6. The Dems are reluctant to use their ultimate political weapons.I'm talking about the power of the purse and the threat of impeachment.
Pelosi is especially nervous about House Democrats exercising their oversight responsibilities by restricting use of funds for the war effort in Iraq, lest they be accused of "not supporting the troops in harm's way." But, if they could get their act together quickly -- before the bulk of the "surge" troops arrive into "harm's way" there -- the Dems could place at least some funding restrictions on Bush's escalation, and divert those and earlier authorized funds for the purpose of getting our young men and women out of Iraq in a staged "redeployment" that could begin within the next few months.
For how this all might be done, check out Gareth Porter's "How to De-Fund the Escalation" ( www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/16/how_to_defund_the_escalation.php ) , and Michelle Chin's "Dems Sitting on Power to Curb Bush's Iraq War Expansion" ( http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/4116 ). The key is to get these bills passed right now before more precious time slips away.
As for impeachment, as more and more in-depth hearings are held on the various Bush&Co. lies, corruptions and bunglings, the possibility of introducing an impeachment resolution should be placed back on the table. It may take a few months for the various committees to complete their investigations and release their final reports documenting the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration, but the evidence will be laid out and should be put to good use in getting rid of this desperate, reckless crew.
7. The Democrats are complicit in gutting true lobbying reform. The Dems deserve great praise for getting a raft of new reforms into place, but there are numerous loopholes that still need to be closed and the Dems and Republicans, anxious to collect as much money as possible for future races, seem to work together to make sure end-arounds continue to exist.
8. The Democrats too easily praise Bush chicanery dressed up as something else. For example, the Dems apparently are going along with the sleight-of-hand maneuver that disguises the continuation of the Bush Administration's widescale domestic spying programs.
For six years, the Democrats have done little to stop Bush's unconstitutional grab for dictatorial power, especially his refusal to obey the law that says that all eavesdropping on American citizens' phone calls and emails must first be authorized by the top-secret FISA Court. Now, with the Democrats in charge of Congress and with appeals courts about to take up the various court cases aimed at overturning the Administration's domestic spying, Bush suddenly claims he will obey the FISA law, and the naive Democrats claim a "victory." (See Glenn Greenwald's "Nothing to Celebrate.") ( http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/01/nothing-to-celebrate_116907140467333806.html )
But apparently what happened is not that the Administration has agreed to go to the court for such warrants, but it most likely got one of the FISA judges to grant blanket authority for Bush to continue to spy on American citizens whenever he feels like doing so. It's bad enough that privacy of American citizens is being violated regularly on a massive scale, but if the Administration, as some surmise, also is spying on its political enemies through this program -- with no detailed oversight by court or Congress -- we may never find out what happened.
The Democrats need to get to the bottom of this issue, especially on who may have granted the blanket approval and on the implications of giving the Bush Administration a free hand to spy on American citizens. The Dems should not tolerate evasions and lies and half-truths from Attorney General Gonzales. In addition, the court cases against this domestic spying must proceed so that the constitutional issues can be joined. Gonzales, not incidentally, has asserted that judges should bow to the commander-in-chief's will ( www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16668110 ) in all national-security matters.
9. The Democrats too easily accept the "framing" terms of the Bush Administration. For example, so much time has passed since the bombing of Iraq in 2003 and the establishment of American hegemony there that the Dems hardly ever revisit the original motives and lies that took the country into war and a neo-colonial occupation. How Americans were bamboozled into Iraq is regarded as "old news," and the focus is on the latest Bush atrocity or in how to get our troops out.
But the neo-con policies that got the U.S. enmeshed in its current unwinnable quagmire in Iraq derive from the same warped ideologies that are taking us deeper into that war and moving us inexorably into an attack on Iran and maybe Syria as well.
Sen. Kennedy has it right when he urges Congress to call for a vote on a new Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq (AUMF), since the old one is now out of date and was based on phony rationales in any case, such as the supposed presence of WMD in Iraq and Saddam's supposed ties to 9/11. It's long past time to have this debate on Bush's war policies that are so endangering America's national security, especially the Bush strategy of "preventive wars" -- i.e., attacking countries that are of no imminent threat but who might years or decades hence be antagonistic to America.
Similarly, Sen. Reid says devoid of an AUMF, Bush has no legal foundation to attack Iran. And, not incidentally, has anyone seen any demonstrable evidence justifying either the escalation in Iraq or the planned attack on Iran? Nope. Just the usual agitprop, assertions and scare tactics from Bush&Co., very reminiscent of the weeks before the "shock&awe" attack on Iraq in 2003.
10. The Democrats do not go after Bush&Co. at their most vulnerable spots. One of the major ones is the Administration's having devised unconstitutional rationalizations for torture as official state policy. Legal-advisor toadies like Gonzales and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, under Rumsfeld's tutelage, came up with the cockamamie theory that a president is effectively beyond the law whenever he says he's acting as "commander-in-chief" during "wartime." Since the "war on terrorism" is a never-ending, non-conventional one, that rationale means that Bush can act as a dictator in perpetuity, ignoring laws passed by Congress, ignoring the Constitutional protections under the Bill of Rights, whenever he wants.
Yoo and Gonzales and the others concocted a policy authorizing torture of detainees either in prisons in the U.S. or Guantanamo, or in foreign countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, or in secret CIA prisons in a wide variety of nations abroad, or sent in "extraordinary rendition" to countries that specialize in extreme torture methods. The Democrats need to focus on getting those policies reversed and the government once again under Constitutional law.
So, those are my ten. No doubt, you could come up with your own list of shames. The point is that the Democrats finally are in a position to do something about them, and they're moving way too slowly in confronting these key issues.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
Your article should have top billing on every website that claims to call itself liberal or progressive.
Instead, as you can see from this article Arianna Huffington's website featured a well-known Republican operative making spurious attacks on Barbara Boxer, in an obvious ploy to deflect criticism away from the Democrats and onto their Republican colleagues.
As Ralph Nader has been saying for years, the lesser evil is still evil. Why people would knowingly vote for a lesser evil, and then expect something good of them, is beyond me. If you consider yourself a good person, and you want good things to happen, why not vote for people like yourself?
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 28 quicklinks, 72 diaries, 907 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 1:06:25 AM
How about because, if we've learned nothing during the past six years, we now realize how one person in the presidency can do an extraordinary amount of damage. Turns out that even if you don't think there's more than a nickel's worth of difference between Bush and Kerry, that nickel turns out to be have been enough to thoroughly alter our government and military policy. Having Bush in there has taken us down the road to international pariah status and neo-fascism at home. A Democrat in the office might have been no great shakes, but would not go to the extremes demonstrated by Bush&Co. That's why, even though we must build a grassroots new party from the ground up, in the interim I sometimes hold my nose and vote for a Democrat who is less than stellar. Thanks for writing. -- Bernard Weiner, Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org)
by
Bernard Weiner (140 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 12:16:44 PM
