When the CIA and elements of the Pentagon do more – much more – than the Democrats to restrain the Bush gang from plunging the planet into an even wider spasm of war, it is time to recognize the absolute irrelevance of the Democratic Party – certainly, under present leadership.
Jaws dropped in capitals all around the globe when the combined intelligence agencies of the United States yanked the rationale for war with Iran, like a rug, from under George Bush’s feet. It was a mutiny, centered in the CIA and in the Pentagon’s nine separate intelligence agencies, designed to prevent Bush and Dick Cheney from expanding, against all military and political logic, their failed jihad in the Persian Gulf. Visibly startled, Bush behaved like he’d been knee-capped by his own men – which he had. The Pentagon-CIA revolt – witnessed by the entire planet – is unprecedented in modern times. Anyone who tells you differently is too blinded by imagined spy-novel schemes to recognize a mutiny when he sees it.
This is not to say that the uniformed and civilian spooks should be given medals – they simply saw disaster of unthinkable dimensions bearing down like a semi-trailer truck, and grabbed the steering wheel from the madman-in-charge before it was too late. The intelligence agencies only look like temporary saviors of the planet in comparison to the Democratic Party, which has done nothing to put the brakes on the Bush-Cheney war machine, or to hold these criminals accountable for a phone book-full impeachable offenses. When spies and generals are more useful to the cause of peace than Democrats, when career intelligence officers and life-time military men conspire to derail the insane schemes of their Commander-in-Chief – yet the opposition party offers no resistance whatsoever – then one must accept that the Party is…worthless.
Democratic leadership has once again caved in to Bush on war spending, after last month shunting aside Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s bill to impeach Dick Cheney. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rationale – shared by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers – is that impeachment is a diversion from all the great works that the Democrats want to accomplish in this and the next Congress. But of course, they have accomplished very little on the domestic front, and nothing on the peace front. They almost seem to enjoy their whippings – like suburban, weekend masochists in a red-light district. If this were not so – if Democratic leadership really wanted to gum up the works of war, and rail to high heaven against Bush and Cheney’s crimes – they could do so even without a working majority. One can only conclude that Democratic leadership believes that allowing Bush to keep his war going, and permitting Bush and Cheney to pile up felony upon felony against the Constitution, is good for Democrats. From a moral standpoint, that puts the mutinous spies and generals who dared to buck their president on Iran heads and shoulders above the Democratic so-called “opposition” in Congress.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford.