It was a remarkable display even by the hideous standards that the Democrats have already set for themselves. Over the past week, the party's leaders have put forward not one but two architects of Bush Regime war crimes as standard-bearers for Democratic policies and principles. In so doing, they have aligned themselves as completely and publicly as possible with the Hitlerian war crime of military aggression in Iraq and the Stalinist filth of deliberate, calculated and brutal torture, as exemplified by (but in no way limited to) the sickening atrocities at Abu Ghraib.
But as these incidents display so nakedly, "bipartisan foreign policy" has never gone away. It has continued to operate smoothly at the highest levels throughout the Bush imperium, greased by the blood money flowing to both parties from the spoils of war (H. Clinton now receives more legalized bribery from military-related industries than any of the Republican candidates), and by their shared vision of armed American hegemony over world affairs. (The latter is well-limned by Arthur Silber here.)
As Amy Goodman notes at Alternet, Sanchez was neck-deep in the
blood-flecked slime where Pentagon brass and White House officials
devised the torture regimens that were briefly exposed at Abu Ghraib.
In addition to urging his troops to "go to the outer limits" in
extracting information from the thousands of Iraqis they were sweeping
up at random, and ordering prison officials to violate the Geneva
Conventions by hiding designated prisoners from the Red Cross, Sanchez
gave "detailed orders" for the infliction of carefully calibrated
tortures used by CIA-trained, Reagan-backed Latin American tyrannies
and death squads in the 1980s. As Alfred McCoy told Goodman:
In September of 2003, General Sanchez issued orders,
detailed orders, for expanded interrogation techniques beyond those
allowed in the US Army Field Manual 3452, and if you look at those
techniques, what he's ordering, in essence, is a combination of
self-inflicted pain, stress positions and sensory disorientation. And
if you look at the 1963 CIA KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation
Manual, you look at the 1983 CIA Interrogation Training Manual that
they used in Honduras for training Honduran officers in torture and
interrogation, and then twenty years later, you look at General
Sanchez's 2003 orders, there's a striking continuity across this
forty-year span in both the general principles: this total assault on
the existential platforms of human identity and existence, OK, and the
specific techniques, the way of achieving that, through the attack on
these sensory receptors.
As for Colin Powell, the idea that this knowing conspirator in
deceitful warmongering and criminal war-waging could "represent our
country well" speaks volumes about Clinton's vision of what America is
really all about. As we noted here before:
Powell's reputation as "one of the good guys" in the Bush
Administration has been one of the most enduring mysteries of our sad,
demented times. He was not only one of the chief enablers of Bush's war
crime in Iraq, but his entire career has marked him out as a bagman for a bloody elite,
ever willing to turn a blind eye — or to pitch in directly — when there
is dirty work to be done, from the My Lai massacre to Iran-Contra to
the murderous excursion in Panama to the warm embrace of Saddam Hussein
to Powell's final apotheosis as Imperial Handmaiden in his sick-making
appearance at the UN in February 2003, when he "made the case" for war.
(For more, see Jon Schwarz's detailed look at Powell's deliberate deceits, and this history of the handmaiden from the incomparable Robert Parry.)
But of course, this dismal record is precisely what makes him a
"distinguished American" in Clinton's eyes: he knows how to serve the
powerful, and how to give their ugly lusts for loot and dominion a more
pleasing outer appearance.
What is perhaps most remarkable about all of this is that none of it is
regarded as remarkable by the molders and mouthers of public opinion in
the echo chamber of the political-media world. Should it not be
scandalous for an "opposition" candidate – one nominally opposed to a
disastrous war – to embrace a man who by all rights should be on trial
for his key role in creating that disaster? Should it not be scandalous
for an "opposition" party – one nominally opposed to the
Administration's "lawlessness" – to embrace a man who by all rights
should be on trial for his complicity in torture and atrocity?
But it is not scandalous – because the bipartisan American
Establishment does not consider aggressive war, lawlessness and torture
to be scandalous, as long as these crimes advance the interests – and
flatter the prejudices and self-regard – of the elite. And if you wish
to belong to this elite, to reap the rich bounty of such an inclusion,
then you must embrace those who commit the crimes that maintain you in
your marvelous privilege. You must accept whatever means are necessary
to perpetuate the system that undergirds your lofty position.
To be sure, there will be quibbles over tactics, over points of
emphasis, over specific policies, and whether or not they best serve
the system; this happens under every form of government, even the most
totalitarian. But the presence of politics in any given system has
nothing to do with its moral content. And as we have seen this week, to
play in the big leagues in the American system, you must openly signify
your approval of aggressive war, deceit and torture. You must dip your
hands in blood. And that is exactly what Hillary Clinton and the
Democratic leadership have done — yet again — in the last week.
*(For more on just what H. Clinton and the Democrats are supporting, see "Eyes Wide Open," and Rich Kastelein's indispensable War Gallery.)*
U.S. Middle East foreign policy under Bill Clinton looks good only in comparison to the on-going debacle that is Bush-Cheney Middle East foreign policy.
Hillary Clinton had already trundled out Madeline "We think the price is worth it" Albright to stump for her campaign in Iowa. The "price" was some 500,000 innocent Iraqi children age five and under who died as a result of the sanctions Albright (and, later, Bill Richardson) championed as Clinton's representative at the U.N., not to mention another million Iraqis over the age of five who suffered the same fate. Three accomplished and widely respected U.N. officials resigned in protest of the Iraq sanctions regime, to no effect, and in 2000, 70 members of the U.S. Congress signed a letter asking Clinton to lift the sanctions. Democratic House Whip David Bonier called the sanctions "infanticide masquerading as policy," saying they amounted to "a slaughter of innocents." The hideous effects of the Iraq sanctions regime were cited by Osama bin Laden as one of three reasons for Al Qaida's war against the U.S. government. Albright has never admitted that the sanctions, which had effects that were genocidal, represented a deeply flawed policy. Bill Richardson defended the Iraq sanctions as recently as 2005 in an interview with Amy Goodman.
If Clinton is now looking to Colin Powell as a representative of "bipartisan foreign policy", what can one expect other than a return to the very policies that so effectively set the stage for the terror attacks of 9/11/2001. Clinton's campaign slogan, "Ready for Change - Ready to Lead" suggests that she would implement a new and different foreign policy. But nothing she has said or done so far represents any significant change. Worse, she seems to be wedded to the disastrous mistakes and miscalculations of the failed foreign policies of the past, if her admiration of Albright and Powell are any indication.
1
December 01, 2007
Bill Jacobs: ...
EXACTLY CORRECT.
2
December 01, 2007
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