Bush Confounds Marx by Daniel Kohanski

Bush Confounds Marx
Daniel Kohanski

The United States is not the world's oldest democracy; that distinction belongs to Iceland. Nor are we the largest democracy. India claims that title. We are, however, the model democracy, the one from which all others take their cue, the first to be consciously founded on democratic principles.

Taken literally, democracy means "rule of the mob." What it really means today, however, is that the people rule; those whom the people place in charge of the country do not rule but govern. And they do so on the authority of the "just consent of the governed," to quote from one of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence. Because authority derives from the citizenry, the citizens must be kept informed of what their governors are doing. In addition, democracy means that all power, except that of the people, is temporary. It is granted for a fixed time, or for good behavior, and then it is transferred to someone else. There is no entitlement to or inheritance of power. Those now in power will one day be in opposition, and the knowledge of this fundamental verity is one of the protections against power's abuse, for no one willingly takes on powers that he knows could someday be used against him. Nor is power absolute; our form of democracy is replete with checks and balances, one group of governors having both the authority and the duty to hold others in power accountable for their actions in the people's name. And ultimately all are accountable to the ultimate source of power: the people.

Further, our founding fathers recognized that, for its own security, a democratic form of government must have its basic principles and methods written down in a Constitution, which all officials, at the moment they come to power, must swear an oath to defend and to obey. In the manner in which it took power, in its exercise of power, and in its efforts to maintain power, the Bush administration has consistently acted contrary to the principles of democracy. George Bush argued in court to stop a recount of votes to determine if the people had really chosen him, while he sent his minions to harass and intimidate the vote counters - and indeed the Dade County commissioners so feared for their lives that they stopped the count. Then the Supreme Court, in a decision so tortured and so partisan that it includes an embarrassed acknowledgment that it should not be used as precedent, ordered the proceedings to be frozen in such a way that Bush came out on top. Similarly, in 2004, voters in Republican precincts in Ohio had working machines and fast services, while voters in some heavily Democratic precincts were forced to wait up to ten hours in bad weather, and even then their votes might not have been counted by what evidence is now revealing were probably rigged machines.

Among the first acts of the new president were orders blocking access to the papers of previous presidents, Bush's father prominent among them, which by law were supposed to be made available for public inspection. Executive departments were instructed to deny, delay and minimize responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, contrary to the intent of the law and the policy of previous administrations. The public was not even to know who the advisers to the new administration were, much less the advice they were giving, as when Vice President Richard Cheney successfully argued to the Supreme Court - the same court that gave him power - that he had the right to conceal the very names of those who were helping him set energy policy for the country. For reasons of partisan preference, backed by demands for personal loyalty and threats of replacement with more compliant persons, the Republicans who control Congress have made certain that no act of the Bush administration, however outrageous or illegal, has been properly investigated, nor, in many cases, nvestigated at all. And when the administration is discovered to have brazenly broken the law, then to admit it and boast of its intention to continue doing so, the response of this Congress has been, not to call the lawbreakers to account, but to call for a change the law to make these actions retroactively legal, in spite of the Constitution's explicit prohibition against doing so.

The press is so important to a functioning democracy that it is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is the primary instrument through which the people interrogate those whom they have entrusted with their power. Yet the Bush administration, in concert with its corporate allies, turned the press into a stenographer. On those few occasions when members of the press remember what it used to mean to be a journalist, and ask probing questions and reveal embarrassing truths, they are ridiculed by their colleagues and threatened with prosecution by the officials whom they have discomfited. George Bush claims he has a mission - on occasion, a divine mission - to export democracy to the world. But he refuses to practice it at home. It is as though, rather than share democracy, he wants to ship it away. It would be tragic enough if the greatest democracy in the history of the world were to be dismantled in pursuit of some high ideal, some lofty goal which, however desirable, is somehow incompatible with the democratic process. But such is not the case. In the beginning, Bush concealed what he was doing in the people's name so that we the people would not learn about the hidden costs of his tax proposals and his spending bills, the no-bid contracts to his friends, the giveaway to the drug industry, the wholesale transfer of the wealth of the country to those already wealthy. In short, Bush attacked the mechanisms of democracy in order to conceal his thefts. But now it is worse. He blocks investigations in Congress, he threatens reporters with prosecution and speculates about ending their daily briefings, he stacks the courts with believers in the absurd theory of the unitary executive, all in order to prevent the public from discovering just how badly he has bungled his charge to govern. In every sphere, from the economy to the war on terror to disaster relief, he has been incompetent and he has fostered incompetence. And he is determined not to be called to account for his incompetence.

For months it has been clear that he and his minions will not be able to maintain their hold on Congress in the midterm elections. The sixth year of an administration is traditionally a year in which the administration's party loses votes. The people tire of the same faces and look for new, fresh ones. But this year the public has finally started to awaken from its long Bush-induced slumber and to hold him responsible for what he has done in its name and with its blood and treasure. The likelihood is very strong that, given an open and fair election, the voters will give the Democrats a majority in both houses of Congress, with instructions to demand an accounting and with the power to enforce that demand. And if there is one consistent pattern to Bush's entire career, both in public office and in private business, it is in his avoidance of being held accountable for his decisions. It is now in pursuit of this objective that he continues to tear at the fabric of our democratic structure.

Karl Marx, playing off a line from Hegel, penned a now-famous witticism that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. Marx was possibly being facetious, though there are numerous examples in history to show that there is some truth to his quip. Bush has even gone one step further and foreshortened Marx by combining as one the tragedy of a destroyed democracy with the farce of his greed and his incompetence. And now his latest adventure bids fair to confound Marx altogether through a reversal of the usual order: Having been a farce of a leader, he is setting out to become a tragic one. The Iraq war has been a tragedy for the Iraqis, and a worse one than they suffered under Saddam Hussein, but for the United States it has been, in some sense of the word, a farce. True, we have spilled our blood, we have wasted our treasure, we have squandered our reputation, but by and large we have not felt personally the pain and sacrifice of conflict.

The pain of September 11 was in no way brought on by Iraq, though Bush continues to insinuate that it was. And that was only the first of his lies, deceptions, misuses of intelligence, misuses of the power and prestige of his office, all of which were the tools by which he inveigled, cajoled and terrorized the American public into following him into a farcical war. But the war into which he now proposes to mislead us (in both senses of the word) will be a tragedy, not a farce. The world understood Afghanistan (though there too he bungled the job), it grumbled over Iraq, but it will not tolerate Iran. And Iran, having watched the United States destroy Iraq, is certainly making plans to strike at the US at the same time that it is deliberately goading Bush into actions that will justify those strikes in the eyes of the world, especially the Muslim world. For Ahmadinejab needs war. He is not popular with his countrymen; just as Bush did, he lied to them about his intentions during the campaign. Since taking office, he has promoted extreme religious policies, just as Bush has, which sit ill at ease with the populace. Many, maybe even most, Iranians are tired of the mullahs and their fundamentalism, and would make peace with the world if allowed to do so. Ahmadinejab needs this war to rally the people to him and to stifle inconvenient questions and pointed accusations - just as Bush needs this war.

Yes, Bush needs this war. Back in 1999, when he was still planning his run for the White House, Bush explained in an interview his view of how presidents need a war in order to build political capital and achieve greatness. His father, he said, had squandered the opportunity given him by the Gulf War; the son, if given the same opportunity, intended to take advantage of it. The opportunity given Bush came not from Saddam but from bin Laden, but Bush twisted it to create a false opponent he could capture in place of the real one who had slipped away.. Terrorists are shadowy, elusive figures who present no obvious or convenient targets; Saddam was sitting where Bush could get at him. A war on Iraq would also, as Donald Rumsfeld assured him, be "war on the cheap." A cheap, fast, satisfying war would be just the thing to divert America's attention from all the other things Bush was doing to the country. Except that things did not work out that way. The Iraqis, expected to throw flowers at the troops come to liberate them, are throwing bombs instead. The new Iraqi constitution was supposed to produce a compliant government obedient to Washington's wishes; instead, Bush and Secretary Rice had to openly twist arms merely to get a prime minister who was less than totally hostile. And worst of all, the voters on whom Bush depends to keep Congress from asking questions have seen through the lies and deceptions and are asking those questions themselves, and demanding that their representatives do the same.

A new war, this time with Iran, would, according to Bush's calculations, relieve him of the need to answer for his past mistakes. He would rally support, demand unquestioning obedience in the name of patriotism, and silence the voices of dissent - voices, which, to any other ear, would be the voices of reason. Except that it will not work out that way this time either. Iranians will not welcome American bombs any more than Americans welcomed bin Laden's airplanes, for bin Laden had similarly deluded himself that Americans, faced with an attack on their home soil, would beg for mercy, abandon Israel and the Saudi royal family, and submit to Islam. Instead the Americans did, as the Iranians will, rally around a president they had despised and distrusted, give him their support and their sons, and denounce the attackers as evil villains who must be removed from the world stage. And unlike Iraq, Iran has the means to carry out such a mandate. They have control over a good deal of the world's oil, and much of the rest is within range of their guns - as are our troops in Iraq next door. They may well have sleeper agents in place in the United States and around the world, and unlike Saddam, they will have the support of the Muslim world which will have seen a president who professes to be guided by a Christian God attack a Muslim country for the third time. For the same delusions that move bin Laden move Bush. He believes a divine hand holds him and instructs him, and he is backed by followers who believe the same and who will brook no argument, no evidence, to the contrary. Moreover, he has learned nothing from history, neither the history of his own country nor the history of his own acts. We have survived the farce of his wars with Afghanistan and Iraq. But even if we survive the tragedy of his upcoming war with Iran, the United States will be diminished beyond recognition. Whether we follow him into war or remove him from office by impeachment, or whether the military (as it has been rumored) refuse to follow his orders, any of these resolutions to the present crisis will be a tragedy, not a farce this time. It need not have been, but Bush has ensured that it will be by discrediting all other options until, just as before, only war is left.--