The Connection between Bush/Cheney's "War on Terror" and its Class War

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Sun Aug-03-08 09:35 PM
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The Connection between Bush/Cheney's "War on Terror" and its Class War

Edited on Sun Aug-03-08 09:38 PM by Time for change

Two of the most notable and unique characteristics of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney�s presidential administration are: the only interminable war in our history; and the greatest level of income inequality in our country since statistics became available to measure it.

It is no coincidence that these two tragic manifestations have occurred together during the same presidency. George Bush�s �War on Terror� is a specific result and extension of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that President Eisenhower warned us about in 1961, and which former Vice President (under FDR) and 1948 Progressive Party candidate for President Henry Wallace warned us about before that. When the MIC gets out of control, the result is billions of dollars poured into wasteful projects that greatly enrich the few at the expense of the many. The MIC under Bush and Cheney is now more out of control than it ever has been, and the American and Iraqi people are reaping the consequences.

In this post I�ll begin by briefly summarizing the current state of income inequality in our country, and then I�ll discuss some aspects of its connection to the Bush/Cheney �War on Terror�.

A brief synopsis of current income inequality in the United States

A recent article in The Nation provides a graph titled �Plutocracy Reborn � Re-creating the Gap that Gave us the Great Depression�. That chart provides a good concise summary of income inequality in the United States from 1917 to the present:

The chart plots income inequality, measured as the ratio between the average income of the top 0.01% of U.S. families, compared to the bottom 90%. Note that preceding the great stock market crash of 1929, which plunged us into The Great Depression, the ratio rose from about 250 at the start of the 1920s to a peak of about 900 by 1929. The ratio then plunged, and by the start of WW II it had declined to about 200, where it remained with some relatively minor ups and downs until the beginning of Ronald Reagan�s Presidency. It then began another precipitous climb, with a sharp decline beginning during the last year of Clinton�s Presidency, but then another sharp increase beginning at about the time that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy first went into effect, so that by the end of 2006 we�ve exceeded even the peak ratio of 1929 that preceded the Great Depression. The three green bars in the chart represent the stock market crash of 1929, the last pre-Reagan year, and the present. Scary stuff! It is also relevant to note that below the above noted graph is another graph, titled �Our Incredible Shrinking Top Marginal Rate�, which shows a trend that is approximately the inverse of the above noted graph.

A closely related issue is trends in the U.S. poverty rate, as depicted in the graph on page 11 of the U.S. Census Bureau publication, �Income Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006�. That graph shows that beginning with President Lyndon Johnson�s much maligned �War on Poverty� in the early 1960s, poverty in the United States declined precipitously, from about 22% to 12% before leveling out beginning around 1970. Then, with the onset of the �Reagan Revolution� starting in 1981, poverty began to rise again, reaching a maximum of about 15% twelve years later, just prior to the Clinton Presidency. The poverty rate then began a slow steady decline, to about 11% by the end of Clinton�s presidency, followed by another rise with the onset of the Bush II administration, to 12.3% by mid-year 2006, where the latest census statistics end. However, that is not the end of the story, by any means. The current economic downturn (or recession) will in all likelihood (and it�s probably already started) send another 5-10 million Americans into poverty, thus raising the poverty rate in our country another 1-4%.

These statistics are no accident. President Johnson�s �War on Poverty� reduced poverty substantially in our country. The only rises in poverty rate we�ve seen in our country since FDR�s New Deal (which decreased poverty) began with the Reagan and Bush II administrations, which are the only two presidential administrations since that time to substantially lower the top marginal tax rate, along with other fiscal policies that favor the wealthy at the expense of the poor and the working and middle class.

The plutocrats use the 9/11 attacks on our country as a window of opportunity

Nobody explains this better than Bill Moyers. He had some speeches on American democracy planned for the fall of 2001. But after the 9/11 attacks on our country he had second thoughts about continuing his speaking tour. From his book, �Moyers on Democracy�, he explains why he hesitated to continue his speaking tour, and then why he decided to continue it after all:

It just didn't seem timely to talk about money and politics while the country was still in mourning. But I began to notice some items in the news that struck me as especially repugnant amid all the grief. In Washington, where environmentalists and other public interest advocates had suspended normal political activities, corporate lobbyists were suddenly mounting a full court press for special favors at taxpayer expense.... Visions of newfound gold danced in the heads of lobbyists. And in corporate suites across the country CEOs were waking up to the prospect of a bonanza born of tragedy. Within 2 weeks of 9/11 the business press was telling of corporate directors rushing to give bargain priced stock options to their top executives... Stocks had fallen sharply after the attacks... As stock options grant executives the right to buy shares at that low price for years to come, the lower the price when options are awarded, the more lucrative they are... One company had begun laying off employees just hours before the terrorists struck; the chairman, nonetheless, helped himself to 602,589 options just two weeks later.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq as a means for enriching the rich and powerful

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has been the centerpiece for the Bush/Cheney �War on Terror�. Indeed, the Iraq War was planned several months prior to the 9/11 attacks, but after the attacks occurred they served as the primary excuse for the war.

Antonia Juhasz, in her book, �http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3D%2522the%2Bbush%2Bagenda%2522%2Bjuhasz%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title">The Bush Agenda � Invading the World, One Economy at a Time�, explains how the Iraq War was used primarily as a means of funneling tens of billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers to Bush/Cheney cronies.

�Trade liberalization�
One of the primary means for accomplishing that was use of the �Trade Liberalization Policy� initiated by L. Paul Bremer III, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) starting on May 6, 2003. This policy immediately suspended tariffs, subsidies, and other measures designed to protect the Iraqi economy and people, thus devastating local industries and businesses. The measures were very similar to those that the IMF, World Bank, and WTO have been hoisting on poor countries for many years now, with devastating effects for local populations. Bremer was in fact well aware of the devastating effects of these policies on local populations because he had spent many years counseling corporations about them:

In a November 2001 paper entitled �New Risks in International Business,� Bremer outlined the risks to multinational corporations associated with the implementation of corporate globalization policies. Every policy Bremer describes in this paper was among those he himself implemented in Iraq a year and a half later. Bremer walks through the devastating impacts of each policy on the local population � the same impacts that his policies would inflict on Iraq. Bremer warns companies that �the painful consequences of globalization are felt long before its benefits are clear� (translation: long before the corporate profits have time to trickle down to the local population). Bremer cites several specific globalization policies, such as privatization of state enterprises, deregulation of controlled industries, and reductions of tariffs and nontariff barriers to open up trade in goods and services. In the paper, Bremer explains that �privatization of basic services, for example, almost always leads to price increases for those services, which in turn often lead to protests or even physical violence against the operator.� As for economic equality, Bremer says, �the process of globalization has a disparate impact on incomes,� which in turn causes �political and social tensions.� The harmful impact� on local producers causes �enormous pressure on� trade monopolies� when �opening markets to foreign trade�

Bremer was therefore well aware that his policies would, at a minimum, reduce access to basic services and support for local businesses in favor of foreign businesses. He also knew the policies would increase inequality and political and social tension. However, he believed that he knew how to protect U.S. multinationals from the impact of these policies and therefore the policies went forward, ever clear on who the intended beneficiaries were�

Plain old corruption
Another method of funneling billions of dollars to Bush/Cheney cronies was much simpler. Juhasz describes circumstances which can best be described as extremely suspicious:

Billions of dollars of U.S. money committed to reconstruction have gone unspent in Iraq, been wasted, or are simply unaccounted for. The U.S. government�s General Accounting Office reported in June 2004 that the CPA had spent virtually all of Iraq�s money during the occupation but relatively little of its own. There were significantly more stringent reporting requirements (although, I would argue not stringent enough) on the U.S. appropriation than on the Development Fund for Iraq, for which there was virtually no accounting. To this day, a full $8.8 billion from the Fund remains completely unaccounted for while audits of U.S. taxpayer funds have found contract files �unavailable, incomplete, inconsistent and unreliable.�� Halliburton has been found guilty and is under investigation for over $1.5 billion in overcharges for its Iraq services� Halliburton was also found to have colluded with the U.S. Defense Department to keep these charges out of public purview�

Oil
Juhasz notes that increased access to Iraq�s oil has always been the major motivation behind the Iraq war. She notes that prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. oil companies had little or no access to Iraqi oil:

Since the 2003 invasion, however, imports have been far more steady and at consistently sizeable levels�.Iraq�s oil has therefore already contributed to skyrocketing oil company profits. So, too, it seems, has the myth of a dramatically reduced oil supply from the Middle East due to the Iraq War�.

The model that won out was the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA)� PSAs turn the entire exploration, drilling, and infrastructure building process over to private companies� that lock in the laws in effect at the time the contract was signed�

Before new oil contracts could be signed, the existing contracts had to be erased. This all-important step was taken back in May 2003� The U.S.-appointed senior advisor to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, Thamer al-Ghadban, announced that few, if any, of the dozens of contracts signed with foreign oil companies under the Hussein regime would be honored�

Selective use of anti-terrorist policies

The hallmark of class warfare is that government uses its powers to tilt the playing field heavily towards the rich and powerful. In return, the rich and powerful use their immense wealth and power to help the government stay in power. It is a major component of fascism, although in the United States it is not called that.

With respect to the Bush/Cheney �War on Terror�, these policies are manifested in the selective manner in which our government cracks down on terrorist money havens:

Crackdowns on terrorist money havens used by the wealthy to avoid paying taxes
One mechanism that terrorists use to hide their money is to put it in off shore financial centers to launder it. The problem is that some American billionaires do the same sort of thing to avoid paying taxes. So how do you stop one without stopping the other? Bill Moyers explains how this issue played out after 9/11:

Right wingers teamed up after 9/11 with deep-pocket bankers to stop the United States from cracking down on terrorist money havens. As Time magazine reports, thirty industrial nations were ready to tighten the screws on offshore financial centers whose banks have the potential to hide and often help launder billions of dollars for drug cartels, global crime syndicates � not to mention groups like Osama bin Laden�s al Qaeda organization.

Not all offshore money is linked to crime or terrorism; much of it comes from wealthy people who are hiding money to avoid taxation. And right-wingers believe in nothing if not in avoiding taxation. So they and the bankers� lobbyists went to work to stop the American government from participating in the crackdown on dirty money, arguing that closing tax havens in effect leads to higher taxes on people trying to hide their money�

The president of the Heritage Foundation spent an hour� with Secretary of the Treasury Paul O�Neill, Texas bankers pulled their strings at the White House, and presto! � The Bush administration pulled out of the international campaign against tax havens.

How about that for patriotism? Better terrorists get their dirty money than tax cheaters be prevented from hiding their money�

Crackdowns on charities
But what the Bush/Cheney administration was unwilling to do against the wishes of American billionaires it made up for by cracking down on charitable organizations. William Fisher describes the conclusions of a report titled �Collateral Damage: How the War on Terror Hurts Charities, Foundations, and the People They Serve�.

The result, the report says, is that U.S. nonprofit organizations have been forced to "operate within a legal regime that harms charitable programs, undermines the independence of the nonprofit sector, and weakens civil society." The report says that the U.S. nonprofit community today "operates in fear of what may spark (the government) to use its power to shut them down." �.

The policies are abused by the government to engage in unconstitutional, political use of surveillance powers." � These powers include the authority to designate any charity as a material supporter of terrorism. This action demands virtually no due process from the government, denies the target to see the evidence against it, and can result in freezing of a charity's assets, effectively shutting it down. Since 9/11, the government has shut down dozens of charitable groups, but only three have ever been charged and brought to trial for supporting terrorist causes. None has been convicted� Treasury's 2006 Terrorist Assets Report estimates that $16,413,733 in assets from "foreign terrorist organizations", which include charities and foundations, have been frozen since 9/11.

The report also asserts that the government has used its surveillance powers against charitable groups for political purposes. It charges, "In addition to providing aid and services to people in need, charitable and religious organizations help to facilitate a free exchange of information and ideas, fostering debate about public policy issues. The government has treated some of these activities as a terrorist threat. Since 9/11, there have been disturbing revelations about the use of counterterrorism resources to track and sometimes interfere with groups that publicly and vocally dissent from administration policies."

Conclusion: The transposition of opposites

How is it that a class war is conducted in our country under the guise of a �War on Terror�, and yet so few Americans seem to notice what�s going on? Of course one reason is that the same multi-millionaires and billionaires who conduct this class war also own most of the sources of news that Americans receive.

But there is also another fundamental explanation as to how they get away with it. It is a fundamental tactic of sociopaths to disguise their activities by calling what they do the opposite of what it is. The most successful sociopaths � those who are able to amass great power � have a substantial talent for disguising their motives in this way.

Thus we have a presidential administration that claims to initiate a war to �spread democracy� to other parts of the world, while at the same time it continuously undermines and violates democracy in its own country.

And thus an administration that prides itself on being �pro-life� undertakes a war of choice that kills over a million innocent people, yet it never expresses the slightest regret for doing so.

And thus a president who calls himself a compassionate conservative sits passively by and parties around while hundreds of poor people die in New Orleans.

And thus it is that a man who had strings pulled to avoid fighting in a war as a young man that he claimed to support shows his �courage� by announcing to terrorists �Bring �em on� � to kill the soldiers that he ordered into battle.

Most Americans really need to do a better job of recognizing these tactics for what they are.

This problem won�t go away on its own. The class war in the United States against the poor, the working and middle class must be recognized for what it is, and the American people must demand that their government redress the problem. FDR, who perhaps did more than any other American President to reverse income inequality in our country, said it best in his speech to the Democratic National Convention of 1936. Here�s a brief excerpt from that great speech:

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor, other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness� Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government.

It is now time for another FDR.