2008 Elections

The Things They Left Behind (or Didn’t Remind You About)

dlindorff — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:02:23 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The introduction to John McCain at the Republican National
Convention last night was all about family values. There was the paean
to his mother and father, the touching story of his and Cindy’s
adoption of a baby girl from India, and then there was Cindy herself,
who was the focus of much of a gauzy introductory film on McCain, and
who also did the introductory speech, and who brought all the kids up
on stage with her at the end.

Oddly missing from this warm, feel-good picture, however, was a
single mention of McCain’s first wife Carol Shepp—the one who stood by
him, raising their three kids, through his trying five years in a
Vietnamese prison, only to be dumped upon his heroic return for a
younger woman, despite, or because of, her having suffered permanent
disabling and disfiguring injuries in an auto accident during his
absence. As in a Stalin-era photo, she had been air-brushed from the McCain family tableau, even as her offspring were up there on the stage on display with the rest of the Senator's spawn.

Now I’m not faulting McCain for leaving his wife for a younger,
richer woman. Who knows what the relationship was like at the time.
Maybe Shepp wanted him out of her life by the time he started slipping
off to date beer heiress Cindy Lou Hensley. But if McCain and his
campaign staff wanted to make him a poster child for “family values,”
they should have had the basic integrity to explain that he didn’t
always consider marriage a binding covenant, for better or worse,
richer or poorer, and in sickness or in health. (If you want an
unvarnished view of the real John McCain, read an interview with Carol
McCain published last June in the UK newspaper, The Mail, headlined The Wife US Republican John McCain Callously Left Behind.)

McCain’s party, and his fundamentalist Christian backers, are
always attacking efforts by gay Americans to win the right to marry by
saying that marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman, but
clearly, with over half of all those marriages between a man and a
woman ending in divorce, it’s not all that sacred, and McCain is living
testament to that hypocrisy.

But this was just the most blatant of a string of hypocrisies that ran on for four days in the Twin Cities.

There was the long list of speakers touting America’s “freedoms”
as, outside the convention hall, police thugs dressed in military gear,
and armed with huge batons and assault weaponry were bashing in doors
and terrorizing journalists, arresting others and dragging them face
down along the street, using teargas against peaceful demonstrators and
arresting them by the hundreds.

There was McCain talking about how everyone, including the “child
of Latino immigrants,” is an American, to an audience of Republicans
that was so embarrassingly white that you had to shield your eyes from
the glare of the screen.

There was Sarah Palin, complaining about a media focus on her
pregnant 17-year-old daughter Bristol, all the while shamelessly
parading that same daughter and her 18-year-old impregnator, who was
dragged down to the convention to be shown off after the two had been
somehow convinced to get married and make the baby “legal.”

There were the repeated characterizations of McCain as a battler
against corruption and the influence of “special interests,” without a
word of mention of his having been the recipient of over $100,000 in
cash from Charles Keating, a corrupt banker whose interests McCain
shamelessly pimped for in Congress, only narrowly escaping indictment
himself.

Perhaps the most outrageous hypocrisy of all was claiming that the
McCain/Palin ticket would be “taking on” the corrupt Washington
Establishment, as though that establishment hadn’t been predominantly
Republican for most of the past decade, and as though McCain and Palin
hadn’t been an integral part of it. McCain, after all, has spent those
years dutifully voting with his Republican peers over 90 percent of the
time, shoveling out perks to the rich and the corporations, while
Palin, first as mayor of the small town of Wasilla, and then as
governor of Alaska, employed an Abramoff-linked Washington lobbyist to
help win massive amounts of corrupt “earmarks” for her town and state.
She even backed the notorious $400-million earmark for the “Bridge to
Nowhere” until it became a national joke, yet there she was, in her
acceptance speech, claiming to have opposed that outrageous taxpayer
ripoff.

Republicans are claiming that this election will not be about
issues as much as about character. But given the incredible fraud that
was perpetrated on viewers by the four-day Republican extravaganza, I’d
say it’s more about caricature.
_________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback). His work is available at: www.thiscantbehappening.net

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digg_title = "The Things They Left Behind (or Didn’t Remind You About)";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n The introduction to John McCain at the Republican National Convention last night was all about family values. There was the paean to his mother and father, the touching story of his and Cindy’s adoption of a baby girl from India, and then there was Cindy herself, who was the focus of much of a gauzy introductory film on McCain, and who also did the introductory speech, and who brought all the kids up on stage with her at the end.\r\n\r\n Oddly missing from this warm, feel-good picture, however, was a single mention of McCain’s first wife Carol Shepp—the one who stood by him, raising their three kids, through his trying five years in a Vietnamese prison, only to be dumped upon his heroic return for a younger woman, despite, or because of, her having suffered permanent disabling and disfiguring injuries in an auto accident during his absence.\r\n\r";
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Meet the Truth-Challenged GOP Vice Presidential Candidate: Sure A. Pallin'

dlindorff — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:20:27 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Now that we’ve had a chance to see Sarah Palin and to hear her speak—or at least read the big rolling white block letters on the teleprompter in front of her—we can see that she’s prone to telling whoppers.

Now we know politicians as a group have a propensity to embellish the truth—particularly when describing their opponents or themselves—and even to lie outright, but Palin does it so well, she’s like a George Bush with reading and pronunciation skills.

In her acceptance speech last night, Palin told a whole string of lies. My favorite was talking about little Trig, her latest offspring, who was born with Down syndrome. Looking right out into the camera, she told the parents of America with special needs children that if she and John McCain win in November, “You’ll have an advocate in Washington.”

Hard to square that with the truth, though, which is that as governor, Palin as proposed a reduction in funds for special needs grants to schools in both her budgets—this at a time that the state of Alaska has been benefiting from record oil tax revenues, which Palin is pushing to return to citizens as cash rebates.

Left unsaid by Palin was the fact that McCain himself, in Congress, has voted against funding for the Head Start program, an early childhood program particularly important to children of teen mothers, and that he has opposed bills to increase funding for special education. So in fact, parents of children with special needs like Trig not only won’t have an advocate in the vice president’s office; they won’t have an advocate in the White House either.

Palin has also tried to turn a family tragedy—her 17-year old daughter Bristol’s getting pregnant by a local self-described 18-year-old “redneck” athlete from the same high school—into a virtue by saying that she and her husband will be helping their daughter “keep the child” and raise it. To keep things cool in the eyes of god, she also announced that the two teen parents would be getting married. Both kids were prominently on display at the Republican National Convention during her speech.

What Palin didn’t tell convention-goers or the national viewing audience was that as governor she cut the funds for a program in the state to support single teen mothers and that as a PTA member, mayor and finally as governor of Alaska, she has opposed sex education in the schools—something that her daughter and future son-in-law clearly could have used. Less advantaged single mothers in Alaska and, should she be elected, in the rest of America, will not have a friend in Blair House. She also failed to mention that McCain has voted against funding of teen pregnancy prevention programs in Congress.

Palin continued, in her acceptance speech, to spout another lie which she had already been making in her first days on the stump since being picked by McCain as his choice for running mate: that she had said “No thank you” to the $439-million “Bridge to Nowhere” which, as perhaps the biggest single earmark in a year of record earmarks last year had become a national joke line. The truth: Palin backed that bridge, and was even ready to add state funding to get it built, until it became a national joke. Then she thought better, and killed the bridge, while still taking the money, which the state’s senior senator, Ted Stevens (now under indictment for taking bribes from contractors), had earmarked.

Palin went on to lie about her opponent, Barack Obama’s, tax plan, saying it would raise taxes on businesses and on all Americans. In fact, Obama’s plan calls for lowering the corporate profits tax, while increasing the tax on dividends and capital gains, both of which fall not on businesses but on investors, and for lowering taxes on most Americans, while raising them for people earning over $250,000.

John McCain likes to ride around in a bus he dubs the “Straight-Talk Express.”

Sarah Palin, in her debut on the national stage since being named as McCain’s Number Two, has lied enough times to deserve the sobriquet “Sure A. Pallin’.
___________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Sarah Palin and Me: Two Kids With Guns

dlindorff — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:05:27 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Sarah Palin and I may not have much in common, but we do share an early history of bloodlust.

We both got guns before we were teenagers. According to a report in the British Times
newspaper, Palin took a shotgun at age 10, crawled through the grass in
back of her house with it, took aim at a bunny “and blew its furry
little head off.”

For my part, I got my parents to let me buy a single-shot .22 rifle
when I turned 12, and proceeded to go out in the woods, alone and with
friends, to shoot at targets, trees, and the occasional animal. A crack
shot, I remember picking off what I thought was a dove perched at the
top of a tree a good 200 yards away. I nailed it, but when I went to
the base of the tree, what I discovered was a dead robin. Oh well.

A few dead animals later, near Thanksgiving, I got it in my head
that I wanted to shoot my own bird, so a friend whose family had a rack
of shotguns and I went out with two 12-gauges looking for turkey or
grouse. We had bad luck all day, though my friend Bob almost shot a
great horned owl that startled us, and which he mistook for a turkey
(luckily he missed!). Late in the day, and about to head home in
frustration, we flushed a grouse. As it started to take off, I got off
a shot and hit it, but not very well. It went fluttering off into the
brush. We chased it down and finally caught it. I picked the terrified
animal up and held it in my two hands, feeling its heart beating
frantically. The bird was bleeding from the shot that had perforated
its body, and it was looking around in terror and struggling to get out
of my grip.

At that point I started to cry. I felt like a monster. We didn’t
know what to do. I suppose I should have just wrung its neck to put it
out of its misery, but I didn’t have the courage to do that—to actually
kill a living thing by hand. So I held it out, and Bob put the barrel
of his gun to its head and fired. I was left holding just the
motionless body. Its “feathered little head” was just missing.

That was the end of my hunting. That realization that animals feel
not just pain, but terror, touched me deeply. I had always loved
animals, but until that moment, I had separated my affection for cats,
dogs, ponies and wild creatures, with the things that I would shoot.
It’s not terribly logical, but somehow, when I was young looking at an
animal through a gunsight reduced it to an object, instead of the
living, breathing, feeling thing that it really was.

For Palin, though, shooting that first rabbit was just the
beginning of a life of slaughter for fun. This Christian
fundamentalist, who believes in creationism and the preciousness of
prenatal human life, spent the intervening years since that first bunny
kill shooting God’s creatures of all kinds: moose, caribou, and even
wolves, which she has hunted from helicopter—probably the bottom of the
barrel when it comes to sportsmanship.

Now I know there are probably millions of Christian hunters who
have all kinds of rationalizations for why blowing away God’s creatures
for fun is in line with Bible teachings —“man’s dominion over the
animals” and all that stuff—but I have to say that I find her and their
lack of introspection troubling. (At the time the Bible was being
written, I doubt that hunting for sport even existed. People killed
animals for food.)

No doubt the gun lovers of America will love Palin’s story, but
there are plenty of Republican animal lovers who may be as revolted as
I am at her love of the kill—particularly of those animals like wolves
that are increasingly threatened even in Alaska, and that display such
intelligence and such socially interconnected and developed lives.

Just as it is jarring to read that a woman who, as a top government
official, actively opposes the teaching of sex education in the schools
sees no irony in having her own 17-year-old daughter, clearly in need
of some basic sex ed, get pregnant, it is jarring to me to see a woman
who claims to be a devout Christian reveling in the slaughter for sport
of God’s wild creatures.

Sarah Palin and I parted ways after our first few kills. Mine
converted me from a pre-teen gun nut into an anti-war activist. Hers
seems to have simply left her thirsting for more.
______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
available now in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Of All the Reasons McCain’s Palin Pick is Awful, Evidence of Her Abuse of Power is the Worst

dlindorff — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:32:21 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

There are many reasons why most Americans should be turned off by
Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s last-minute choice of
Sarah Palin as his running mate.

She’s an evangelical Christian who believes in creationism and
thinks this fantasy belongs in the school science curriculum alongside
evolution. She’s opposed to the right to abortion. She thinks global
warming is not a proven phenomenon. She favors drilling for oil in the
Arctic Refuge and damn the environmental consequences. This supposedly
family-centered “hockey mom “is happy about sending her 18-year-old son
off to war in Iraq, even as Iraq is trying to shoo us out of the
country and even as the president is tacitly admitting that the whole
thing is a bust by agreeing to a timetable for withdrawal.

But the real reason Palin, the former mayor of little Wasilla,
Alaska (pop. 5000 when she was there) and two-year governor of Alaska,
is a disastrous pick for the vice presidency on a ticket headed by an
ailing 72-year-old presidential candidate who has suffered two bouts of
melanoma and who is showing early signs of dementia, is the evidence
that she has abused power as governor.

We’ve had eight years of a president and vice president who have
abused their executive power, using the awesome capabilities of the
state to spy on Americans, inserting fake news in the media, pressuring
news organizations not to run important stories, silencing protests by
penning in all critics in remote “free speech” zones, attacking
individual critics with White House-directed campaigns that border on
treason, as in the case of the outing of CIA undercover operative
Valerie Plame, whose husband had criticized a Bush argument for
invading Iraq, and threatening government scientists who wanted to
report their legitimate findings on climate change.

We have seen over these past eight years just what abuse of power can do to destroy democratic government and a free society.

So now we have Gov. Palin, whom evidence suggests may have abused
her power as governor of Alaska to fire the state’s public security
director after he blocked her efforts to destroy the career of a
low-level state trooper who happened to be her former brother-in-law,
because she wanted to avenge a sister engaged in an ugly post-divorce
custody dispute.

Published allegations would show that both Gov. Palin’s husband
Todd Palin, and members of her staff, repeatedly called and harangued
state Public Safety Director Walt Monegan, who says he was “pressured”
to fire the brother-in-law, Officer Mike Wooten. The Palins have
charged that Wooten drank beer in his patrol car, hunted moose
illegally and that he once fired his taser at his 11-year-old step
son—charges that Wooten has denied. They have also claimed that Wooten
threatened Sarah Palin’s father—also denied by Wooten.

Also interesting—the charges that were made against Wooten were for
things that he allegedly did years before, and for which, where
appropriate, he had already been disciplined or exonerated by his
employer. That taser incident, if it happened, was when the stepson was
11. The boy, now 17, reportedly lives these days with the allegedly
trigger-happy step dad. The alleged beer and hunting incidents also
predate the divorce, which raises questions of why, if those charges
warranted Wooten’s firing from the police force, the supposedly
ethics-obsessed Palin would not have raised them back at the time with
his superiors.

Palin has improbably denied that she had “anything to do with” her
husband’s calls to Monegan. She subsequently fired Monegan and got his
successor to fire her sister’s ex from the police force. (Her pick to
replace Monegan is being accused of sexual harassment!).

The Republican state legislature has voted $100,000 to fund an
independent investigation into the abuse of power charges against
Palin, and there is talk of a possible impeachment proceeding, too.
Palin has denied that she did anything wrong. The investigation, which
is expected to take three months to complete, will drag on through the
entire presidential election campaign.

One thing is clear: Whatever Palin’s troglodyte social and
political views, Americans don’t need another vice president who views
public office as an opportunity to abuse his or her power for personal
or political vendettas.

The other thing that is clear in all this is that McCain, who is
running for president in part on a claim of competence, has certainly
demonstrated a lack of same in his naming of Palin, whom he reportedly
only decided on this past week and after only speaking with her last
Sunday by phone. (His campaign says he also met her once briefly last
February at a state governors’ convention in Washington.)

The Alaskan “troopergate” abuse of power scandal, which will now
play out through the coming weeks, clearly was not vetted by McCain and
his staff, and no doubt will turn off a lot of one natural Republican
constituency: law enforcement officers, who expect to have any charges
leveled against them handled by due process.

If even some of the charges against Palin are true, her actions
should make her unfit for the office of vice president, particularly on
the ticket with a man who is pushing the actuarial envelope in running
for president.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Remembering When the Government Was at Least Approachable

dlindorff — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:26:59 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

We’ve come a long way towards imperial government in the US—towards
a view of the relationship between the federal government, and
especially the administration, and the citizenry that has more of a
ruler-subjects than a democratic feel to it.

Now I know it is easy to gloss over the way things were, and since I
spent a few days in federal prison for protesting the Indochina War at
the Pentagon in 1967, after being beaten by federal marshals for doing
nothing more than exercising my constitional right to protest on public
ground, I am well aware that 40 years ago we were also often treated
like serfs. But that said, there was something different back then—a
sense that you could deal with powerful officials as an equal.

Back in the summer of 1968, I spent one of several summers on the
road (something more young people should do today). I had hitch-hiked
across the country from Connecticut to Washington state with Allen
Baker, a college buddy, and then, towards the end of that summer break,
had bought an old pick-up truck for $100, which we were driving home
via the West Coast and the central route. Not having much cash, we were
stopping at cities along the way, where I would play guitar for gas
money.

This was the late ‘60s, and there was a major and sometimes violent
culture war underway between the long-hairs like me and the clean-cut
American “Silent Majority,” and my travel companion, Allen, and I were
concerned that it would be tough scaring up much cash in the vast
Republican stretches of desert, mountains and prairie that lay between
Nevada and Missouri. So when we passed through Yosemite National Park,
we decided to spend a day in the valley’s main parking lot, raising
donations from tourists.

While Allen dozed in the back of the truck, I opened my guitar case
and put up the “Gas Money” sign, and then, sitting on the running board
of the old Dodge, started to play.

The money poured in—over a hundred dollars in a fairly short amount
of time. It was really astounding. People walking by really enjoyed the
music and wanted to help us out.

Then a park ranger, an older fellow with a friendly smile, drove up.
“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically, “but I have been told to arrest
you.”

“What for?” I asked, genuinely shocked.

“There’s no panhandling allowed in the park,” he responded.

“What’s panhandling?” I asked him, genuinely unaware of the meaning
of the term, which I, an Easterner, thought must have to do with
cooking with a skittle on an open fire.

“It’s what you’re doing right now,” the ranger said.

By that point, Allen had woken up and sat up in the truck bed, rubbing his eyes.

“You’ll have to come in too,” the ranger told him.

We followed him back to the ranger station, where he proceeded to
write up our tickets. I noticed that there were two actual jail cells
in the station. Thankfully, at least we weren’t going to be locked up.
Then there was a loud bang outside. Suddenly, a younger ranger, looking
like a recent Marine veteran, muscled and crewcut, ran in. “Where’s the
first aid kit,” he yelled. “ I was just bringing in a kid on a
marijuana charge and he tried to run. I shot him in the leg.”

Whoa! I thought. This is Dodge City!

The older ranger told his partner where to get the kit, and then
turned his attention back to us. “Here are your tickets,” he said. “And
don’t skip out on them. This is a federal offense, and the FBI will
come after you if you don’t pay it.”

We left the building, and only then did I look at my ticket closely.
The fine: $500! It was a fortune back then. Even today it is a big
whopper—especially as a penalty for being poor.

I was pretty upset. That was about how much I had earned towards college that whole summer.

Well, the $100 I’d earned panhandling in the park got us back across the country, at least.

When I got home to Connecticut, though, my fine was rankling. Angry
at the injustice of it all, I typed up a letter to the Secretary of the
Interior, who at the time was Stewart Udall. I wrote about the shooting
incident, saying that I thought it was an outrage that an unarmed young
man arrested on a minor charge like marijuana possession would be shot
in a national park, and I also wrote that it was unfair to fine someone
$500 for simply playing music in a park parking lot. “I wasn’t
bothering people,” I wrote. “In fact, they were coming up to me to hear
the music, and the $100 they tossed into my guitar case is testimony to
the fact that they liked what I was doing. That isn’t panhandling, and
in any case, it’s pretty nasty to fine someone $500 when he’s doing
something because he needs money.”

About two weeks later, I got my letter back from the Department of
Interior. On it, in red ink, Udall himself had written, “I agree.
Forget your ticket. It’s been taken care of. Stewart Udall.”

I have tried to imagine that same situation happening today. First
of all, the unfortunate hippie who got shot that time long ago would
probably have been killed, because the ranger would have been carrying
a more high-powered weapon, and wouldn’t have even been aiming to
disable. Second, Allen and I would probably have been put on some
database at the Pentagon, the FBI and the Transportation Security
Administration, and would have been barred from flying or entering any
national parks. More importantly, though, I tried to imagine the
response I would have gotten writing to current Interior Secretary Dirk
Kempthorne to complain about an arrest for panhandling. Or to his
predecessor, Gale Norton. This is, after all, a department that has
instructed its rangers at the Grand Canyon and other parks not to talk
about evolution, and those at the Everglades National Park not to talk
about global warming and the inevitability that rising ocean levels
will swallow that sea-level park in this generation. Under both
secretaries, the Interior Department has played a key role in the Bush
administration’s efforts to alter and to selectively censor government
scientific reports on evidence of climate change.

I’m not saying it was all sweetness and light back in the ‘60s, or
even that Stu Udall was representative of all government officials in
the Johnson years, but there clearly was a different sense back then
that ordinary citizens had a right to communicate directly with their
leaders and to expect some kind of response.

Nixon began the end of all that, with his Imperial Presidency. It
wasn’t just his penchant for secrecy, though that was legendary. It was
his desire to make the government something more remote and feared,
something imposing and awesome, rather than down-to- earth and
accessible. President Carter, to his credit, went a long way towards
reversing that trend, but over the years it has continued, with Bush
and Cheney taking it to an extreme. Today the White House is a bunker.
Federal police carry assault weapons. Snipers man the roof of the White
House. People who write letters of complaint to minor federal officials
can end up being strip-searched and arrested.

And from the looks of things, it may not be much better even if
Obama takes over the White House. The first day of the Democratic
Convention in Denver saw anti-war protesters penned into the same kinds
of “free-speech zones” that the Bush/Cheney administration has made
into standard features of any “public” appearance they put in, while
AT&T, the company that brought us the convention, kept even
credentialed reporters away from a private party the company threw for
those Democrats in Congress who obligingly passed immunity legislation
to protect the company from lawsuits by those whose communications were
spied on by Bush’s National Security Agency. (Obama supported the
immunity legislation.)

So even as we are all being reduced to a nation of panhandlers, it
may be a long time before we can expect a handwritten letter from the
secretary of the Interior Department or of federal department, or for
help in getting off an unfair ticket.
___________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006).
His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Foreign Policy and National Security Are Not the Same Thing

dlindorff — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:27:10 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

One of the sorrier legacies of eight years of Bush and Cheney in the White House has been the conflation of the terms “National Security” and “Foreign Policy” by both Republicans and Democrats.

Granted that the history of US foreign policy in the world has been heavily larded with wars, many of them at America’s instigation. It is nonetheless true that foreign policy is much bigger and more far reaching than just what has come to be known as “national security” issues.

In Bush-speak, national security come to mean having big guns, lots of heavily armed troops, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, naval armadas and a bully’s willingness to use these weapons on a whim, with no thought of consequences.

The term is kind of oxymoronic, since it is clear that by resorting to war and to threats of war, and by squandering unprecedented sums of money on the military, eight years of bellicosity has not made the nation more secure. Quite the opposite: The military has been run into the ground, the economy has been bankrupted, education, healthcare and other critical national services have been shortchanged, and the country has become a pariah state, viewed around the world as a loose cannon and a terror nation—hardly a comforting position to be in.

Foreign policy, meanwhile, has ceased to have any meaning at all, beyond the making of war or threats of war, making it virtually synonymous with the term national security.

When I was a Fulbright professor in China, back in 1991, at a mid-year conference in the southern Chinese city of Kunming, we grantees were addressed by the head of the Fulbright Program in China, a cultural affairs director from the US embassy in Beijing. He informed us that as teachers (I was teaching journalism at Fudan University in Shanghai), we Fulbrighters were the frontline of American foreign policy in China. Most of us were kind of repulsed by his semi-military allusion to a battle line and by implication to us as soldiers, and we chose instead to see our role as something different: emissaries from the American people to the Chinese people. In fact, given that most of the 21 of us were hardly superpatriots or cold warriors (the academics, journalists, lawyers and other professionals who serve in the Fulbright Program tend demographically to be among the most liberal and left-leaning group in the American workforce), we would have made a pretty bad defense line. Rather, what we were doing in China, by teaching and building relationships with young Chinese college students, was the essence of real foreign policy—building bridges at the grass roots level between the people of China and the people of the US.

Foreign policy can be reduced to a strategic chess game—the kind of “real politik” practiced by Klemens von Metternich in the 19th Century, or espoused by Henry Kissinger in the Nixon years—but it is actually, or at least ought to be, much broader than that kind of cold and calculating manipulation and pursuit of narrow self-interest.

Real foreign policy should be about winning friends, building trust, establishing relationships between countries and peoples, negotiating treaties designed to achieve mutual advantage and to deter aggression. It is about aiding countries that are in need of assistance, and at its best, should also be about making the world a safer, better place for all, which in the end is the best way to guard against war and the threats of war.

Now it would be naïve to imagine a foreign policy that ignored national self-interest. Much as I or others might wish for a world without borders and a common humanity, in a world of nation states, it is inevitable that foreign policy as practiced by any nation, including the United States, will be focused on achieving the maximum benefit for that nation, and US foreign policy has always been about just that, and unfortunately probably always will be. But even granted this selfish parochialism, it is incredibly shortsighted and ignorant to treat foreign policy as simply an America-first process of bullying others into submission to our dictates. Thousands of American teachers and Peace Corps volunteers and aid workers do much more to advance America’s position in the world and to enhance the nation’s security than do hundreds of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs and missiles.

For Republicans, there is no difference between national security, which is defined as a powerful and assertive military, and foreign policy. But Democrats, who at times have had a more nuanced view, have more recently bought into this too. At the current Democratic Convention, anxious to look as tough as Republicans, Democratic speakers have used the terms national security and foreign policy interchangeably.

Afghanistan and Iraq provide excellent cases in point. Clearly, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, ostensibly aimed initially at hunting down Al Qaeda fighters and leaders, quickly devolved into an all-out assault on that nation, which has been reduced to the same rubble and state of chaos and civil war as has Iraq. Now, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is talking about expanding the war there, and increasing the killing and destruction in that country. In Iraq, where the US has been involved in an orgy of killing and destruction now for over five years, Obama and fellow Democrats are calling for a “responsible exit” from that conflict over the course of another 16 months. A truly responsible exit would be an immediate withdrawal, a national apology to Iraqis and to the world community, and a massive program of reparations to help rebuild that nation.

What Obama and the Democrats are touting is not foreign policy. It is a continuation of national security run amok.

No amount of American force, no level of mayhem and slaughter, will bring about a secure and tranquil Afghanistan. In fact, every time Americans kill Afghanis, as American bombers recently did, slaughtering 60 children and 30 other adults, women and men, in an aerial bombardment reminiscent of the German Luftwaffe’s attack on the Basque village of Guernica, they produce not peace and submission, but rather hatred and a desire for vengeance.

It will take perhaps a generation of good works for the US to undo the evil done to American foreign relations by eight years of Bush/Cheney obsession with national security, but it doesn’t even look like the Democrats “get it.” In Congress, they have vied with Republicans to look tough, supporting both the invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, they have supported the continued funding of those wars and increased funding for the already bloated US war machine, and they are now backing Obama’s call for more combat troops in Afghanistan.

Real foreign policy would be looking at ways to work with other nations to bring down the level of combat, and to bring peace to Afghanistan and to other war-torn regions of the world.

Meanwhile, the concept of national security needs to be broadened. As Genghis Khan, conqueror of China, is reputed to have said as a frightened Chinese empire, at extraordinary financial and human cost, constructed the Great Wall to fend him off, “A wall is only as strong as the people behind it.”

One need only drive through any American city today and view the bombed-out neighborhoods, the crack dens, the pot-holed streets, the decrepit transit systems, the shamefully overcrowded and prison-like schools where any teaching and learning that goes on is an accident, one need only visit ignored and forgotten rural areas of America where unemployment is the norm and healthcare is half a day’s drive and half a year’s income away, one need only drive through a suburban neighborhood and look at all the “For Sale” and even more pathetic “For Sale: Reduced Price!” signs in front of houses, to see that what lies behind America’s walls, like the ridiculous one being built now along parts of the border with Mexico, is incredible weakness. (At the rate things are going here, it won’t be long before Americans will be scaling that wall to find jobs in Mexico!)

The folly of conflating national security and foreign policy, and of imagining that a mindless willingness to resort to force and bullying is the sine qua non for being “presidential,” has been made painfully clear not only in the screams of wounded children in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in the cries of hungry children in America. The United States does not need a man of war in the White House. It needs a wise advocate of peace.
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/35736'; digg_title = "Foreign Policy and National Security Are Not the Same Thing"; digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n One of the sorrier legacies of eight years of Bush and Cheney in the White House has been the conflation of the terms “National Security” and “Foreign Policy” by both Republicans and Democrats.\r\n\r\n Granted that the history of US foreign policy in the world has been heavily larded with wars, many of them at America’s instigation. It is nonetheless true that foreign policy is much bigger and more far reaching than just what has come to be known as “national security” issues.\r\n\r\n In Bush-speak, national security come to mean having big guns, lots of heavily armed troops, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, naval armadas and a bully’s willingness to use these weapons on a whim, with no thought of consequences.\r\n\r"; digg_skin = 'standard';

The hero of New Progressivism - Roy Carter - Please Read

highcountryprogressive — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:56:00 -0400

Hi this is Mike a longtime lurker, and sometimes poster, who wanted to share the story of a man I think you would personally love to check out once you hear about him.

If it's true that anyone, regardless of income or social status, can run for national political office in this country then this man should be elected and I encourage you to take the time to read about him, and possibly support a school teacher's bid for congress.

His name is Roy Carter, who's running an amazing campaign for U.S. Congress in NC-05, and in full disclosure I'm his Political Director.

He was my high school teacher, when I was struggling and considered dropping out he convinced me to stick it out and graduate from high school. And now I'm four months away graduating college with a degree in journalism, and a minor in political science. And last summer I was able to intern for Dean's Democracy for America organization, all due to Roy Carter believing in me.

When you hear the words Baptist, Deacon, Southern good ole' boy, high school football coach/teacher, and farmer in one of the reddest districts in NC you would hardly picture that person being a Progressive.

At best you might consider the guy a Blue Dog Democrat, at best, like Heath Shuler in the neighboring district.

The thing about Carter is, his "progressivism" is not something based on ideology, but rather common sense.

It wasn't a staunch opposistion to imperialism or to nation building that made him opposed to the invading Iraq back in 2002.

It was the simple fact that Iraq had not attacked us and therefore we should not attack them. And that's what he told his High School students in the classroom in 02 and 03, I should now because I was one of them.

Carter is a man who has coached football and taught science for forty years, also tending to the family farm, and he built his own house four times, never living much of a public life.

But after he saw former student after former student being shipped off to Iraq, and then being Stop-lossed, he decided it was his duty to help bring them home safely to their families.

So he boldly announced his candidacy for U.S. Congress in a district that has been Republican since 1994 and produced current NC Senator Richard Burr.

It's also a heavily gerry mandered district and the odds usually are against any Democrat winning there. But after none of the big name democrats, Mayors, Town Council members, and lawyers were too scared to run, Roy bravely threw his hat into the ring to defeat right-wing extremist Rep. Virginia Foxx.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk6mTyxekZ4&eurl=http://... /

In the past the Democrats struggled mightily in challenging Foxx by nominating perceived "intellectuals," men who had written several books and who came off as elitist.

That simply wouldn't work in a district where NASCAR started, that's the birthplace of Lowe's Hardware, and hosts the east coast's largest bluegrass festival.

It's a backwoods district, country as you can imagine. But this time the Democrats got it right by backing the guy who has a southern drawl, and the personality of Andy Griffith (Andy's hometown and the basis for the show are also in the district).

You'd think given the nature of the district that only way of winning would be to run as a Blue Dog and serve as one too in order to stay in Congress but that's not the case.

Roy is running as a full blown progressive, issuing landmark statements in opposition to Mountain-top Removal (the source of most of the district's power), corporate greed, and the Iraq War. And most importantly the corruption of his opponent:

http://www.roycarterforcongress.com/5.27.html

He wants to trash NAFTA, end No Child Left Behind, end the tax breaks for the large oil corporations, and will demand universal health care for all Americans.

And he'll be great on the House floor, fighting for progressive ideals with the intimidating factor of a hard nosed football coach.

And Roy has been getting involved during the campaign as an activist as well.

Carter appeared at an anti-war rally at the local university, Appalachian State, and drew many of the crowd of 500 to tears with an inspiring speech.

Weeks later Roy joined 50-60 students in a sit-in in the Chancellor's office of the University over the University's use of sweatshop labor to produce it's apparel.

It really is a unique story, he's become a hero of the Left, and the netroots, being named Democracy for America's Grassroots All-Star and winning their endorsement, as well as that of LCV, NEA, etc...

In the Grassroots All-Star race 90 Democratic Congressional challengers were entered into an online voting pool, that was open to anyone with an email address, and an relatively unknown man like Carter who's never run for anything before finished in first because people fell in love with his story.

When Carter retired as a coach and teacher, after forty years, he was making $40,000 a year.

His opponent is worth around 9 million.

Let's prove to America that a poor man can still win a Congressional election.

What's truly amazing about the whole thing is that Roy, by running as a progressive, in rural NC, is poised to win and is in a statistical dead heat in the polls.

And that's because he's taught at four different schools in the district, so he's practically a hero in four separate communities here.

The folks here know him and respect him as a person -and the conservatives are drawn to him because of his southern charm and persona.

His former students and players swear by him and many have volunteered to canvass, phone bank and work the polls for him.

Wish you could see his 250+ pound former offensive linemen going door to door for their coach.

I truly believe he's going to pull this out, and will shock the world getting elected as a progressive in a heavily republican district.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccu3pjS14gU&eurl=http://...

So please check him out at www.roycarterforcongress.com

Let's prove that a man who was sitting on a rocking chair on his porch thinking about how bad things have gotten, thinking of his students, and his former ones in Iraq, and boldly decided to run because nobody else would, can win this thing.

Let's put a teacher and Farmer in Congress, one who will not back down, because he never has.

Sincerely,

Mike Cooper Jr.

Political Director
Roy Carter for Congress

Here's some quick bio info on him:

In 1965, Carter married Patricia Burleson of Barnardsville, NC. and upon graduation from East Tennessee State University, embarked on a coaching and teaching career that spanned forty years.
Using leadership and innovation Carter has worked on several student and community programs to combat drop-out rates, drug and alcohol abuse, and illiteracy. In 1997, one such program was instrumental in Andrews High School naming Carter as its Teacher of the Year.

Carter has been a member of the North Carolina Coaches Association for over thirty years, being chosen as Conference Coach of the Year in 1993 and Coach for the annual East / West All-Star game in 1998. Additionally, he has been actively involved in the North Carolina High School Athletic Association, and was elected to the North Carolina High School Association Re-Alignment Committee in 1999, receiving the Merit Award and receiving the Award of Achievement in 1995.

Obama, don't follow McCain into the mud

mr_twist — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:02:14 -0400

Please help unite
Obama supporters in rejecting McCain’s
negative campaign style. We must clean up politics if things are ever to get
better. We have a chance to be so much more than the same old attack politics,
but Obama must hear the voices of his supporters on this.

Please read the message to Obama on the following blog and
help spread it to others.

http://manyhands.blogspot.com/

Senator Barack Obama,

I realize that you have already endured
much since the start of your campaign for the presidency. Along with
the grueling schedules, lack of sleep, and time away from your family,
you have had to deal with being the target of racial slurs, hateful jokes, untrue attacks on your faith, and even slander against your loved ones. All of us who support your bid for president and many of those who do not condemn such unethical political trash.

I call upon you to recognize in these difficult times that the Obama campaign belongs to its supporters. It belongs to all of us. We want to support what we have seen in you. Maybe it was something we read in one of your books, a rousing speech
you made at a huge rally, or a small commitment you expressed in a more
personal setting. Regardless, we all found something to believe in that
we share. We found a hope for something better in the potential that
you contain and in what we have seen from your best moments. Do not
forget this. Even when you falter you must still be committed to the
steady course of something new, something positive, and something which
makes you capable of inspiring and leading millions.

This needs
to be said in light of McCain deciding recently that there is only one
way for him to defeat you: by drawing you into his mud. Unable to rally
the enthusiasm and hope that you stir in people McCain has decided
instead to take the low road and lash out
at you for inspiring so many to believe in and work for change in their
country. These are McCain's politics, do not let them become yours. Our
country does not need a second McCain campaign, we need something
different, something new, and something better.

I am not asking you to be soft and avoid holding people accountable, asking tough questions, or defending yourself from lies.
I am asking you to not be drawn into the negative campaigning that your
opponent so wishes to see you engage in. There is a difference between
hard politics and dirty politics. Do not become a mudslinger instead of
a "hope monger". Many of us want something different and you are our
best hope for that. Please Sen. Obama, do not walk into the politics of
anger and spite.

--- One of your inspired supporters

Check Out Alan Grayson's new ad! (D-FL CD08)

ddeclue — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:59:04 -0400

Fellow Democrats:

Just in case you haven’t seen Alan’s new ad on TV yet, you can check it out on-line at the DailyKos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/25/155020/561/340/556978

I actually saw it for the first time on TV the other night and I thought it was really an eye-catching ad in which Alan talks about just how much money has gone missing in Iraq and how he has been working to recover tax dollars through his whistleblower lawsuits for waste fraud and abuse. I thought the ad had a lot of energy and avoided the usual political clichés that voters tune out.

Please be sure to leave a comment and please be sure to tell your friends.

Thanks,

Doug D.

We're a Nation of Lemmings

dlindorff — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:27:20 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Listening to the endless stream of cars passing my house every day,
and knowing, from watching them from my mailbox, that they are almost
all carrying just one person, either commuting to work or running some
kind of errand, I know we are headed for disaster.

Two days ago, there was a report by Agence France Presse
about the ongoing destruction of the world’s remaining wetlands (60
percent have already been destroyed by man over the past century), and
how they contain within them an amount of stored carbon equal to all
the carbon currently in the atmosphere. Global warming and property
development are drying out those remaining wetlands, causing the
release of that carbon, which will more than negate even the most
radical efforts at reducing carbon emissions from power plants,
factories and automobiles.

There are also credible, well-researched reports
that even a few more degrees of temperature rise in the arctic regions
of Siberia and northern North America will melt the permafrost and
release as much 400 gigatons of methane gas trapped in frozen
clathrates for millennia—the release of which would cause global
temperatures to soar to levels not seen in 250 million years (methane
is 20 times as potent a global warming gas as CO2). Vast regions of
Siberia are already bubbling with releasing methane as the permafrost
line moves north.

Now I grant that our corporate media, ever focused laser-like on
important stories like Britney Spears’ return to the stage and on the
latest gaffe of one or the other presidential candidate, have not been
very interested in alerting the masses to these disasters now in
progress that could end humanity’s run on the planet (along with
exterminating most of the rest of the life on the planet too). But that
said, at this point everyone has surely heard enough, and witnessed
enough in person of the dramatic changes taking place in the earth’s
climate, to know that something scary is going on.

And yet, people are not just going about their business as
usual—they are actually, for the most part, complaining not about the
lack of highly energy-efficient transportation, the lack of alternative
and less energy-wasting public transit, and the lack of government
funding for a crash program into researching carbon-free energy
solutions, but rather about the high price for carbon fuels. People are
clamoring for solutions to make gasoline cheaper!

Years ago, back in the 1970s during an Arab-led oil embargo, when
gas prices soared, there were mass campaigns to organize car pools. No
such campaigns are being organized today, and if any are they don’t get
any media attention. Instead we read that geologists are saying that
massive quantities of untapped oil reserves exist in the far north.

Now the last thing we should be wanting to do is take that nicely
sequestered carbon out of the ground and burn it into CO2! But that’s
what many Americans want done. Screw the climate! We want our cheap gas!

There are so many things we could be doing right now to reduce
carbon emissions—as individuals and as a nation. Turning off
air-conditioners would be one. Why should entire houses be cooled by
central air? Cool one room and use it for the hottest part of the day
if need be. Live downstairs during the hottest months and close off the
upstairs when it gets too hot. Ditto in the winter. There’s no need to
occupy and heat an entire house when it gets really cold. Most
Americans’ homes are way too large anyhow, but if you need that much
room, use it when it doesn’t require all that extra energy to heat and
cool. (When I lived in Cambridge, England as a kid, we used to sleep in
unheated bedrooms under cozy comforters, and then in the morning, I’d
go down and light a fire in the living room where we’d be during the
day. It would be cold as hell until the fire started, but not for
long.) Share rides. Plan errands so that many things get taken care of
on one outing, instead of in multiple run-outs. Use bicycles. I have
yet to see, on my own bike rides in town or when driving anywhere,
someone who is actually riding a bike on some errand—carrying a load in
a basket or in a backpack. The only bikers I see are people dressed
like Tour de France racers out for some exercise. What’s the matter
with using bikes for a purpose, instead of the family car?

I’m not trying to criticize, or to say I’m more ecologically
virtuous. I’m looking at this as an unprecedented disaster that is
dooming my kids, or their future children, to a life of strife, misery
and maybe even catastrophe. If I don’t take serious action—and I don’t
just mean individual life changes, but political action—to try and save
their world, I am guilty of a serious crime. And so are we all.

What the hell happened to any sense of shared responsibility, not just for society, but for our own offspring?

Most decent parents are ready to sacrifice in their lifestyles in
order to send their kids to college, or to help them out financially
when they are starting out as young adults. But for some strange reason
nobody seems ready to sacrifice at all when it comes to rescuing their
collective future. This makes no sense.

And yet, this is what our mass culture has done to us. As a nation,
as a people, we cannot think beyond our own noses. We cannot even think
about the need to act in our own and our children’s interest.

Seventeen years ago, I had occasion while living in Shanghai,
China, to visit a rural area in Anhui Province that the year before had
been devastated by a flood so huge that the entire region had been not
just flooded, but put deep underwater. As I neared a county seat town
that was my intended destination, the bus I was on passed a
dike-building project. Thousands of peasants were laboring by hand,
with shovels and wheelbarrows, to erect a 50-foot wall of earth to keep
the river in its banks in the event of another such flood. I got off
the bus and, with my travel companion, started walking towards the
project. When we were spotted, thousands of those workers dropped their
shovels and ran towards us. It was a terrifying moment to have so many
people heading towards and surrounding us, but they were very
friendly—just curious because none of them had ever met a westerner. We
began talking with them, and learned that they were all peasants who
had left their fields to build this colossal new Great Wall of dirt.
They brought us to the worksite and showed us how they would bring
their wheelbarrows to the base of the dike, and then attach a cable,
which was connected to a winch operated by those ubiquitous
one-cylinder, two-stroke kerosene tractors used across rural China. The
winch would whip the barrow up the steep hillside, with a peasant
running up behind keeping it upright. At the last minute, the peasant
would flip the barrow, dumping the dirt and releasing the hook. Then
he’d be off down the hill to collect more dirt.

What struck me, besides their ingenuity, was how all these
thousands of people had left their own fields to labor for the
collective good that year.

I tried at the time to contemplate my fellow Americans doing the same thing, and couldn’t for the life of me imagine it.

Now we’re in that moment. We know the flood is coming, but no one is willing to join the brigade to take preventive action.

No. Buying a Prius is not taking action. Neither is upgrading the
insulation on your house or buying carbon offsets when you fly. We
need, as a nation, to commit to seriously ending our addiction to
fossil fuels, to rapacious development and the concomitant destruction
of forests and wetlands. We need to end our nation’s imperialist
policies and to instead devote the trillion dollars a year spent on war
to saving the planet from ourselves.

A good start would be seeing that people “get it.” That would mean
communities starting to organize around improving mass transit,
arranging for carpooling, and demanding climate-saving action from our
political leaders.

I’m not optimistic.
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net