoms and human rights.” Specifically, Amnesty is concerned that the act “creates a broad definition of ‘domestic terrorism’ that may have a chilling effect on the US and international rights to free expression and association…Allows non-citizens to be detained without charge and held indefinitely once charged…Infringes on the right to privacy and removes many types of judicial review over intelligence activities.” In September of 2001, US military expenditures already exceeded those of the next fifteen nations combined, but the opportunity 9/11 presented to exploit the fear and horror of the attacks was too good to pass up and military spending took a sharp increase. A sharp increase to the point where they have now reached the highest levels in U.S. In September of 2002 Bush and his cronies announced its National Security Strategy, which states that the U.S has the right to resort to force, if need be, to eliminate any perceived challenge to U.S. global hegemony, which is to be permanent. Think about that for a second. Firstly, a “perceived” threat doesn’t even have to be a real threat; it can be a hunch, a rumour or miss-information. Then “global hegemony.” There not talking about a threat to the U.S or its people, there talking about a threat to the U.S getting its way in all things everywhere. For example, when the U.S. runs out of drinking water they could under this doctrine invade Canada for our water, we are a perceived challenge to their global hegemony. We wont just give them the water and they need the water so they’ll just roll in and take it. How does that sound? Part of Bush’s National Security Strategy is the proliferation of American military might, the militarization of space and ballistic missile defence. Bush’s National Security Strategy is in stark contrast to that of the previous President, Bill Clinton. In his 1999 National Security Strategy, Clinton committed to such non-proliferation efforts as STAET Treaties to reduce both U.S and Russian nuclear arms, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to minimize deployments of missile defences in the U.S and Russia and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to limit the spread of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states. Clinton and the Democrats spent eight years trying to de-militarize a world on the heels of a fifty-year-old cold war and Bush and the Reaganites have quickly turned the tide. By joining the ‘war on terror’ countries such as Russia and Israel were given a free hand in dealing with their own terrorist problems. The Bush administration announced that “it had no objections to [Chinca’s] plans to build up its small fleet of nuclear missiles,” in the hope of gaining China’s help in their planned dismantling of arms control agreements . Of course China’s military build up will have a ripple effect with India and Pakistan and the rest of the Mid-East. It does not appear that “America and the world are safer.” as President Bush proclaimed in his July 12th speech at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. All right, so where does John Kerry fit in all this. Now, I am not a huge John Kerry fan either. I would rather have seen Vermont’s Howard Dean as the democrat’s choice to take on Bush, but due to the Dean Scream the Dems have decided that Kerry is more electable and have nominated him as their Presidential candidate. According to Time, Kerry “The Senator and Vietnam vet is from Massachusetts, but is not as liberal as his colleague Ted Kennedy. He's liberal on social issues, more moderate on economics and foreign policy.” He’s definitely liberal on social issues. Kerry is a huge supporter of the ‘pro-choice’ movement, according to the Washington Post he is even been sued by a Catholic lawyer and the Archdiocese of Boston for heresy. Apparently the presidential candidate has brought the “most serious scandal to the American public” by receiving communion as a pro-choice catholic. The Reaganites are trying to paint Kerry as a ‘LIBERAL’, which is considered to be a bad word down south. Scary isn’t. L..I..B..E..R..A..L.!! ahhhh!! They Liberals are coming! Unlike Bush, Kerry is a real live veteran; something his campaign is quick to remind us about. Not to mention the fact that he was awarded three Purple Hearts and numerous other ribbons. Although a veteran from the Vietnam War Kerry, upon his return, became a strident anti-war activist. In 1971 during a protest on the Capitol Building in Washington he, like many other disenfranchised vets, threw his war decorations away (Kerry kept the purple hearts however.) Kerry testified before the Senate foreign relations committee. “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” So he’s pro-choice and anti-war, sounds like a Canadian to me. Kerry is also pro U.N, he writesin an Op-Ed printed in the Washington Post: "The United Nations, not the United States, should be the primary civilian partner in working with Iraqi leaders to hold elections, restore government services, rebuild the economy, and re-create a sense of hope and optimism among the Iraqi people.” It gets better and better, pro-choice, anti-war and in favour of the U.N. – Canada’s favourite international organization. Not to mention that, according to an amusing Ailsin cartoon depicting President Bush beseeching Americans to ware Kerry because he “plays hockey – like a Canadian! – and….shudders….speaks French!” Speaks French and plays hockey! Kerry might as well move up here to the Great White North. Now that’s not to say that Kerry is all roses and puppy dogs. He is after all a politician and all politicians are crooked or in somebody else’s pocket. I doubt he will be able to stand up to drug company lobbies and support cheaper Canadian made pharmaceuticals. He won’t get out of Iraq, especially since it’s not his mess. He’ll take as much advantage from it as he can. Namely, supporting a puppet regime that will continue to allow the plunder of Iraq’s resources by the Anglo-American occupiers and transnational corporations. However, as bad as he could be or is forced to be by his political masters he still pales by comparison to the tyranny of George W. Bush. This really comes down to who is the lesser of two evils, who can the world work with? Kerry is the obvious choice for both of these criteria. Tariq Ali, renowned thinker, critic and founding member and editor of the New Left Review, in an August 5 interview with WBAI Radio in New York deemed that “if the American population were to vote Bush out of office, I think the impact globally would be tremendous…People would say this guy took his country to war surrounded by these neocons who developed bogus arguments and lies to go to war against Iraq, he lied to his people, he misused intelligence information, and the American people have voted him out. That in itself I think would have a tremendous impact on world public opinion.” When asked his opinion on the belief, which many of the American left share, that fundamentally Kerry really isn’t that much different from Bush, Ali responded: “We’re talking about the government which took the United States to war…If Gore had been elected president, he would probably have gone to war on Afghanistan if a 9/11 happened, but personally I doubt whether he would have gone to war on Iraq. This is very much a neocon agenda, dominated by the need to both get the oil, as we know, but also to appease the Israelis, who’ve been very keen on this war. This particular war is Iraq is very much something this particular administration went for. So a defeat of this administration would be a defeat of the war party.” Ali, as do I, believes that any change is a good change; a regime is needed for the benefit of the world. One would hope that the example set by Bush’s demise, after all this was a President who at one time had the highest approval ratings of any President in U.S. history, would serve as a sharp example to John Kerry of what can happened when you go against the majority of your own citizens and world opinion. As the recent anti-corporate movement has shone when only the interests of the few and are served the many will re-act. So it is clear that the majority of the world would see a Bush defeat as a victory. The majority of Canadians would also see a victory in a Bush defeat. Canada has a history of getting along better with Democrats rather than Republicans. Except for the Mulorney/Reagan pairing of the 1980’s, I don’t think anybody got along better than those two. You know Paul Martin will be secretly rooting for Kerry, that way he won’t be forced into any unpopular decisions like going along with Bush’s Star Wars plan and so on. So jump on the Anybody But Bush campaign and root for Kerry, we should all think about the effect that either man will have on their country and visa vie our country. To not would be to wade the shallows of ignorance and indifference. This election really does matter for the outside world, as it will have huge impact on what kind of world that will be. Notes 1 Paul Krugman, New York Times, 21 December 2001. 2 Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, (Metropolitan, 2003), p. 217. 3 Joshua P. Rogers, The Havard Crimson Online, http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503219, 24 July 2004. 4 Amnesty International Fact Sheet. Denial Of Rights: Amend the USA PATRIOT Act Now!, http://www.amnestyusa.org/waronterror/patriotact/index.html. 5 Chomsky, p. 226. 6 President George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002. 7 Chomsky, p. 233. 8 President Bill Clinton, A National Security Strategy for a New Century, December 1999, p. 7-9. 9 Chomsky, p. 219-220. 10 President George W. Bush, Remarks by the President on the War on Terror, 12 July 2004. 11 Mitch Frank, Time.com, http://www.time.com/time/election2004/candidates/kerry.html, 4 May 2004. 12 Julia Duin, The Washington Times, 30 June 2004. 13 CBC News Online, http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/uselection2004/candidates.html, 15 March 2004. 14 John Kerry, The Washington Post, 13 April 2004. 15 Aislin, The Montreal Gazette, 16 March 2004. 16 Tariq Ali, Behind the News – Doug Henwood, WBAI, Pacifica Radio, 5 August 2004, http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html.