| by Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers Page 1 of 4 page(s) | |   |
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers
Author's Note: Approximately six million U.S. citizens live overseas, most of them eligible to vote back home. Democrats Abroad has so many active chapters all over the world that their ex-pat members have some leverage in shaping Dem policy and a number wind up as delegates to the National Convention. The largest German chapter is in Munich and they have been kind enough to invite me, as a progressive blogger/public speaker from the States, to meet with them during my occasional trips to Germany when visiting my wife's family.
In the two weeks prior to my most recent DA talk, I had the occasion to speak with numerous Germans and Austrians about their take on American foreign and domestic policy. As on previous visits to other countries in the past six years (Crete/Greece, Morocco, Italy, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos), the virtually unanimous reaction of the locals was to commiserate with me as an American with leaders as ignorant, reckless and incompetent as Cheney and Bush. This attitude, voiced by everyone I met on my recent trip to Europe -- from service providers to businessmen to college professors to current officers and former employees of multi-national corporations -- was expressed even before they learned my political persuasion. The roof message above, photographed in Vienna, seems to capture the general point of view.
As for my recent presentation to DA-Munich, the meeting room was packed with activist Dems living and working in and around Bavaria's largest city. These Democrats mirror the progressive, activist base back in the States: They are politically savvy and deeply perplexed by their party's timid leadership in Washington. Here are my brief opening remarks, with a few updates:
Many of you may remember that the last time you had me here, a month or so before the 2006 midterm elections, I said that it looked like the Democrats could well sweep into control of the House and Senate, but, if that happened, CheneyBush might react with even more criminality and desperation. And that having majority control in the Congress would not be an instant utopia for Democrats, but merely the first steps for a new beginning. And that's pretty much what has occurred.
This evening, a little more than a year out from the next presidential election and only a few months before the first primaries, I want to talk about three overview subjects: 1) The imploding CheneyBush Administration, and the dangerous actions of that cornered, wounded beast. 2) The ongoing Iraq Occupation and the impending attack on Iran. 3) The positive and negative nature of current Democratic Party policy, including some discussion about the leading contenders for the nomination.
My take is that of a blogger activist in the States; I'll be interested to hear what the situation looks like from your perspective on the other side of the pond.
1. DOWN IN THE BUSH BUNKER
The ranks of the Bush Bunker crew, the loyalists who still remain in White House, are shrinking fast, especially with the departure of Rove, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, et al. The first-tier decision makers left include Cheney, Addington, Hadley, and Bush; I don't include Defense Secretary Bob Gates (as he's being frozen out by Cheney&Co.), or Rice and Chertoff, who are basically toadies to their boss.
Given the catastrophe that is the war in Iraq (and the one about to begin against Iran), along with the various corruption and sex and policy scandals involving Republican stalwarts, and the enormous unpopularity of Cheney and Bush -- given all those GOP negatives, one would be tempted to say that things look rosy for Democrats going into the November 2008 election.
But if we've learned anything in the past six-plus years, it's that the CheneyBush crew do not give up easily, and are quite happy to continue their smashmouth, in-your-face, big-lie brand of politics until someone stops them. Given their bleak situation, they are worried, to be sure -- GOP members of Congress are especially anxious about being wiped out in 2008, but they are sticking with the Administration for now -- but CheneyBush are not in any mood to give up and slink away.
Why? Partially because they realize their criminal culpability and wish to remain outside the federal slammer. They continue to control enormously powerful governmental forces to help protect themselves and their friends and punish their enemies. I'm referring to their control of the Judicial Branch, including the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorneys around the country, the courts they've packed with their ideological brethren, and FEMA, the agency that would supervise martial law if and when it were to be invoked. CheneyBush also still control much of the mass-media, who either are ideologically in bed with them or afraid to openly challenge the Administration on its behavior and blatant lies.
In terms of the military power center, there are scores of retired generals and colonels, and currently serving officers, who snipe at the Administration's dangerous and failed military policies; a few days ago, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez ( http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/101207.html ) who commanded the troops in Iraq in 2003-2004, blistered Administration policy from the occupation then to the current "surge" now. But CheneyBush still can count on the military services to execute their orders, reckless or no.
THE ABANDONED DEM MANDATE
Now you may say that I'm ignoring a very real impediment to the CheneyBush juggernaut: the Democrats, who defeated them handily in the 2006 midterm elections. Surely, one would think, the Democrats would be able to use their considerable majority muscle to roll back one bad Administration policy after another, and to make sure CheneyBush do limited major damage in the next 15 months before they depart the premises.
But the Democrats, who inherited a clear mandate for major change in the midterm elections, especially on the need to get the U.S. out of Iraq, have little to show for their victory. Several committee chairmen (symbolized by Waxman, Conyers, Leahy, a few others) have conducted important hearings and investigations. But in the main, this amounts to Democrats nipping at CheneyBush around the edges, hardly ever confronting their impeachable offenses frontally. Certainly, the Democrats make a lot of noise, hold a lot of one-day hearings and the like, but CheneyBush made a conscious political decision to simply ignore them.
www.crisispapers.org
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). For comment, write >> crisispapers@comcast.net
No comments:
Post a Comment