“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.”-- Adolph Hitler
Little wonder we didn’t hear much from Bush and Cheney during the Republican National Convention. Presto-chango, ignore the men behind the curtain, the GOP’s new mantra is “Washington is not working,” which is a hilarious fabrication given that the Republican party IS Washington! As a recent Times editorial (9/4) points out, “as hard as he tries, Mr. McCain cannot escape the burdensome shadow of President Bush because his policies offer no real change.” I mean, if you’re going to “drain the swamp” within the beltway you can’t have the residing reptiles holding up signs trumpeting economic “prosperity” and military success.
But who wouldn’t tout prosperity as a Republican virtue when, as The New York Times (9/5) points out, these are “the least diverse, most conservative and richest Republican delegates“ in the history of its tracking data. It’s ironic that the Republicans want to change the disastrous paradigm they’ve created. They’ve been in charge of the White House for the last eight years, and they’ve controlled congress the majority of the time. It’s like they’re running against themselves, but still expect the public gullibility they’ve so dearly counted on--how else could Bush have been elected to a second term--to keep them in power.
Trouble is, McCain’s one of the wartiest toads in the mire. He’s been hunkered in the muck for twenty-eight years, and he’s incubated Bush’s policies for the last eight, voting with him 90% of the time. Do the math, Bush’s popularity is at a 30% approval rate, so….hmmm…if we then, theoretically, of course, extrapolate Bush’s approval rating to McCain’s endorsement of the administrative status quo, if McCain were president he would enjoy a 33% approval rating. And so I ask you my fellow Americans, is this what we want? If elected, McCain’s policies would bring a definite “lack of change.”
Actually, this tactic worked for Bush. Why? Because he could count on the fact that the public’s paralytic, deer-in-the-headlights, FEAR of change, would negate the possibility of risking what would have been a wise choice in the election following 9/11. “Rather than remaking George W. Bush’s Republican party in his own image, Mr. McCain allowed the practitioners of the politics of fear and division to run the show”(9/5 NYT). It’s no coincidence that the White House spin of late has had to do with the dangers of forgetting the war on terror. The media, ever compliant with supporting the ancien regime, widely disseminated the call that we remember 9/11.
And so it is the Times reports that, “Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush’s advisers inserted a provision in a recent proposal from the Bush administration that many Americans have forgotten that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda.” In the midst of an election season, its language represents a political attempt to ratchet up the fear factor, and desperately try to salvage a foundering McCain candidacy. The irony here is that McCain is employing the “same Karl Rovian team Bush used to eliminate McCain’s candidacy in the 2000 primaries.” (9/5 NY)
Regarding the fascist dramaturgy that framed McCain’s acceptance speech, I guess we can count on him to help those students at Walter Reed High School in Los Angeles, (oops! his handlers need a new google-image stooge), because he surely hasn’t helped the veterans (note the soldier-protestor at this cult gathering) who were three thousand miles away at Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. And while his handlers proffered a larger than life feature on a heroic soldier who threw himself on two hand grenades in saving his comrades, they must have rued the fact they were unable to cash in on what might have been a star spangled feature on Pat Tillman. And well they could have, if the truth had never come out about the real Pat Tillman story.
According to his mother, Mary Tillman, in her new book, “Boots On The Ground By Dusk,” (2008), “The Army used him. They knew right away he was killed by fratricide [She refuses to use the phrase ‘friendly fire’] and they used him for their own purposes to promote the war, to get sympathy for the war, for five weeks.” Regarding the myth of Pat Tillman, the gung-ho, these-colors-don’t-run, warrior zealot? It simply wasn’t true. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, there was “A side of Pat Tillman not widely known—a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought, and died in service to his country yet was critical of president Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books…to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author.”
Nor is it a probable coincidence I’ve received multiple e-mails of graphic 9/11 color photos, focused mainly on mid-air jumpers and exploding jet fuel. McCain’s war record is really an implied reminder that only a warrior president can protect us from the perpetrators of evil responsible for the events depicted in these gruesome images. Assuming this is true, and that McCain knows the grim complexities of militaristic policy decisions, consider the consequences should his potential vice-president be left to manage the contingencies of waging war. Governor Sarah Palin’s carefully thought out position on America’s investment of over four thousand American dead in Iraq is this: “that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.” On this view, if the American invasion of Iraq was poorly planned, it must have been due to a lack of communication between Bush and God. What we really need is a candidate who can channel God’s will.
“Mr. McCain says he is the candidate who will better protect the country from terrorism. But about all he has to offer is his pledge to continue the war in Iraq. We have yet to hear an explanation for how he plans to do that while also salvaging the war in Afghanistan—the real front line in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban”(9/4 NYT) And what about this “real” front line? Given that page 8 of today’s New York Times reports that “A missile strike from a pilotless United States reconnaissance aircraft killed 6 to 12 people in a group of houses in southern Afghanistan, very close to the border with Pakistan….among the dead were two women and three children,” it’s not surprising that their lead editorial, “Caught in the Cross-Fire” warns that, “Civilians in Afghanistan are paying a deadly price in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. America is fast losing the battles for hearts and minds.”
So forget winning hearts and minds, let’s play the FEAR card again. Trouble is, you can always count on America’s short memory. As no less than our venerable Attorney General, Michael Mukasey told House lawmakers in July, “As Sept. 11, 2001, recedes into the past, there are some people who have come to think of it as kind of a singular event and of there being nothing else out there.” But never fear, the reason we forget has to do with the wonderful job the Bush administration has done in protecting us: “In a way, we are the victims of our own success, our own success being that another attack has been prevented.” Never mind that 9/11 might never have happened had the present administration heeded the warnings by a number of government agencies that an attack was imminent.
McCain’s war hero montage may have stoked a few patriotic hearts, but the only New-York-state-of-mind most viewers were in concerned the Giants and Redskins. Besides, if being a soldier is the only qualification one needs for the highest office, then why weren’t Audie Murphy, or Ira Hayes ever elected? Moreover, films like Platoon and Heartbreak Ridge are passé. Most of the public, apart from the yawning old white men we’re being asked to trust, are more interested in Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express. McCain’s hackneyed charge that Obama’s party is a “me first, country second” crowd out of touch with America’s deep seated patriotism is the illusion of a rich power elite insulated from the realities of everyday American life. To coin a phrase from the good-old-boy vernacular, that dog won’t hunt. The young, immigrant, and multicultural majority on the horizon are less interested in killing people or being killed than achieving social and economic justice.
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