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Loyal
Opposition, Disloyal Regent
by
Daniel Patrick Welch
October
2, 2003
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
bogeyman 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 ballgame 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 neeedle-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 Masss 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 wait. 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 big ticket donors 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 wining 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.
Daniel Patrick
Welch lives and
writes in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde.
Together they run The Greenhouse School. He has appeared on radio [interview
available here]. Past articles and translations are available at www.danielpwelch.com.
©
2003 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted.
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* From Tweedle
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* We Were Just
Talking: (Yet ) Another Conversation About Dennis Kucinich