[A-List] US election: Skull vs. Bones

[Michael Keaney]

Bush or Kerry? No difference
The New Statesman
Monday 8th March 2004

The man who, after Super Tuesday, is all but certain to become the
Democrats' candidate for president is as dedicated as any Republican to the
American empire. By John Pilger

A myth equal to the fable of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is gaining
strength on both sides of the Atlantic. It is that John Kerry offers a
world-view different from that of George W Bush. Watch this big lie grow as
Kerry is crowned the Democratic candidate and the "anyone but Bush" movement
becomes a liberal cause celebre.

While the rise to power of the Bush gang, the neoconservatives, belatedly
preoccupied the American media, the message of their equivalents in the
Democratic Party has been of little interest. Yet the similarities are
compelling. Shortly before Bush's "election" in 2000, the Project for the
New American Century, the neoconservative pressure group, published an
ideological blueprint for "maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding
the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security
order in line with American principles and interests". Every one of its
recommendations for aggression and conquest was adopted by the
administration.

One year later, the Progressive Policy Institute, an arm of the Democratic
Leadership Council, published a 19-page manifesto for the "New Democrats",
who include all the principal Democratic Party candidates, and especially
John Kerry. This called for "the bold exercise of American power" at the
heart of "a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party's tradition of
muscular internationalism". Such a strategy would "keep Americans safer than
the Republicans' go-it-alone policy, which has alienated our natural allies
and overstretched our resources. We aim to rebuild the moral foundation of
US global leadership . . ."

What is the difference from the vainglorious claptrap of Bush? Apart from
euphemisms, there is none. All the Democratic presidential candidates
supported the invasion of Iraq, bar one: Howard Dean. Kerry not only voted
for the invasion, but expressed his disappointment that it had not gone
according to plan. He told Rolling Stone magazine: "Did I expect George Bush
to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." Neither Kerry
nor any of the other candidates has called for an end to the bloody and
illegal occupation; on the contrary, all of them have demanded more troops
for Iraq. Kerry has called for another "40,000 active service troops". He
has supported Bush's continuing bloody assault on Afghanistan, and the
administration's plans to "return Latin America to American leadership" by
subverting democracy in Venezuela.

Above all, he has not in any way challenged the notion of American military
supremacy throughout the world that has pushed the number of US bases to
more than 750. Nor has he alluded to the Pentagon's coup d'etat in
Washington and its stated goal of "full spectrum dominance". As for Bush's
"pre-emptive" policy of attacking other countries, that's fine, too. Even
the most liberal of the Democratic bunch, Howard Dean, said he was prepared
to use "our brave and remarkable armed forces" against any "imminent
threat". That's how Bush himself put it.

What the New Democrats object to is the Bush gang's outspokenness - its
crude honesty, if you like - in stating its plans openly, and not from
behind the usual veil or in the usual specious code of imperial liberalism
and its "moral authority". New Democrats of Kerry's sort are all for the
American empire; understandably, they would prefer that those words remained
unsaid. "Progressive internationalism" is far more acceptable.

Just as the plans of the Bush gang were written by the neoconservatives, so
John Kerry in his campaign book, A Call to Service, lifts almost word for
word the New Democrats' warmongering manifesto. "The time has come," he
writes, "to revive a bold vision of progressive internationalism" along with
a "tradition" that honours "the tough-minded strategy of international
engagement and leadership forged by Wilson and Roosevelt . . . and
championed by Truman and Kennedy in the cold war". Almost identical thoughts
appear on page three of the New Democrats' manifesto:



As Democrats, we are proud of our party's tradition of tough-minded
internationalism and strong record in defending America. Presidents Woodrow
Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman led the United States to
victory in two world wars . . . [Truman's policies] eventually triumphed in
the cold war. President Kennedy epitomised America's commitment to "the
survival and success of liberty".



Mark the historical lies in that statement: the "victory" of the US with its
brief intervention in the First World War; the airbrushing of the decisive
role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War; the American elite's
non-existent "triumph" over internally triggered events that brought down
the Soviet Union; and John F Kennedy's famous devotion to "liberty" that
oversaw the deaths of some three million people in Indo-China.

"Perhaps the most repulsive section of [his] book," writes Mark Hand, editor
of Press Action, the American media monitoring group, "is where Kerry
discusses the Vietnam war and the anti-war movement." Self-promoted as a war
hero, Kerry briefly joined the protest movement on his return from Vietnam.
In this twin capacity, he writes: "I say to both conservative and liberal
misinterpretations of that war that it's time to get over it and recognise
it as an exception, not as a ruling example of the US military engagements
of the 20th century."

"In this one passage," writes Hand, "Kerry seeks to justify the millions of
people slaughtered by the US military and its surrogates during the 20th
century [and] suggests that concern about US war crimes in Vietnam is no
longer necessary . . . Kerry and his colleagues in the 'progressive
internationalist' movement are as gung-ho as their counterparts in the White
House . . . Come November, who will get your vote? Coke or Pepsi?"

The "anyone but Bush" movement objects to the Coke-Pepsi analogy, and Ralph
Nader is the current source of their ire. In Britain, seven years ago,
similar derision was heaped upon those who pointed out the similarities
between Tony Blair and his heroine Margaret Thatcher - similarities which
have since been proven. "It's a nice and convenient myth that liberals are
the peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers," wrote the Guardian
commentator Hywel Williams. "But the imperialism of the liberal may be more
dangerous because of its open-ended nature - its conviction that it
represents a superior form of life."

Like the Blairites, John Kerry and his fellow New Democrats come from a
tradition of liberalism that has built and defended empires as "moral"
enterprises. That the Democratic Party has left a longer trail of blood,
theft and subjugation than the Republicans is heresy to the liberal
crusaders, whose murderous history always requires, it seems, a noble
mantle.

As the New Democrats' manifesto rightly points out, the Democrats'
"tough-minded internationalism" began with Woodrow Wilson, a Christian
megalomaniac who believed that America had been chosen by God "to show the
way to the nations of this world, how they shall walk in the paths of
liberty". In his wonderful new book, The Sorrows of Empire (Verso), Chalmers
Johnson writes:



With Woodrow Wilson, the intellectual foundations of

American imperialism were set in place. Theodore Roosevelt . . .

had represented a European-driven, militaristic vision of imperialism backed
by nothing more substantial than the notion that the manifest destiny of the
United States was to govern racially inferior Latin Americans and east
Asians. Wilson laid over that his own hyper-idealistic, sentimental and
ahistorical idea [of American world dominance]. It was a political project
no less ambitious and no less passionately held than the vision of world
communism launched at almost the same time by the leaders of the Bolshevik
revolution.



It was the Wilsonian Democratic administration of Harry Truman, following
the Second World War, that created the militaristic "national security
state" and the architecture of the cold war: the CIA, the Pentagon and the
National Security Council. As the only head of state to use atomic weapons,
Truman authorised troops to intervene anywhere "to defend free enterprise".
In 1945, his administration set up the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund as agents of US economic imperialism. Later, using the "moral"
language of Woodrow Wilson, John F Kennedy invaded Vietnam and unleashed the
US special forces as death squads; they now operate on every continent.

Bush has been a beneficiary of this. His neoconservatives derive not from
traditional Republican Party roots, but from the hawk's wings of the
Democratic Party - such as the trade union establishment, the AFL-CIO (known
as the "AFL-CIA"), which received millions of dollars to subvert unions and
political parties throughout the world, and the weapons industry, built and
nurtured by the Democratic senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson. Paul Wolfowitz,
Bush's leading fanatic, began his Washington political life working for
Jackson. In 1972 an aberration, George McGovern, faced Richard Nixon as the
Democrats' anti-war candidate. Virtually abandoned by the party and its
powerful backers, McGovern was crushed.

Bill Clinton, hero of the Blairites, learned the lesson of this. The myths
spun around Clinton's "golden era of liberalism" are, in retrospect,
laughable. Savour this obsequious front-page piece by the Guardian's chief
political correspondent, reporting Clinton's speech to the Labour Party
conference in 2002:



Bill Clinton yesterday used a mesmerising oration . . . in a subtle and
delicately balanced address [that] captured the imagination of delegates in
Blackpool's Winter Gardens . . . Observers also described the speech as one
of the most impressive and moving in the history of party conferences. The
trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt, described it as "absolutely
brilliant".



An accompanying editorial gushed: "In an intimate, almost conversational
tone, speaking only from notes, Bill Clinton delivered the speech of a true
political master . . . If one were reviewing it, five stars would not be
enough . . . What a speech. What a pro. And what a loss to the leadership of
America and the world."

No idolatry was enough. At the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, the leader of
"the third way" and of "progressive internationalism" received a long line
of media and Blair people who hailed him as a lost leader, "a champion of
the centre left".

The truth is that Clinton was little different from Bush, a crypto-fascist.
During the Clinton years, the principal welfare safety nets were taken away
and poverty in America increased sharply; a multibillion-dollar missile
"defence" system known as Star Wars II was instigated; the biggest war and
arms budget in history was approved; biological weapons verification was
rejected, along with a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, the
establishment of an international criminal court and a worldwide ban on
landmines. Contrary to a myth that places the blame on Bush, the Clinton
administration in effect destroyed the movement to combat global warming.

In addition, Haiti and Afghanistan were invaded, the illegal blockade of
Cuba was reinforced and Iraq was subjected to a medieval siege that claimed
up to a million lives while the country was being attacked, on average,
every third day: the longest Anglo-American bombing campaign in history. In
the 1999 Clinton-led attack on Serbia, a "moral crusade", public transport,
non-military factories, food processing plants, hospitals, schools, museums,
churches, heritage-listed monasteries and farms were bombed. "They ran out
of military targets in the first couple of weeks," said James Bissett, the
Canadian former ambassador to Yugoslavia. "It was common knowledge that Nato
went to stage three: civilian targets." In their cruise missile attack on
Sudan, Clinton's generals targeted and destroyed a factory producing most of
sub-Saharan Africa's pharmaceutical supplies. The German ambassador to Sudan
reported: "It is difficult to assess how many people in this poor country
died as a consequence . . . but several tens of thousands seems a reasonable
guess."

Covered in euphemisms, such as "democracy-building" and "peacekeeping",
"humanitarian intervention" and "liberal intervention", the Clintonites can
boast a far more successful imperial record than Bush's neo-cons, largely
because Washington granted the Europeans a ceremonial role, and because Nato
was "onside". In a league table of death and destruction, Clinton beats Bush
hands down.

A question that New Democrats like to ask is: "What would Al Gore have done
if he had not been cheated of the presidency by Bush?" Gore's top adviser
was the arch-hawk Leon Fuerth, who said the US should "destroy the Iraqi
regime, root and branch". Joseph Lieberman, Gore's running mate in 2000,
helped to get Bush's war resolution on Iraq through Congress. In 2002, Gore
himself declared that an invasion of Iraq "was not essential in the short
term" but "nevertheless, all Americans should acknowledge that Iraq does,
indeed, pose a serious threat". Like Blair, what Gore wanted was an
"international coalition" to cover long-laid plans for the takeover of the
Middle East. His complaint against Bush was that, by going it alone,
Washington could "weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century".

Collusion between the Bush and Gore camps was common. During the 2000
election, Richard Holbrooke, who probably would have become Gore's secretary
of state, conspired with Paul Wolfowitz to ensure their respective
candidates said nothing about US policy towards Indonesia's blood-soaked
role in south-east Asia. "Paul and I have been in frequent touch," said
Holbrooke, "to make sure we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential
campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."
The same can be said of Israel's ruthless, illegal expansion, of which not a
word was and is said: it is a crime with the full support of both
Republicans and Democrats.

John Kerry supported the removal of millions of poor Americans from welfare
rolls and backed extending the death penalty. The "hero" of a war that is
documented as an atrocity launched his presidential campaign in front of a
moored aircraft carrier. He has attacked Bush for not providing sufficient
funding to the National Endowment for Democracy, which, wrote the historian
William Blum, "was set up by the CIA, literally, and for 20 years has been
destabilising governments, progressive movements, labour unions and anyone
else on Washington's hit list". Like Bush - and all those who prepared the
way for Bush, from Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton - Kerry promotes the
mystical "values of American power" and what the writer Ariel Dorfman has
called "the plague of victimhood . . . Nothing more dangerous: a giant who
is afraid."

People who are aware of such danger, yet support its proponents in a form
they find agreeable, think they can have it both ways. They can't. Michael
Moore, the film-maker, should know this better than anyone; yet he backed
the Nato bomber Wesley Clark as Democratic candidate. The effect of this is
to reinforce the danger to all of us, because it says it is OK to bomb and
kill, then to speak of peace. Like the Bush regime, the New Democrats fear
truly opposing voices and popular movements: that is, genuine democracy, at
home and abroad. The colonial theft of Iraq is a case in point. "If you move
too fast," says Noah Feldman, a former legal adviser to the US regime in
Baghdad, "the wrong people could get elected." Tony Blair has said as much
in his inimitable way: "We can't end up having an inquiry into whether the
war [in Iraq] was right or wrong. That is something that we have got to
decide. We are the politicians."