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Wednesday, May 26, 2004
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"INVENTED THE RANT, TOO!"
Al Gore yesterday gave a speech to MoveOn.org (you know, they're the folks who want to "get money out of politics" by hitting you up for a shitload of it and then buying lots of TV time....kinda like....hey, don't politcians do that?) From what I've seen, all Gore managed to prove is that he can yell really loudly (though not as psychotically as his preferred candidate, Howard Dean), and that he is not voting for President Bush in November (although, given his incompetent campaign in 2000, it is entirely possible that he voted for Bush then.)
Let's explore the rantings of the Phantom of the White House and cut open and exam the logical innards therein.
George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.
Humility flows right into humilation, doesn't it? Am I the only one who thinks Al cleared this throgh Jesse Jackson?
Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.
This is a lot to chew in a small bite. Bear with me here.
-"He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention" The Geneva Conention really only applies to people who wear uniforms and shoot at other people in uniforms. This is why it's known as "the Law of War." While what happened at Abu Ghraib is nasty, and potentially impeachable business, it most probably does not violate the Geneva Convention.
-"Just as he would not honor the United Nations" Actually, the UN resolutions of January 2003 did say, "If Saddam does not comply with weapons inspections, the United States gets to invade Iraq. The phrase, "All necessary means does imply that. The fact that the resolution wasn't transparently clear wasn't the fault of the US.
-"international treaties" Such as?
-" the opinions of our allies" Such as? France? Germany? Russia? Countries that were in Saddam's hip pocket through the "Oil For Food" program and desperately trying to get the sanctions that they themselves voted for lifted?
-"the role of Congress" Who voted overwhelmingly for a more aggressive resolution than the UN did? Those guys?
-" ....and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." The "opinion of mankind" is a shaky thing to rest on. That opinion ignored things like the Holocaust. It also ignored the genocide in Rwanda. Oh, I'm sorry. That was just the Clinton administration. It wasn't like Al a part of that or anything. He was just, "The most powerful Vice-President in American history."
-"He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq This is probably true, at least in terms of the neat "after the war" stuff.
-" And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins. This is FUNNY for Gore to bring up. There have been media accounts from 2003 that referred to the "ten-year-old photo ban." I wonder who was president ten years ago? I wonder where American forces were fighting in 1993? Did the use Black Hawks? Did any go down?
-"How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib. The French ran a similar headline 60 years ago next week. Within about a month they were back to calling you "cocksucking fuckerheads" again. Don't guage world opinion on the French. They are, after all, French.
-"To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President. By Gore's own logic then, American involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the expension of a food delivery mission to armed conflict in Somolia, were also all "radical destructions" of that doctrine.
One should also consider whom the doctrine of "containment" was directed at. That would be the Soviet Union. For those unschooled in history, at the end of World War II the Soviets had a conventional military roughly three times that of the United States. This is after 25 MILLION of them were killed fighting the Nazis. Then, in 1949, the Soviets acquired nuclear weapons and were no longer ever possibly susceptable to conventional miliatry defeat. Does that history sound at all familiar?
-"More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does. Thanks, Forrest. But isn't it possible that the administration means the dominance of ideologies, like in that thing...what was it called.....the Cold War? Maybe Al thinks that that the thinking of suicide bombers is, "equal but different" than ours.
-"Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul." Waitasecond! Aren't the people Gore wanted Bush to glad hand, France, Germany, Russia, Begium, Portugal, et al- at one time or another, "dominant?" Is Al Gore saying they have "no soul?" Certainly he's in a position to know.
-"One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.
Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that." For the most part, I agree with Gore on this. But then I think of what would've been said if this were the Clinton/Somebody Else administration, and the line would've been somethingly along the lines of, "Mistakes were made. No need to investigate here."
-"There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation. " Which is, of couse, why the United States has toppled fewer governments, pre-2001 than say, Sweden.
-"Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others." If I'm not mistaken, the "better angels of nature" quote actually is Abraham Lincoln's. If I'm wrong, so be it, I'm a Canadian douchebag. On the other hand, if I'm right....this is a guy who was elected Vice-President of the United States! TWICE! I should HOPE his American history is better than mine.
-"Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.
Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a groan man piss on himself."
What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances." Here again, Al Gore is either lying or stupid. He seems to believe that United States Constitution applies everywhere in the world that Americans happens to be. It decidedly does not, as both Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg would tell you if they could. This is not to excuse Abu Ghraib, those prisoners enjoy no more of the US Constitution than I do. And I enjoy none of them.
-"The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th." An aftermath of which the Clinton/Somebody else was in absolutely no way responsible for, right Al?
-"There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him." Mr. Vice-President, contempt generally begins at home. Phrases like,"Trying to steal the election" probably didn't help in ingraining international repect for this respect. Besides, More often than often than not, I refer to the current holder of the office as "President Bush" and your former boss as "President Clinton." And I'm a fucking Canadian!
-"He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name." As opposed to the first World Trade Center Bombing, Khobar Towers, the East Africa Embassy Bombings and the USS Cole, where abosolutely NOTHING was done? I'm sure that those nothing at all to do with "hornet's nests."
-"President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks. Ok, Mr. Vice President, let's look at the stastics, shall we? Membership in al-Qeada when you became Vice President, 0. Membership when you left.....open question. Certainly 19. You've gotta give me that.
Let's now move on to Iraq. The adminstration and the party to which you belonged, criticized and continue to criticize, the first Bush administration for not "taking out Saddam" in the '91 war. How do you propose that would have happened then without the current consequences? And didn't your administration sign the Iraq Liberation Act? Were you kidding? It would've been nice for President Clinton to have left something, a smiley face, anything to indicate that on the bottom of the bill.
-"The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force." With this, I have to sadly agree and said so at the time.
-"There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting. Waitasecond! Aren't you folks trumpeting the fact that there weren't any nuclear materials?
-"Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor." What if they were planning to sel the Abu Ghraib pictures to gay porn magazines to buy kevlar for the floorboards of Humvess? Besides, who exactly funded the military for eight years when terrorists were hitting you and right anyway?
-"And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss." This could also be, sadly, tragically, true.
-"When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged. Would they be like when they said, "Don't take sides in Somalia?"
-"Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."
The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically." So did marching in the streets chanting, "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh is going to win" help then? I doubt it will now.
-"The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers." Oh, please Al, tell us how many retired generals you had visit the White House when you were there.
-"But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public. And as a former Vice President, why arent you calling for their firing. Now, You and I know that you would've been this laid back about a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1996, but I doubt anyone else does.
-"The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."
-In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption." These are all of course, impeachable offences. Gore would have my respect repect if he just said so and left the rest to Congress.
-"Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." Needless to say, the Clinton White House never went into a tizzy when Dick Morris or George Stephanopolous wrote books.....
"Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out." Actually, Shinseki put in his papers BEFORE he testified, but the truth never bothered Gore before.
-"And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.
To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.
The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.
Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say." All of the above, so far, happens to be true. This is notable for a Gore speech. Three whole paragraphs must be a record.
Okay, it's late and I'm tired. THe speech is long and, of course, Al Gore's. Maybe I'll continue with it tomorrow.
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