March 01, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

TRASH THE "BUSH DOCTRINE"

The Bush Doctrine is a little like saying the guy down the street has a gun, I don't like the guy, he may use the gun against me someday, and I'm going to get him first. That defense wouldn't work in any court of law. But Bush announced a doctrine of "preventive war" after the attacks on 9/11, and Congress went along with it. It's time to retire the Bush Doctrine to the garbage bin of history. This article by Andrew J. Bacevich is at www.commondreams.org:

In 2003, Saddam Hussein posed no immediate threat to the United States; arguing that he might one day do so, the administration depicted the invasion of Iraq as an act of anticipatory self-defense. To their everlasting shame, a majority of members in both the House and the Senate went along, passing a resolution that "authorized" the president to do what he was clearly intent on doing anyway. Implicitly, the Bush Doctrine received congressional endorsement.

Events since have affirmed the wisdom of seeing preventive war as immoral, illicit, and imprudent. The Bush administration expected a quick, economical, and decisive victory in Iraq. Advertising the war as an effort to topple a brutal dictator and liberate an oppressed people, it no doubt counted on battlefield success to endow the enterprise with a certain ex post facto legitimacy. Elated Iraqis showering American soldiers with flowers and candies would silence critics who condemned the war as morally unjustified and patently illegal.

None of these expectations has come to pass. In its trial run, the Bush Doctrine has been found wanting.

Today, Iraq teeters on the brink of disintegration. The war's costs, already staggering, continue to mount. Violence triggered by the US invasion has killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. We cannot fully absolve ourselves of responsibility for those deaths.

Our folly has alienated friends and emboldened enemies. Rather than nipping in the bud an ostensibly emerging threat, the Iraq war has diverted attention from existing dangers (such as Al Qaeda) while encouraging potential adversaries (like Iran) to see us as weak.

GOSH, RIGHT-WINGERS ARE STUPID

Recently it was announced that our local Air America affiliate KFPT is being sold. The new owners intend to change the format to sports. Some people, including me, are disappointed that an alternative to the right-wing gasbags isn't going to be available locally. Predictably, a right-wing moron wrote The Fresno Bee exulting in the change of format, saying that listeners abandoned Air America because of "lies," and even suggested that the major news anchors, including Brian Williams, are liberal. As a liberal, I can say with assurance that Brian Williams is no liberal. It's much easier, of course, to brand everything that doesn't come out of Limbaugh's or Hannity's mouths as "lies" because it contradicts the tidy little black and white world of ignorant reactionaries.

December 29, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

REPUBLICAN "REVOLUTION" UTTER FAILURE

A dark moment in our history was the election of the Republican Congress in 1994. We were told it was a "revolution." We heard about the "Contract With America." We saw a group of right-wing reactionaries come into power whose major objective was to demonize opponents, bring the government to a screeching halt, and push through tax cuts for the rich. Even the claims that they would reduce the size of government have proved to be bogus. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.roziusunbound.blogspot.com:

After first attempting to deny the scale of last month’s defeat, the apologists have settled on a story line that sounds just like Marxist explanations for the failure of the Soviet Union. What happened, you see, was that the noble ideals of the Republican revolution of 1994 were undermined by Washington’s corrupting ways. And the recent defeat was a good thing, because it will force a return to the true conservative path.

But the truth is that the movement that took power in 1994 — a movement that had little to do with true conservatism — was always based on a lie.

The lie is right there in “The Freedom Revolution,” the book that Dick Armey, who had just become the House majority leader, published in 1995. He declares that most government programs don’t do anything “to help American families with the needs of everyday life,” and that “very few American families would notice their disappearance.” He goes on to assert that “there is no reason we cannot, by the time our children come of age, reduce the federal government by half as a percentage of gross domestic product.”