A Closer Look At The “Anti-War” Candidates Of the Democrat Party
[Steve’s arguments against Kucinich aren’t particularly strong, but I think he’s right on with his fundamental point: none of these Yahoos will do anything to seriously disrupt the status quo that governs our country, contributes to the destruction of the world’s ecology, upholds the wholesale repression of most of the world’s population, etc. If you think Kucinich is going to cut the U.S. military budget down to a level comparable to that of our allies, reform the tax system to make sure corporations and the rich pay their fair share, institute true universal health care, or slow down the wholesale destruction of the American and global ecology, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. … would I vote for Kucinich anyway, if he got the nomination? Possibly… but, most likely, he won’t obtain the nomination, and most likely, California will be a “safe” state for the Democratic nominee, which means the odds of me not voting Green in 2004 are pretty damn low. -Thomas]
A Closer Look At The “Anti-War” Candidates Of the Democrat Party
By STEVE ARGUE
The main contenders for the nomination of the Democrat Party for
US President are former Governor Howard Dean, Senator John Edwards,
Representative Dick Gephardt, Senator Bob Graham, Senator John
Kerry, Representative Dennis Kucinich, Senator Joseph Lieberman,
former Senator Carol Mosely-Braun, and Reverend Al Sharpton.
Also running against Bush and the Democrat nominee will be a
candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party as well as candidates from
other socialist parties and potentially a candidate from the Green
Party as well.
Four of the contenders for Democrat nomination, Dick Gephardt,
John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and John Edwards, were amongst the many
of Democrats in the House and Senate who voted for the US war
against Iraq.
Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, Carol Mosely-Braun, and Al
Sharpton, are painting their candidacies as anti-war.
Governor Howard Dean
Howard Dean has challenged the Bush administrations lies
regarding Iraq’s supposed nuclear weapons programs and has called
for an investigation. Yet Dean has also stated, “I believed then
and I believe now that removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq
was a just cause. But not every just cause requires that we go to
war, especially with inadequate planning and without maximum
support.”
So Dean has no problem with invading a sovereign country for the
benefit of the US oil and arms industries killing around 7,000 Iraqi
civilians and making US soldiers into a hated occupation army. That
was a “just cause”. Dean’s issue is with Bush’s lack of planning.
By inference Dean claims that as president he would plan imperialist
wars better than Bush.
In addition Dean has stated, “General Shinseki’s professional
military advice that 200,000 troops would be needed was rejected. I
would add at least 50,000 foreign troops to the force in Iraq.”
While the Iraqi people are fighting to liberate themselves from a
foreign occupation army that has set up a completely subservient
puppet government and caused the collapse of the Iraqi economy, Dean
is calling for more troops from other nations to maintain the
imperial order.
Dean states, “What I want to know is why in the world the
Democratic Party’s leadership is supporting the president’s
unilateral attack on Iraq?” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Feb. 22,
2003). Dean would have supported the war if it was done with UN
backing. At the heart of Dean’s opposition is the idea that U.S.
imperialist interests would be better served if the UN were backing
the war. This view does not respect the right of the Iraqi people
to self-determination. It should also be remembered that
such “unilateral” action was also taken with the US war against
Yugoslavia under Clinton.
Representative Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich is also portraying himself as an anti-war
candidate in the Democrat Party. Yet on his web site the Kucinich
campaign states that Kucinich, “Supports a strong and efficient
military. He believes that the current practice of procuring ever
more costly weapons has the effect of weakening military readiness.
As the cost of new weapons systems rise, the cost of merely
replacing aging weapons with new ones becomes prohibitively
expensive. As a result, U.S. military forces shrink, while they
become at the same time more expensive to maintain and more prone to
failure.”
This is the same position taken recently by two U.S. generals
waging the war in Iraq. During the U.S. invasion in the ongoing
Iraq war General Stanley McCrystal complained, “It was enough for
the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as
our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its
meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results.
The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach
the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of
the defense industry!”
Similarly General Richard Mayers commented on precision-guided
munitions, “The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained
results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!”
Kucinich’s position on military funding is not one that calls for
an end to U.S. imperialist wars, but instead calls for a more cost
effective and deadly military to terrorize and keep in line the semi-
colonial people of the world. The contradiction here is limited to
the difference between the pure profiteering of the military
industrial complex and the desire for actual cost effective results
for imperialist victory on the battlefield.
Dennis Kucinich spoke to a gathering of the Southern California
Americans for Democratic Action claiming, “We [he and the congress]
did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood
of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with
the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan. We did not authorize
the Administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases.
We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a
permanent war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent
war economy.”
Yet that is exactly what Kucinich and the rest of the congress,
with the exception of California Democrat Barbara Lee, agreed to
with their votes authorizing Bush’s endless war on the world. The
entire Democrat Party in both the Senate and Congress, with only one
exception, voted for war.
Since votes have since been taken authorizing the US war in Iraq,
the most practical application of this vote by Kucinich was to
authorize the US war on Afghanistan. In stark contrast to
Kucinich’s vote for war this author wrote on September 12,
2001, “Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center
collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S.
government has done with it’s bombing of civilian populations in
Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Panama, and Korea. The
U.S. bombings of these countries killed millions of civilians.
Terror against civilians is never justified. Now the U.S.
government is preparing to terror bomb Afghanistan.”
The U.S. war in Afghanistan has in fact killed well over 3,000
civilians and brought the Afghan nation to back to the chaos of
fragmented warlord rule last seen after the various U.S. trained and
financed Mujahideen forces defeated the Soviet backed PDPA
government. Now those same Mujahideen forces have defeated the
Taliban, once again with U.S. backing, and they are just as
incapable of bringing a decent life, or even political stability to
Afghanistan.
The same 9-12 writing also pointed out: “Today the clerical
fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power
with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S.
intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary
PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting
women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching
the poor and women how to read and write.
“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old
feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the
Mujahideen (from which the Taliban were later formed). With
billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the
Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war
that included killing woman for teaching little girls how to read
and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become
liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of
this U.S. intervention.
“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid
recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the
people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as
the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S.
corporate (oil) interests.”
Kucinich, the “peace candidate”, as much as he may now want to
deny it, voted for the war on Afghanistan and played his part in
making it happen.
Some may argue that Kucinich is not perfect, but he’d make a
better president than Bush. Yet it is unlikely that Kucinich has
any intention of winning the presidency. His role is one of
bringing the anti-war movement and others who are breaking from the
establishment and the twin parties of war back into the fold of the
pro-war Democrat Party. Kucinich makes this point clear when he
states, “The Democratic Party created third parties by running to
the middle. What I’m trying to do is to go back to the big tent so
that everyone who felt alienated could come back through my
candidacy” (Counter Punch, April 2003).
Yet that tent Kucinich speaks of is one that despite its name, is
not Democratic. It is a tent dominated by big capital and the
politicians subservient to it. It is under this tent that the
ruling class would like to swallow up the legitimate opposition of
the people towards war and turn us into the water boys
for “responsible” politicians.
On the third parties who are trying to build a real alternative
to the pro-war Democrat Party Kucinich states, “I have no interest
in a third party candidacy. None, I want to do it the other way —
bring third party candidates into the [Democratic] Party” (The
Progressive, April 2003).
Reverand Al Sharpton
Another candidate who has opposed the war on Iraq and is much
less likely to give his endorsement to the other openly pro-war and
racist Democrats is Reverand Al Sharpton. Speaking on this issue
the New Republic opined, “Anyone who rules out the possibility that
in August 2004 an aggrandized Sharpton will, after a private
conversation with Karl Rove, issue a pained statement declaring that
the Democratic nominee has betrayed the party’s base and doesn’t
deserve the reverend’s endorsement should have a conversation with
Robert Abrams, Mario Cuomo, or Mark Green.” (The Village Voice,
April 16-22)
Yet Sharpton’s lack of loyalty to the racist and pro-war Democrat
machine has not meant endorsements for the authentic parties of the
left that uphold much of the program Sharpton claims to represent.
Instead Sharpton has stooped as low as endorsing Republican boss Al
D’Amato to show his dissatisfaction with the Democrat Party. This
has accomplished nothing but the bolstering of the twin parties of
war and racism that rule America.
Sharpton’s support for both the Democrats and Republicans while
pretending to be leading a crusade against war and racism makes
particular sense in light of the fact that he is a self admitted
informant for the FBI. The FBI, as America’s internal political
police, play a role of carrying out spying, infiltration,
disruption, harassment, disorientation, and even murder against anti-
racist, anti-war, and other organizers in this country.
When asked about the new provisions of the Patriot Acts that
allow for all kinds of FBI surveillance Sharpton himself
responded, “What you’re really doing is allowing the government to
do overtly now what they did covertly in the ’60s, not only to Dr.
King but to every group from the [Black] Panthers to the anti-war
movement. They tried a whisper campaign against Dr. King with
illegal information. Imagine what they would do with legal
information against anyone they would want. That is frightening. Big
Brother is here, and has a license to do it.”
Yet the Times reported on July 22, 2002 regarding a 1983 FBI
surveillance tape of Sharpton in an attempted cocaine deal that was
aired on HBO last year, “The grainy tape was recorded as part of an
FBI investigation into Mr Sharpton’s friend, the boxing promoter Don
King. The drug deal never went through and no charges were ever
brought against Mr. Sharpton as a result of the operation. However,
the FBI was said to have used the material to pressure Mr. Sharpton
into becoming a government informant for five years on figures in
organized crime and black leaders, as well as Mr. King.”
Sharpton himself admitted in a two-hour interview with Newsday
that he wore body recorders in meetings with subjects under federal
investigation and that he also allowed a tap to be placed in his
phone at his Brooklyn home. (Newsday Friday, October 21, 1988)
Sharpton’s FBI activities for five years or perhaps longer, his
dealings with the mob, and his support for both the Democrats and
Republicans while excluding the left should be cause enough for
concern about Sharpton’s supposed anti-war and anti-racist
credentials.
Senator Carol Mosely-Braun
Former Illinois Senator Carol Mosely-Braun moved into the
presidential race as an opponent to the U.S. war in Iraq as well.
Yet she has her own disturbing connections with the imperialist
world order. As senator Mosely-Braun befriended Nigerian dictator
General Sani Abacha. It was General Abacha who hanged beloved Ogoni
community leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 other activists in 1995 for
their activities exposing the environmentally unsound practices of
Shell Oil in Nigeria that are poisoning the earth and the Ogoni
people. Under Abacha the average annual income of the Nigerian
people fell from $1,000 in 1980 to $260 in 1995 despite the massive
profits made by Shell Oil and the large Swiss bank accounts
accumulated by Abacha and his cronies. While Abacha killed for
Shell, Shell has now admitted that they imported guns for Abacha.
At one of Mosely-Braun’s meetings with the dictator, General
Abacha used the occasion to present her with a letter endorsing
Clinton in his re-election bid. Of course this was not the kind of
publicity Clinton wanted, having had to try to distance himself from
Abacha’s horrible human rights record with a weak set of symbolic
sanctions that did not effect Nigeria’s oil exports.
The restrictions imposed by Clinton included a cut off of aid,
restricted arms sales, and imposed visa restrictions on Nigerian
officials. Obviously these restrictions didn’t bother Abacha who
endorsed Clinton. Yet former Senator Mosely-Braun used several
occasions to speak out against the restrictions that were placed on
Nigeria. This issue played a large role in preventing Mosely-Braun
from being re-elected to the U.S. Senate.
The Peace and Freedom Party
The Peace and Freedom Party is back on the ballot in California
with 80,000 registrants and will be running a presidential candidate
who actually represents the values of the hundreds of thousands who
have marched in the streets against the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Yugoslavia. Founded in 1967, the Peace and Freedom Party has
opposed all of the wars this country has waged since. At home we
campaign for political freedoms, equality, full employment, spending
on social programs rather than war, and for an egalitarian socialist
society that redistributes the wealth and ends imperialist war by
ending imperialist profits.
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