The 2004 Election Stakes
The Republican Goals and Strategies

Jack Dresser, Ph.D.
Capt., Medical Service Corps, USAR (1962-65)
A Veteran for Kerry
 

“A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy.”

  – James Madison, Fourth President and principal author of our Bill of Rights

All responsible citizens should understand that the impending election is not a simple popularity contest between individuals named Kerry and Bush.  In a head-to-head comparison of traditional masculine virtues such as physical courage, moral courage, honesty, integrity, intelligence, honor, and athleticism, Kerry would be the clear-cut, no contest winner on all counts, although he appears to lose as a preferred beer-drinking buddy.

But the figurehead is far less important than the political philosophy he represents, the social and economic policies to be implemented, the department and agency heads to be appointed, the legislation to be proposed, the regulations to be enforced or ignored, the international role of the country envisioned, the federal judicial nominations to be made, and the institutions to be supported or malnourished.  At stake is a collision of two very different visions of government.

The Republicans are very skilled at creating confusion and distractions from their glaring failures (e.g., allowing 9/11 to occur) and their central agendas, both of which are far more profound in their implications and potential effects than the peripheral issues that attract public and media attention such as abortion, gay marriage, Kerry in Vietnam, or Bush avoiding Vietnam while in or out of Alabama.  The Republican propaganda machine follows a 500-year old model.

A 16th Century Mentor

While practicing deceit, “a prince should seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion,” since the most successful princes “have had little regard for good faith, and have been able by astuteness to confuse men’s minds,” wrote Niccolò Machiavelli, the 16th century Florentine, disillusioned with representative government, who advocated to Lorenzo de’ Medici the principle that the ends justify the means: if the goal is worthy, then any methods of achieving it are OK.  This amoral view is familiar to every undergraduate Philosophy of Ethics student.

Machiavelli continued, “it is necessary to be able to disguise this character well, and to be a great feigner and dissembler; and men are so simple and so ready to obey present necessities that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”  Machiavelli lauded the “indispensable role of fraud in political affairs” and in the rise “from mean to great fortune.”

Lee Atwater, political adviser to the first President Bush, re-read Machiavelli yearly.  And his friend Karl Rove, political mastermind behind our current president, is an equally devoted reader of Machiavelli. “The great majority of mankind is satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities,” he was quoted.   A long-time observer described Rove’s guiding principle for Bush governance: “perception is reality.”
Machiavelli would applaud the Republicans.  He believed that a ruler can ignore the mob and devote himself to the ruling class, gulling the inert majority of those ruled.  Because “everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are,” he concluded from observing rulers.
 

George W. Bush carefully chose his Machiavellian adviser to suit his character and purposes.  He has shown a long-standing pattern of dishonesty and deceit preceding Karl Rove.  He cheated to avoid combat duty in Vietnam thirty-six years ago, logged a long subsequent history of shady dealings and voter manipulation well documented by multiple observers, gained the Republican nomination by misrepresenting John McCain and the presidency through fraudulent disenfranchisement of Black Florida voters, populated his top administration with neoconservatives with long-standing designs to invade and occupy Iraq at the first opportunity without having informed voters of this intention, and then used 9/11 as an excuse for this invasion at a cost to date of 1000+ American lives, some 16,000 Iraqi lives, and over 150 billion taxpayer dollars.

And yet a majority of the oblivious American public continue to rate Bush as trustworthy, exceeding John Kerry in “character” and “integrity” despite reports by long-standing associates of Kerry that he, unlike Bush, is temperamentally incapable of dishonesty.

To Madison’s quote above I would add that functional democracy requires a clear-thinking and caring public that seeks independent information and is inherently suspicious of power and of statements by self-interested parties in either politics or business that profits from politics.   The power elite do not make their activities and purposes easy to detect, so responsible citizenship requires time and effort well beyond simply showing up on election day.

The Hidden Agendas

Well over a dozen meticulously documented books by Bush administration insiders, historians, social and political scientists, and journalists of impeccable credentials and integrity describe a Bush presidency that precisely follows the  Machiavellian blueprint.  This model best fits the entire pattern of communication and events over the past 3½ years, both international and domestic, many well-known and many little-known to the public.

It is not my purpose here to review this immense body of evidence.  If you are reluctant to believe that you have been subjected to a relentless stream of disinformation, outright lies, false images and language manipulation, then I suggest that it is your duty as a citizen to bring yourself up to speed by reading any half dozen of the above-mentioned books.

If you refuse to believe that your leaders are misleaders, and are determined to believe whatever feels comfortable irrespective of the mountain of evidence, I have a nice island for sale in the South Pacific that might interest you as an investment opportunity.  It is fully tax-deductible with a guaranteed 100% annual appreciation, and I can have the deed printed and all paperwork completed within 24 hours of your call.

If you are prepared to believe that you have been misled by the deceptions and/or delusions of your government, then read on, because it is vitally important to understand what this impending election is really about.  To do so, it is necessary to see through the camouflage, and well worth the effort because the issues are huge and long-term.

There are four principal agendas of the neoconservative Republicans who narrowly control our administrative, legislative, and increasingly our judicial branches of government:

1. A long-standing vision of prospective American empire, utilizing our uncontested military supremacy following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and focused on control of the middle east beginning with Iraq for its oil reserves and geopolitical position;

2. A “starve the beast” attack strategy on domestic programs, accomplished through directing available resources increasingly into the military-industrial-security complex – an indirect, politically camouflaged method developed under President Reagan;
 

3. Deregulation of Big Business to have its way with our economy and environment, including weakening the influence of organized labor and widespread defunding of agencies and non-enforcement of regulations protecting the environment; and

4. Anti-intellectual discounting of scientific and other specialized expertise in favor of political ideology and religious belief.

(1)  Establishing empire

The U.S. already maintains 725 military bases on foreign soil, not including an estimated 300 security facilities, the number, locations, and budgets of which are not disclosed.  Most of these were established following military victories.  Looting and pillaging are no longer the spoils of war; they have been replaced with permanent military installations extending the victor’s reach and influence, and with lucrative reconstruction contracts for the victor’s business community.

The key players with whom Mr. Bush has surrounded himself – including his Vice President, Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense, and numerous others (e.g., DOD #3 civilian Douglas Feith, Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle, pardoned felon Elliott Abrams) – are all members of a “neoconservative” group who, encouraged by the collapse of the Soviet Union, have long proposed an imperial plan of American world domination. Invasion and occupation of Iraq was a long-intended centerpiece of this plan awaiting an opportunity or excuse. This is public knowledge, posted since 1997 on their website, Project for the New American Century (www.newamericancentury.org/) where they advocated “the explicit goal (of) removing Saddam Hussein’s regime from power” in letters to President Clinton and congressional leaders Lott and Gingrich.  Please don’t take my word for it; look it up.  (But I note today that many papers have been removed from their website since I reviewed it last year, perhaps those most potentially troublesome to the administration.)

This group held an apocalyptic view of Saddam’s future power and since the Gulf War have advocated armed intervention to remove him, without which “An Iraqi government bent on dominating the Middle East and its oil reserves” will develop weaponry of mass destruction which “could well make Saddam the driving force of Middle East politics...free to terrorize our allies and threaten our interests.”  As a result, they predicted, “the Middle East will be destabilized, other aggressors around the world will follow his example, and “a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard.”  Their motivation was nothing quite so noble as liberation of an oppressed people.  Since Europe, Japan and China are much more heavily dependent than the U.S. upon oil from the Middle East, control of these resources would provide us with global political leverage. Thus, their rationale was geopolitical hegemony, and for this over 1,000 Americans and some 16,000 Iraqis – most of them innocent civilians – have died.

Thus, the administration’s post-9/11 assertion of a new urgency justifying a new doctrine of pre-emptive aggression was utterly hollow.  Compounding this deception, it directly contradicted statements made by Bush against “nation-building” during his election campaign.  Were prospective Bush voters directed to the newamericancentury.org website and advised that this jingoistic worldview would be in charge of our Department of Defense and that American and Iraqi citizens would be forced to fight and die at the first credible pretext for war?

The neocons had explicitly recognized that “a new Pearl Harbor” would be needed to justify invasion of a country that had not attacked us.  9/11 provided this opportunity, immediately exploited by identifying Iraq vaguely as part of the “War on Terrorism”–  vaguely enough that 70% of the US population believed that Saddam was involved in 9/11 until many months after public support for the war was no longer necessary and public exposure made it impossible to continue concealing.  The administration invited and encouraged public confusion as long as it suited their purposes.

This was undoubtedly one motive behind the “rush to war” that was transparent to me at the time.  Another motive was the risk of delay to the neocon agenda: if UN weapons inspectors found WMDs, invasion would be unnecessary to disarm Saddam; if they inspected for months and found none, then the assurance of their existence would be questionable and the chief excuse for war would be weakened.  In either case, the neocons would lose their golden opportunity to invade and dislodge Saddam and seize control of this choice middle eastern real estate.

Think about it.  If invasion of Iraq had not been anticipated, why would Bush have appointed this entire team of neocons from the New American Century project to his administration?  And why otherwise the rush to war, just as UN inspectors had been re-admitted to Iraq?

The imperial agenda was re-affirmed on September 21, 2004, when Mr. Bush addressed the UN, attempting to attract international support and justify his invasion of Iraq.  In so doing he proposed “a new definition of security” based upon “the advancing rights of mankind” that justifies intervention to liberate countries under tyranny as an essential part of the war on terror.  By Amnesty International’s current count, that would involve some 150 countries. Thus, Mr. Bush has declared the right under his doctrine of pre-emptive war to invade any or all in the name of increasing security and opposing terror.  Iran, Syria and North Korea are of course paramount at this time, but Sudan can’t be far behind and Bush the Elder found dubious reasons to invade even the tiny countries of Panama and Grenada.

Likelihood of a new draft.

During this same speech, Mr. Bush affirmed indefinite troop commitments in his already-invaded countries. “We will stand by the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes of freedom and security are fulfilled,” he declared.  By all realistic indications those goals will be a long time coming, and an exit strategy is not even under discussion.  The real goal, of course, is control.

This agenda will almost certainly require resumption of the military draft in the event that Bush is re-elected.  Mr. Bush has alienated our major potential allies that might otherwise contribute security forces and resources in Iraq, leaving the entire burden to American troops and taxpayers.  Beyond the UK, his “coalition” consists primarily of small countries strong-armed or bribed through aid packages or debt relief to participate, which assume relatively little of the costs and risks. To gain more substantive support, the administration would have to share some degree of authority and probably some of the massive, lucrative oil and reconstruction contracts with non-American companies, which they are unwilling to do.

There is increasing resistance among National Guard troops pulled away from their jobs and families, and increasing resentment among regular troops required to serve extended tours of duty.  General Meyers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has confirmed plans to fill a minimum of 5,600 slots by December, including increased activation of the Individual Ready Reserve. This will increase discontent and won’t be announced, of course, until after the election.

Legislators have expressed concern over the unequal distribution of military service burdens across socioeconomic groups, and resolutions to re-institute the draft have already been crafted, worked their way through committees in the House of Representatives (HR 163) and the Senate (S 89), and were defeated by Republicans to avoid public alarm but could be revived at any time.
Imperial ambitions and alienation of allies would not characterize a Kerry administration, and Mr. Kerry has promised in the second Bush-Kerry debate that they would initiate no draft.

(2)  Permissiveness toward Big Business and abrogation of regulatory responsibilities, especially involving energy and the military-industrial-security complex.

The evidence is massive here and the pattern couldn’t be more clear.  In addition to the spoils of war distributed en masse to administration-connected and Republican-supporting companies, some principal areas of public benefit attacked to the advantage of Big Business are listed below in four general categories: protection of the environment; protection of workers; protection of ordinary citizens, including military personnel; and corrupt favoritism to Republican supporters.

Protection of the environment

• Energy and environmental policy-making that included only energy industry insiders and excluded environmental representatives

• Reversal of environmental protections, with widespread logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling throughout pristine areas of the western United States.

• Withdrawal from the 1997 international Kyoto protocol to reduce the hydrocarbon emissions from fossil fuels responsible for global warming.

• Extending the 2004 deadline for Detroit to develop prototype high mileage cars, while defiantly granting tax advantages to gas-guzzling vehicles.

• Complete neglect of alternative energy source development.
• Disregarding campaign promises to fund rainforest conservation and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Protection of workers

• Reduction of workplace safety regulations.

• Revision of labor regulations requiring overtime pay.

• Doing nothing to discourage export of jobs to low-wage overseas labor markets

• Eliminating workplace ergonomic rules.

• Protection of ordinary citizens, including military personnel

• Reduced regulatory standards for arsenic in drinking water.

• Reduced health care benefits for veterans and benefits for active duty military personnel.

• Efforts at “tort reform” that would restrict or eliminate consumer rights to sue for damages caused by corporate fraud or neglect.

• Attempting to revise bankruptcy laws to protect lenders at the expense of borrowers irrespective of abusive interest rates and other questionable lending practices.

• Withdrawal from the international Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the 1972 international treaty banning germ warfare, since the administration wants no restrictions on its own WMD production despite the fact that their use would invite similar weapons against us.
 

Corrupt favoritism to Republicans and their supporters

• Consistently supported deregulation of energy companies, conspicuously including Enron – despite the anti-free market fact that consumers have no choice –  leading to flagrant price manipulation and gouging of consumers in California, the UK and Argentina.

• No-bid contract awards to Halliburton and its subsidiaries before Iraq War had begun.

• Failed to impose sanctions on Halliburton or other government contractors with documented overcharges and accounting irregularities, compared with strict sanctions for such violations during the Clinton administration.

• Reversal of rules to deny contracts to companies that violate federal workplace and environmental laws.

• Doing nothing to discourage corporations from locating overseas to avoid U.S. taxes.

• Proposals to partially privatize social security, which would severely compromise the existing system and dump huge funding into the corporate sector.

• And of course, the Great Tax Cut, almost half of which went to the wealthiest 1% of the population on the old Reaganomic “trickle-down” economic theory that produced enormous deficits in the 1980s and has done so again.

In short, rape is not too strong a word.  The Bush administration has systematically, consistently and relentlessly allowed the rape of America’s human and natural resources by Big Business that provides massive Republican campaign contributions.  And yet much of America remains oblivious, self-absorbed, asleep, indifferent.

This flag provides an insightful Canadian perspective.  If you find the picture disrespectful, unpatriotic, or offensive, I suggest you turn your displeasure against the Bush administration, because this is the America they project, promote and protect: huge American corporations that have been given free reign to exploit natural resources, avoid taxes, manipulate prices, favor investors over employees and customers, and inflate executive salaries while laying off tens of thousands and moving production facilities to low-wage labor markets.

On the other hand, the states –  represented by the usual stars in the flag –  have been systematically and relentlessly demoted in importance through decreased federal help for funding health care, public schools, higher education, unemployment compensation and other safety net programs, and many other public responsibilities while suffering reduced tax revenues from the prolonged recession, “jobless recovery,” export of high-paying jobs and their replacement with low-wage jobs, together with increased demands on public health care (associated with reduction of employer-provided health benefits due to cost escalation and labor’s weakened bargaining position), job retraining, and all forms of public assistance.  This brings us to Agenda #3.

(3)  Starving domestic programs

The list here is long and well-known to all state and local administrators struggling to replace lost federal funding, as well as massive under-funding for new federal programs such as Homeland Security and “No child left behind.”  Their purpose is to force states and localities to assume the burden for all public services.  The effect of such a plan, of course, would be gross inequalities between rich and poor jurisdictions.

We obviously cannot spend $2 billion monthly in Iraq and have enough for domestic needs, building new schools there at our expense while not even repairing our own.  But even before Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration had cut federal spending on libraries, physician training, research on fuel-efficient cars, research on renewable energy, health care for the poor, child abuse and neglect programs, public housing, workforce training for dislocated workers, welfare-to-work programs, the Environmental Protection Agency, aid to family planning organizations (on ideological grounds), and almost all funds for litigation against tobacco companies despite the role of smoking as our #1 public health problem.

This is a “starve the beast” strategy developed by the Reagan administration to gradually eliminate the federal role in supporting public health, education and safety net programs while not directly opposing anything politically popular, accomplished by massive shifting of tax dollars into the military-industrial complex and leaving no resources for other programs.

(4)  The anti-intellectual attack on science, inquiry and specialized expertise in favor of political ideology and religious belief

Machiavelli was not the only 16th century forebear of the Bush administration.  Mr. Bush has assumed a base of authority much like that of a medieval Pope, declaring that he is directed by God and in effect a representative of God on earth.  It is not surprising that so many of the world’s Muslims identify the Iraq invasion with the Crusades, since it was on this same declared authority — and with a familiar demonization of the adversary — that pope Urban II sent off armies of European knights on their bloody mission a thousand years ago.

The pre-Enlightenment tensions between religion and science have been resurrected.  Vice President Cheney, continuing to insist upon yet-undiscovered WMDs and imaginary Saddam-bin Laden connections in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, sounds much like the 16th century Pope declaring that the world is flat and the center of the universe, suppressing scientific evidence to the contrary and prosecuting Galileo for supporting the Copernican viewpoint.  The refusal of our conservative neighbors to examine and consider the evidence is much like Galileo’s astronomer colleagues at the University of Padua who refused to look through the newly invented telescope since it challenged their views of the universe.

This irrational, anti-scientific pattern is reflected in some very large (and cold) iceberg tips:

• Prohibiting stem cell research, which has the potential to solve major health problems such as Alzheimers Disease and spinal cord injury.

• Disregarding overwhelming scientific evidence and expert judgment on global warming.

• Discounting biological evidence that homosexuality is hardwired, not freely chosen.
• Defunding of reproductive health services that include abortion counseling, and attempting to interfere in reproductive and STD-preventive research; thus, to force a religious objection upon others who do not share it, the entire range of reproductive education is denied worldwide to poor and poorly informed populations in urgent need.

• Imposing unprecedented secrecy, withholding government documents from scholars, journalists, regulatory bodies, and citizens with legitimate “rights to know”.

• Distorting scientific findings and attempting to interfere in the scientific peer review process, prompting 60 scientists including 20 Nobel Prize winners to publish a complaint.

• Advancing initiatives to award taxpayer funds to religious schools and organizations in violation of our bedrock principle of separation between church and state.

• Ignoring American Bar Association ratings of nominees for judicial appointments.

• Ignoring the testimony of expert U.N. weapons inspectors such as Scott Ritter that Saddam’s nuclear program had been completely dismantled and could not have been reconstituted with his available time and resources and without detection.

• Dismissing self-understanding as “psychobabble.” This is especially disturbing in view of two recent books by leading psychiatrists that identify significant psychopathology in the President’s behavior, including the impulsiveness, residual dyslexia and poor judgment characteristic of adult ADHD, a history of sadism and insensitivity to the suffering of others, attitudes of special entitlement that justify ignoring rules, laws and agreements, and projections of personal grandiosity into world affairs.  Many consequences of these disturbances can be seen throughout his tenures both as Governor of Texas and president.

• And of course, ignoring the abundant and repeated advice of his own counter-terrorism expert, Richard Clarke, as well as his CIA Director, regarding the bin Laden threat of an impending terrorist attack, including warnings from several foreign intelligence agencies and information on specific likely scenarios, one of which occurred on 9/11/01.

In view of this last fact – (1) that 9/11 occurred during this administration, (2) that there is abundant evidence that it was preventable had they been alert and responsive to obvious clues, available information, and multiple warnings from multiple sources, and (3) that four commercial airliners were identified as hijacked well in advance of their eventual crash sites without missile or NORAD intercepts which require only a few minutes, even after the first crashed into the World Trade Center  – it is astonishing that so many Americans hold fast to the cherished fantasy that they are safer with the Bush administration than ANY alternative.
 

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Copyright 2004 Jack Dresser, Ph.D.