April Fool 2003

April Fool

That= s me, because I missed my deadline last week. I am writing this AFTER April 1, but I won= t miss the April 15 drop-dead-day. Our tax statements went out the door March 15, except the one with an amount due.

There are lots of fool things going on this April, not the least of which is King George= s war in Iraq. In addition, we have Congress jumping up and down in its hurry to send $78 billion to the military in Iraq. Meanwhile, money promised the local schools, police, fire and other agencies has disappeared. The State= s broke and threatening not to pay doctors, nurses, hospitals and, again, the teachers. The way the royal Labor Secretary looks at it, unemployment is not up because people stopped looking for jobs because there are far fewer jobs on offer. Somehow, I can= t decide whether things would be a lot better without this Federal government, or just the latest batch of goofs manning the desks. To think they all got a pay-raise after the 2000 elections!

Some things go right regardless of the clowns in Washington, Sacramento and elsewhere. Plants know when it is time to put out roots, grow stems and leaves, then flower. Our lemon begins blooming. The Thompson grape is busy with new shoots, while the pomegranate is putting on new leaves. The cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, zinnias and snapdragons are just waking up to a new year.

In our part of the world, March is usually a warm and wet month, followed by an early April fake-out. So, it= s got colder the last few days, as if we= re going back into winter. But, we= re not; it= s only an April fool. Soon enough, late spring= s warmth will set in, and, by May, summer will be back.

April stands between winter and summer, keeping them at arm= s length. Neither here nor there, trying a little of each; seemingly deciding which to keep. Even though we know the seasons= progress, for a moment we can feel otherwise. Choosing neither this nor that, we are comfortable in our lack of commitment, our freedom from necessity. Let us enjoy that foolish illusion for a time in this, the cruelest month.
 

Lately, I= ve been handed a lot of harsh criticism. I= ve noticed a lot of hard words in the media. The War has made people very hard. The President insists > you are either for us or against us.= Muslims insist Americans are Infidels. Americans call Muslims IslamoFascists, or A Islamicists.@ And, on and on. What a bigoted world! I think this is not the right way to be.

I wrote many pieces for various Wall St Journal Forums on Iraq, where I= m on the A losing@ side of the issue. I worried earlier on that people would become blood thirsty, once the war started. Now, people are keeping scorecards on the military victories, casualties, etc. I guess it= s Monday Night Football for flightless couch hawks. While government officials serve up canned or frozen Freedom Fries to pay for the war, school children have no lunches; not even ketchup as a vegetable snack.

The latest version, you see, of A compassionate conservatism@ (or A compassionism@ ) is A get used to it.@ That= s like things farm hands say to pigs penned for slaughter. It= s a generalization of that old Russian saying, A A man= s not a pig, he= ll eat anything.@ As always, the truth, the facts and what they mean are soon lost in the heat of battle.

If there= s to be any hope, we must sharpen our memories and our pens, writing down what actually happened as well as what they say happened. I feel we= ve suffered a terrible fate: we= ve gone Through the Looking Glass into Brave New World, even if a little later than the prophetic date 1984.

Here= s my recollection of some salient FACTS pertaining to the war in Iraq. It already seems hard to recall them, as history is being rewritten and advertised everyday by the President, his party and his well paid agents.

Whose idea is this war? There is a cast of characters who have the ear of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, starting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Policy Advisor Richard Perle, and military planner Douglas Feith. Let= s not forget Bill Cristol, former advisor to Dan Quail, editor of The Weekly Standard (paid for by Rupert Murdoch) and William Bennet, writer of books on Virtue.

What these folks have in common is a deep belief in morality, which they feel is best represented today in American values. Bill Kristol has been saying for years that it is moral for America to impose its will on the rest of the world, just because we are the most virtuous people. It is not a case of > might makes right,= because Kristol and the others believe America not only is right, but has the might. What they also have in common is missionary zeal, reminiscent of Manifest Destiny and White Man= s Burden.

I don= t want to spend a lot of time on describing them, so I= ll take my prejudicial short-cut: they= re all straight, right out of the 1950s. Before Dylan= s A Mr Jones.@ I get the idea of them by watching the way they dress, talk, walk and go about their lives - at least as far as that is possible through the TV media. When I was a teenager, I would have thought them A normal@ (but that was long ago).

Wolfowitz and Perle, particularly, have been hankering for the US to take on the Arabs for a long time. Attacking Iraq, Iran, Syria and the other usual suspects was on their agenda, before George Bush got elected. They discussed it a lot in 2001, before the attack on the World Trade Towers. Then 9/11 happened, and invading Iraq has been on their agenda ever since. I believe attacking Iraq was discussed in meetings early in 2002, but The Plan wasn= t ready until last summer.

George Bush, now President, decided what was going to be done about Iraq last August, during his 2002 summer vacation in Crawford, Texas. The decision was to impose A regime change@ on Iraq. This is what started the crisis leading to invasion of Iraq.

Karl Rove, Bush= s political advisor (campaign manager) and master propagandist, ginned up the A regime change@ campaign. Being a master, Rove quickly threw the Democrats off their track. Please recall that, until Labor Day, 2002, the Democrats had every reason to believe they would win the November, 2002 elections. Democrats were geared up for a Fall campaign on domestic issues. Suddenly, last September, the President was everywhere plugging regime change in order to stop Islamic terrorism. The Democrats= advantage vanished.

The Democratic leadership felt unable to defend themselves from a President bent on war. Sen Daschle and Rep Gephardt wanted the Fall campaign to return to the domestic issues (the recession, prescription drugs) on which they had planned to run. They believed Democrats would win, if the looming war could be forgotten. Thus, as things went from bad to worse for Democrats in the polls, Daschle and Gephardt became more and more compliant and accepting of Bush= s war policies.

What the erstwhile Democratic leadership did not reckon on happened: a very large proportion of the voting public immediately opposed the war. These opponents included moderate Republicans who had worked for Bush pere, and some ultra-conservatives as well as the usual cast of Left Wing loonies, whiners and losers (such as myself). Warhawks and chickenhawks lined up behind the President, regardless of party. Mr. Bush was very effective in gathering support from all those in terror of another 9/11, as well as those who wanted revenge. This left Gephardt and Daschle representing less than 30% of the electorate, the 30% with A no opinion@ or who didn= t vote.

The solution, you will recall, was the Democratic leadership jumped on the Iraq War Powers Resolution, and wanted to get that skateboard down Pennsylvania Ave faster than a Mafia get away car. But, there was a hitch.

The anti-war people - the peace movement or protestors (depending on your A moral@ judgement of them) - made a lot of noise. While the Republican controlled House passed the Resolution lickety-split, the Senate was not so fortunate. Because of huge public pressure, and with control of the Senate hanging fire in the election, there were attempted alternative Resolutions, understandings, speeches, etc. In the end, the Senate passed the Resolution, substantially written the way Bush had submitted it. What the Senate gained last October was the President= s concession to go to the UN Security Council for authorization of war against Iraq.

Until this point, the plan was to attack Iraq and get Saddam Hussein. When Bush and Powell went to the UN, things changed. Most of UN members didn= t want a war in Iraq. France, Germany and Russia were very opposed to it. It became clear that the UN Security Council was not going to authorize a war in Iraq. In the UN context, the US was forced to rely on previous resolutions on Iraq. Those resolutions only allowed military force against Iraq if Iraq failed to meet the terms of its 1991 surrender. Possession of A weapons of mass destruction@ (WMD) was one such casus belli. Thus, the Bush Administration began a campaign alleging the Iraqis possessed WMD, so should be punished.

For those opposed to war in Iraq, the question became whether Iraq possessed WMD. The answer prescribed in previous UN resolutions was the inspection process. The US didn= t want any inspections, just war. But, since the Senate had insisted on going to the UN, Bush was forced to compromise. There was a lot of haggling over the UN= s Nov 7, 2002 resolution (UNSCR 1441). The French and Russians just wanted inspections, and no use of force without a so-called A 2nd Resolution.@ The Americans wanted an ultimatum which authorized military force. The compromise restarted the inspections process, and called for regular reports to the Security Council.

The Americans hoped the inspectors would find the smoking gun, which would force UN intervention. The Europeans hoped the inspectors would find nothing, or gain Iraqi compliance in destroying what was found. UNSCR 1441 was a temporary stalemate.

The Democratic leadership was shouted down by the noise. The American electorate was either thrilled or shocked by the prospect of a war, which became the focus of the Fall election. Those Democrats who followed the Daschle-Gephardt A me-too@ line supporting Chief Sheriff George Bush found themselves on the street soon after the election. The Democrats who did best stuck to their usual lines. The ones who did best of all drew support from the peace movement. The 2002 Federal election was all about forgetting where you came from.

Meanwhile, starting in September, the Bush Administration made preparations for an attack on Iraq. Regardless of political events in the Senate, the election and the UN, bases were created, troops were moved, deployments planned and changed. By December - just 1 month after UNSCR 1441 - the Pentagon was testing its command centers with the more than 50,000 personnel already in place for the attack. The buildup never stopped, and reached critical mass shortly after Valentine= s Day, 2003. After that, it remained only to find a pretext for invasion.

When the military buildup was completed, Sec Powell was suddenly discovered as a convert to the chickenhawk camp (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz Perle et al). Now, Colin Powell demanded the A 2^nd Resolution@ from the Security Council, saying the inspections were a failure. The Americans and British insisted Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, and that Iraq was a potent threat to the world. Of course, this brought the matter to a head, despite the French and Russian hope that the compromise in UNSCR 1441 would avoid war.

As you know, the Security Council never voted a 2^nd Resolution. Of 180 UN members, more than 110 are opposed to the war in Iraq. Mr. Bush decided the UN was a waste of time, so the order to attack was given.

A few more notes are in order. The Neocons (neo-conservatives, Rumsfeld et al) haven= t had any use for the UN at least since the days of Ronald Reagan. They want the US to withdraw from the UN, and throw it out of New York. One of their goals is destroying the UN, and this war helped that along. If you haven= t done so, you should read the NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY and related documents published last year. That document clearly states US policy is world economic and military dominance, and that unilateral, pre-emptive wars are a legitimate means of fulfilling that purpose. According to the neocons, we have the right to do what we will, because we are a moral people and virtuous nation. This is the most extreme statement of American exceptionalism I= ve heard.

I suppose it doesn= t matter. Que Sera, Sera, that is, if A que sera sera@ applies to you favorably.

It just doesn= t happen to apply favorably to me and many people I know. That= s not because I will be sent to fight a foreign war in a strange place, but because foreign warriors are more likely to be sent to a familiar place: here.

Our neo- and ultra-conservatives are also making war on the American people. They are scheming to undermine and privatize Medicare. They want to privatize Social Security. They= ve already cut down food stamps and many other welfare programs. They believe the needs of the poor can be met by voluntary programs, administered by the religious faithful. They believe America is Christian and not just Episcopalian Christian, but evangelical Christian. They think a women= s place is in the home, not on the job, and that women should bear the children planted on them by men. They believe the wealthy and successful are the chosen of God. And, above all, they believe they are Right!

Put it all together: imagine what the country will be like, made over in the conservative image. What I get is Salem, Mass, around 1650. Or, ante bellum Charleston, SC. I don= t get anything that looks any America I=ve known, not even the conservative Republican hometown of my childhood.

During the last few years, I= ve come to realize how fortunate I am to live in this Western region - northern California and southern Oregon. This is not a good home for conservatives, who have many complaints about us: first and foremost that we= re just too relaxed (A laid back@ ). But, to me that is exactly the point: laid back people aren= t in a hurry to go off to wars, or make someone obey a crazy preacher (or politician), or worry about who= s doing whom in what they enjoy.

It= s all about being who you are, not what someone says you ought to be. That was the point of the First Human Be-In, way back in the Summer of Love, 1967. Unfortunately, George W Bush did not attend.

I have NOT said all I had on my mind in this edition.

Later.