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Edited on Mon Mar-08-04 10:51 PM by teryang
I took a stab at responding to this provocative article and posted this on the other thread:
I have trouble with several of the characterizations. Especially of Biden. If any Democrat has trouble articulating his position it must be him. The only impression I have of him is trying to sugar coat the American aggression against a people in Afghanistan and supporting the war in Iraq. If he was trying to do something else he certainly didn't make that clear at the time.
It is somewhat hypocritical to pose as the enlightened elder statesman of foreign policy after raining bombs down on civilians who haven't attacked us and presiding over slaughter. "Trust me, I'm here to help" is a common joke that entered the vernacular long before this. Ironic that a child sensed his hypocrisy. That same hypocrisy weighs heavily upon this article.
I'd like to hear Wellstone's side of the story but he is dead. If Wellstone didn't support Biden's version of the resolution, than there was something critically wrong with it. Perhaps the author should publish the original Biden Lugar proposal so it may be judged directly on its merits against the embarassing monstrosity of a blank check that was signed. My inference is that the leadership in Congress (including the Senate) is what is seriously deficient. To project this deficiency upon the people who have supported the democratic party and elected its representatives is an unjustified transference of moral culpability.
American CIA activities in central and southwest Asia mobilized, armed, trained, protected and promoted militant Islamic totalitarianism. This author apparently has forgotten that. The widespread killings, injustice, hardship and oppression are something his (Biden's) budget votes helped pay for. I never heard Biden speak out against this policy. American foreign policy is to meddle in the internal affairs of foreign nations, topple governments, assassinate leaders, etc. This ideological cloak that he articulates is just that. Nor do I hear Biden speak out against the obvious obstruction of justice by this regime before and after 911 that empowered Saudi and Pakistani support of terrorism and now attempts to conceal that relationship.
Numerous Democrats have a correct understanding of what the "political dimensions of the struggle are." It isn't a "history of colonialism" it is colonialism.
If you want to make the cold war analogy, the preferred solution is coexistence, commerce and convergence, not bombs and conquests. Our regime is forcing our will upon others without a care for democracy, law or anyting else. The law we bring is the law Cortes brought to the Aztecs, sign this paper surrendering your sovereignty and resources to the royal charter or be killed. Like Cortes we will try to get factions among your countrymen to do it so we won't have to risk our own soldiers' lives if possible. The fact is we can't tolerate sovereignty in a targeted nation let alone democracy.
The notion that American citizens haven't sacrificed enough is ludicrous. Perhaps the author has some sort of guilt feelings in this regard. Many of us have served our country and community for many years to be rewarded with the same sort of corporate indifference shown to employees of downsized corporations while the corporatist defense junta gets unjustifiably larger and richer at our expense and that of our progeny. It is our corporations and the ruling elite who don't pay their fair share but instead profit from war whenever their price gouging and fraudulent schemes have otherwise exhausted the economy.
This attempt to articulate an alternative to conquest and hypocrisy in foreign policy as usual suffers from the very weakness it purports to remedy. One must disable the Pentagon, defense contractor, energy lobby, Israeli lobby axis in order to change the severely metasticized foreign policy of what amounts to a neo-fascist junta. One must remove and sanction the illegitimate government now in power. This is where culpability lies. Digging into 911, anthrax, the CIA, and the inextricably intertwined affairs of the BFEE, big energy and Saudi Arabia would enable a new foreign policy. Few elected representatives or journalists have the courage to stand up to it. As long as social priorities are aborted for contrived crises enabled to justify weapons procurement and conquest of resources, nothing will change. The necessary response is prosecutorial in nature not in hollowly articulating a foreign policy "vision."
As an afternote, I discussed Iraqi policy with Wellstone's staff a few months before these events and received a written response from his office. It is my opinion that the characterization of any differences between Wellstone's policy and that allegedly of Biden at the time described in this article is probably misrepresented.
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