The introduction to a discussion the Danbury Peace Coalition might organize:

Almost as soon as the most recent war in Iraq was announced, the calls came out: Let’s get rid of him in '04. A popular protest chant was, “Like father like son, one term and he’s done,” which resonated through the streets of Manhattan loudly on the days of the RNC protest. Sometime in the campaign season, with no Republicans seriously taking a shot at dethroning the emperor, a new campaign was established. This campaign had a strange candidate in mind: anyone. Specifically, "Anybody But Bush" would be better than Bush himself. Not surprisingly, that “anybody” is qualified in the fine print as “any Democrat.”

For some time, it was dean that the anti-war, pro-liberties groups favored. The same Howard Dean who supported, without giving it a second thought, the President’s $87 billion war budget. The same Howard Dean who, upon being labeled “ultra-left,” described those in his party affixing that label as “pathetic.” After some flip-flopping, “anybody” became John Kerry, who based his Iraq policy on the guarantee of increased troop levels. His National Security Strategy would be a “better” war on terror.

There is no doubt that George Bush’s policies are hurting the people of America and the world. What’s surprising is that, compared to his predecessors of both parties, Bush isn’t that far outside the “mainstream” of political action. The main difference is that the current administration draws attention to their “controversial” policies. The USA PATRIOT ACT would have, under Clinton, been passed almost secretly, at least with very little fanfare and certainly not with the celebration that accompanied it in 2001. In fact, Clinton did pass his own version of the act in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which followed the Oklahoma and 1993 World Trade Center attacks. This legislation limited the right of habeas corpus in capital cases and enabled quicker deportation of immigrants on only the suspicion of supporting “terrorist” activities, organizations or states. While bush has been chastised for his “tax cuts for the rich,” in the last year of his term, Congress and the Clinton administration passed a $1.3 trillion tax cut, much of it for the wealthy at the expense of social programs. Remember that “welfare to work” which limited the assistance granted under the welfare program, was Clinton’s. Also remember the promise of universal health care by the former President, which was not accomplished during two terms. On foreign issues, it was the elder Bush who first attacked Iraq and Clinton who supported it and in 1998 ordered missile strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the neoliberal interventions in Yugoslavia and Bosnia/Herzegovina.

That’s the past, and Clinton wasn’t running against GWB. John Kerry, however, was running, and on a platform of Bush-lite. He spent his time explaining the minute details of how he wasn’t George W. Bush instead of substantiating his own platform, because that was his platform. For example, Kerry felt that gay marriage was a state’s rights issue, not a human rights issue, and was hailed by whatever parts of his party didn’t just drop the issue as a champion of liberty and equality.

Don’t forget that Kerry supported both the USA PATRIOT ACT and the war of terror in both Afghanistan and Iraq, destroying the lives of untold numbers of people at home and abroad.

But, of course, Kerry wasn’t elected. TV’s talking heads proclaimed that it was either a victory for Bush because of his “leadership” in a time of “crisis” or a failure of the Democratic party to be more like Bush. He won on a platform of fear.

 

Now, what is one to do when even Hunter S. Thompson and Noam Chomsky, two of the greatest minds of our time, support the Bush-lite politics of John Kerry? Some have decided that it might be best to give up fighting, in a move reminiscent of the demoralized and confused global justice movement after 9/11. It’s obvious that the Democrats cannot as a party of capitalism be trusted any more than the Republicans, especially at the federal and state levels.

The question of the day what to do next. Vladimir Lenin wrote over a century ago in “What Is To Be Done:”

What, in the year 2006, can we do in avoidance of falling into the marsh?

(At this point, there will be talk about the subject. I don’t want to offer suggestions, just get discussion flowing.)

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