Rove “frog-marched out of
the White House in handcuffs.” |
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Loyal Opposition, Disloyal Regent
Posted May 6, 2003
thepeoplesvoice.org
By
Daniel Patrick Welch danielpwelch.com
Remember
the hullabaloo about The End of History? There were many of us who scoffed
then at its hubris, the sheer arrogance of thinking we were “it.” Now,
of course, even the adherents of such triumphalism are back in the trenches,
forecasting their own gloom-and-obscene-profit version of Permanent War.
It’s as if the Cold War never ended—and just in the nick of time for
them, too. This gives the right the opportunity to revive that most heinous
of Cold War anachronisms, the Loyal Opposition. Now the LO can be
permanently kept toothless by the ever-present threat of the New Cold War
(remember: they have actually used these words). Some have even promised
World War IV.
This
bogey man is considered by the right to be sufficient to cover any manner of
High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Even the egregiously traitorous act of
deliberately revealing the secret identity of an intelligence agent must be
beyond scrutiny. But who’s kidding whom? The whole concept of loyalty is
perverted, of course, when the war itself is fraudulent, and when those
demanding such loyalty are treasonous themselves. This whole new ball
game—largely missed, of course by the unnecessarily “loyal”
“opposition,” provides the means, opportunity and motive to beat back
the right like never before.
In
the last analysis, Karl Rove may have to borrow his defense from Shaggy: It
wasn’t me. Despite the increasingly violent denials erupting from the
White House, Rove is widely believed to be behind the leak, if only because
it is also widely known that all pertinent information is kept, a la Great
Carnac, in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar on Karl Rove’s front porch
(by which we still mean the White House).
Wilson
himself, whose courageous exposure of the Niger Lie prompted the retaliatory
and illegal outing of his CIA agent wife, said his preference was to see
Rove “frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.” I have no idea
what “frog-marching” is, but it all sounds very exciting. It is High
Treason, after all, and may have prompted (and may yet still) the
“liquidation” of dozens of CIA “assets” overseas. What would the
right wing think of The Regent from Hell—their own little
Frankenstein—suffering the fate of those they would condemn? High
Treason…hmmm sounds like a job for our old friend, Lethal Injection.
Something wickedly alluring about the ultimate vindictive fantasy of poking
a needle in Rove’s icy veins. Some might think it can’t be done on a man
like Rove—the needle would freeze or something. But then, the needle-happy
Texas Mafia must have more practice than anyone else in chilling the coldest
hearts of man. Talk about opportunity.
But
what if opportunity knocks and no one answers? There is no longer any reason
to be trapped behind this soft-on-defense façade, since it is made of
Kleenex and spit. The right wing is always barking up this same tree. My
wife’s cousin, filling that most curious of niches, Black Republican,
keeps shrieking: What about 9/11? Ah, yes…what about it, exactly? You can
hear the rest of this tired exchange paraphrased
in Al Franken’s new book, in the one-page chapter entitled “Our
National Dialogue About Terrorism.” Without even resorting to the well
reasoned arguments about
U.S.
imperialism, state terror, etc., the standard expert’s opinion about
fighting “terror”—that is to say, mass murder by non-state groups—is
with police, not invasion and conquest. Go after a fly with a tank, and two
things happen: you’re likely to blow up a whole lot of stuff, and miss the
fly in the bargain.
If
fighting terror must be your mantra, then the counterpoint is obvious: Not
only is the right dangerously incompetent at their own game, but its
vindictive, overly politicized and petty exercise of this power proves once
and for all that they really don’t give a damn about the Security of the
American People they so righteously claim only they can protect. This is
their Ace of Spades, and OutingGate shows that the Trump Card has no
Technicolor Dreamcoat…or something like that.
Yes,
Democrats are beginning to ask for Rove’s head on a spike, as well they
should. But they have been beaten to the punch by more courageous former
defenders of the Realm. What is this, Seven Days in May?? Do we really need
the Halls of Power, from the CIA to the elite soldiers of
Israel
’s Air Force, to tell us when the world has gone mad? Where is the voice
of the left in the Democratic Party?
I
heard this from a translator who declined work, and she may as well have
been speaking for most of the Democratic Party: “I’m actually not 100%
against the war, although there are some things about it I don’t like.”
Sounds like the same moral fuzz that clouds the vision of the Democratic
candidates. Hey, what’s not to like? Is it the DU that will be poisoning
the children of the region for decades? Is it the tens of thousands of dead
and maimed? It’s not the war crimes, is it? Please tell me it’s not the
war crimes. The tens of billions in reparations? The point is that there are
enough “embedded disasters” (tell Fox I own that one) to make anything
but total withdrawal, along with reparations and a foreign policy which
unflinchingly acknowledges such a grievous mistake—seem doomed to failure.
The
scary reality is that Democrats seem in insufficient awe of the horror of
inheriting the debacle in
Iraq
, and the concomitant mess around the world. Were it not for the disastrous
effects on the poor of the world of a continuing relentless
assault—naively assuming beyond all evidence that an alternative to Bush
might actually stop this assault—it could even be argued that it
just might be preferable to spend the next four years watching these
bastards sink in the swamp of their own making, and pulling them out just as
they slip under to make sure they survive impeachment, trial, imprisonment
etc.
The
GOP is up to another con game, and the Democrats should not be so easily
fooled as in con games past. However smooth Schroeder and Chirac may appear
on television, no one should mistake the cool statist rapprochement veneer
with any softening of the world’s anger. Career politicians, after all,
will not be the ones to initiate war crimes trials, let alone commit further
acts of mass murder on behalf of stateless organizations.
From
inside the American bubble, it seems like a “reasonable” position that
tinkering with the occupation of
Iraq
is the prudent course of action. But this is not 1968. It’s like Richard
Nixon in reverse. There is no George Wallace, and the opposition is squarely
in charge of the disaster that is this war. There is no reason on earth to
dignify this muddleheaded thinking with the old cold war obeisance.
The
protection argument has always been a sham, a Cold War leftover by which the
“left” seems only too eager to be cowed. Some of my favorite lines in
this campaign so far come from Dennis Kucinich’s brave and consistent
attempts to give the lie to Bush’s bogus WMD obsession: “Mr. President,
I grew up in America’s inner cities, and I have inspected real
Weapons of Mass Destruction here at home…poverty is a Weapon of
Mass Destruction. Joblessness is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Lack
of health care is a Weapon of Mass destruction. Poor education is
a Weapon of Mass Destruction.” Bull’s-eye. The gap between rich and poor
in
America
is the widest in 70 years, according to a new study published by the Center
for Budget and Policy Priorities. But then, motive has never been much of a
problem.
Former
Republican pollster Kevin Phillips has talked about “Compression,” that
necessary narrowing of this gap when it gets too large, as happened during
the 1930’s. It is bound to happen one way or another, and it is pathetic
that we keep relying on renegade republicans to point it out. “Jeffords
saves the party,” is not a particularly flattering headline for a
self-respecting “opposition.” John Weaver, a former GOP consultant in
Texas
, fled to the Democrats after being hounded out of the state and the party
by the ubervindicitve Rove, according to James C. Moore, co-author of Bush’s
Brain. So is this what we want to be: the party of Karl Rove’s
victims?
It
might be thought best to refrain from mentioning a particular candidate
while making these arguments, and I had at first intended to do so. But then
I hit on the means, opportunity, motive thing. Besides, it is tiresome to
keep dancing around it: Kucinich is the Elephant in the Room. The Means.
Even supporters of other contenders often agree that his is the best
position on just about everything, yet he is almost completely blacked out
because “he can’t win.” Most of these hypotheticals wouldn’t stand
up to scrutiny in any self-respecting forum, of course, but the best
prediction may come from Eliza Doolittle: Just you wite. Kucinich, unlike
any of the other “non-viable” candidates, is building an organization
that is truly national in scope, fueled by a truly astonishing supply of
volunteer labor that may not need Kerry’s or Dean’s money machine to
sustain itself.
The
smear of ideological purity should not be allowed to sully the genuine
virtue of moral clarity. In a tense moment in the movie Luther, Joe
Fiennes’ dashing portrayal reached a crescendo in his moment of truth: as
supporters looked on, worrying openly whether the young monk would “say
the right thing,” Luther was finally forced to say whether he would
recant. His firm “I cannot” is more a revelation of moral truth than an
act of defiance, and his supporters cheered. The tension is broken by his
having said “the right thing”—not, as those frightened for his life
might have reasonably wished, to save his own ass, but because his
conscience gave him no choice.
This
moral clarity acts as a beacon where going along to get along never can.
Democrats need to remember that sloganeering, obfuscating, dodging and
weaving will never win them another election. Programs, policies and
positions—clear and unequivocal—that affect the growing constituencies
they need to inspire will provide the winning coalition to beat the right
wing—not catch phrases and amorphous “anger.” If the Democrats win,
and more importantly, if that victory is to have any meaning, or any shadow
for future elections, it will be not because they contort themselves trying
to pick “a guy who can win,” but because they pick a guy who is right.
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© 2003
Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com
Welch
lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, with his wife, Julia
Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The
Greenhouse School. A writer, singer, linguist and activist, he has
appeared on radio [interview
available here] and can be available for further interviews. Past
articles, translations are available at danielpwelch.com.
Links to the website appreciated.
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