By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – May 16, 2007
We finished up Part 1 of this two-part series with: “While
McCain is offering earnest programs for ‘winning in Iraq’ and Romney is
spouting ‘lower taxes, balancing the budget, and small government,’ no longer
winners for the Republicans, there is Giuliani doing the Rove fear thing.
Giuliani is using fear just the way Hitler and Mussolini did. First to
finally establish the political dominance of their party. For if given
the War and etc. the Democrats manage to lose in 2008, they will be an
electoral non-factor for many elections to come. Second, if Giuliani can
win, he can then finish off the project that BushCheney have started so
effectively since Jan. 20, 2001: the establishment of the ‘Unitary
Executive.’ As I have illustrated many times in this space, it is nothing
but fascism by another name. And boy, does that make Giuliani Rove’s
boy. Rove is a political genius, an evil one, but genius nevertheless,
and he doesn’t want to stop working his evil magic now.”
And so now, how should the Democrats respond to all of this
if they want to use the issue to help them win the next election? Well,
not by saying what Hillary Clinton said in response to Giuliani’s charge that
the Dems. cannot be trusted to defend the country against “terrorism,” only
Republicans can. According to Clinton ”One of the great tragedies of this
administration is that the president failed to keep this country unified after
9/11. We have to protect our country from terrorism --- it shouldn’t be a Democratic fight or a
Republican fight." And not what Barack Obama said either: “Rudy
Giuliani today has taken the politics of fear to a new low and I believe
Americans are ready to reject those kind of politics. . . . America's
mayor should know that when it comes to 9-11 and fighting terrorists, America is united. We know we can win this war based
on shared purpose, not the same divisive politics that question your patriotism
if you dare to question failed policies that have made us less
secure." (Both quotes from: “Updated: 2007-04-25 13:21:45,
“Democrats rebuke Giuliani for suggesting Democrats' election would lead to
terrorist attack,” AP).
These two worthies did exactly what Giuliani and behind him
Rove/CheneyBush want them to do: respond on issues of process: “we need to be
united,” “it shouldn’t be Democrats and Republicans,” “we’re in this together,”
“you’re politics are divisive.” And as for Obama buying into Giuliani and
“America’s Mayor.” Oy! He wasn’t my Mayor when he was Mayor of New
York City. Part of Giuliani’s campaign is the perpetuation of the myth
that he is, or was, “America’s Mayor.” Democrats have no business playing
into that. When the great Keith Olbermann of MSNBC went after Giuliani
for his “only Republicans can protect you” speech, he too went in on the
process. “See. He is using the Politics of Fear. That’s
bad. He should apologize and correct himself.”
But Clinton, Obama and Olbermann all miss the point.
The process response, the “how dare he say such things” response, is precisely
what Giuliani and the other Rovian Republicans want the Democrats to come back
with. Because a) you then can avoid the substance, and b) you can easily
respond to a “you just shouldn’t do that” with a “oh yeah, who says?” or “we
can do it as much as we want to, nyah, nyah, nyah.” And so the argument
descends to the level of the sandbox, which is exactly where they want it to
be.
So the “we should just all play nice" tack that just
won’t work. What will work is to get onto the substance, and get onto it
loud and clear. Attack, attack, attack. Republicans in general and
the Bush Administration in particular are the best equipped to protect the
country against terrorism (however it might be defined)? Oh yeah, Oh
really? In light of the following facts?
Protecting us from future 9/11s? As is well known, the
first one happened to have happened on their watch. It happened
that Richard Clarke and others warned them about the danger of al Qaeda from
the beginning of their reign of error. It happened that they had received
multiple specific warnings about a threatened dire terror event, from the
famous 8/5/01 Presidential Daily Briefing paper to whatever warning was leaked
to Judith Miller and The New York Times by a “top-level White House
source” in the summer of 2001 (Daily News Attytood, www.pnionline.com. 5/18/06). It happened that under the
Clinton Administration two comparable plots, one in 1998 (the multiple
airliners attack) and one in 2000 (the LAX attack), were unearthed and
aborted. The Busheviks didn’t protect us the first time. Why should
we count on them to protect us again? (For the Democrats at this time, it
is hardly necessary to get into any discussions of Georgite complicity in 9/11
at one level or another.)
1. As
far as Osama bin Laden is concerned, the man that in the first Republican
Comedy Hour McCain said he would follow to the gates of hell (presumably
risking Air Force One to do so), and all of the others chimed in with “we’ll
get ‘im,” is still out there. Bush has had 5 ½ years to get him.
Nothing, niente, nada. (There are multiple possible reasons for this: a)
bin Laden is a U.S. government asset, b) bin Laden is a Bush Family asset, c)
the U.S. has got him, has had him for quite some time, but ain’t telling,
because 1) he is of much more use for Georgite propaganda supposedly out there
than he would be otherwise, and 2) they would possibly have to try him in at
least a semi-open court and boy, would he have some stories to tell.)
2. If
the Georgites did not consciously lie the US people and Congress, as well as
the UN, into the War, they were totally incompetent in handling the
intelligence information about what was the true situation in Iraq in relation
both to WMD and relations with al Qaeda (both non-existent). 3500
American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars later why should the
Georgites be trusted to do any better the next time around.
3. They
have depleted and weakened our armed services in fighting a war for which
it is ill-equipped and not properly trained. In fact, they have managed
to take the world’s mightiest military force and be well on the way to
rendering it incapable of doing anything effectively except massive bombings
(apparently on the Georgite agenda for Iran if they can ever get to it).
4. They
have created large numbers of new terrorists, not reduced their ranks.
5. They
have turned the world against us.
6. They
have done virtually nothing to strengthen homeland security in the
homeland. (See a fine article on this one in The New York Times of
May 8, 2007, “Answering Al Qaeda,” by Clark Kent (I kid thee not!) Ervin,
former Inspector General of the Dept. of Homeland Security.)
7. They
have demonstrated clearly that they are totally incompetent when it comes to
handling natural disasters, much less future man-made ones that could have even
worse aftermaths.
8. They
have depleted the national treasury.
9. As
for Iraq, they say that they are the only ones who want to see the war through
to “victory” there. Well, the first step in achieving victory is to
define it. And they aren’t even capable of doing that, much less
achieving it. That is of course unless “victory” is defined as Permanent
War, something Giuliani is already close to talking about.
10. And
as for Giuliani personally? There’s his doing nothing to set up an
anti-terrorist Operation in the NYPD after the World Trade Center bombing in
1993; the failure to link Fire Department radios with those of the Police Dept.
despite many requests, which failure likely lead to many of the 343
9/11-related deaths of New York City’s Bravest; the probably ego-based
establishment of his Emergency Command Center in the World Trade Center
complex, in the building that housed the local offices of the FBI, the CIA, the
NSA and who knows what lese despite specific warnings from experts not to do
so; his denial of the air pollution danger immediately following the tragedy,
which has affected the health of tens of thousands of people; his failure to
guard the wreckage of the buildings so that a proper study of the cause of
their collapse could have been carried out; and his attempt to deal with the
post-9/11 situation in New York City by attempting to extend his term of
office.
So indeed, the country does have to be afraid, of the
Republicans and what their continued occupation of the Presidency would mean
for its future, by Giuliani or any of the others, on all levels, from the
National Defense to the preservation of Constitutional Democracy, the defining
core of our great nation.
Get away from process, Democrats. Let’s get onto the
substance. That’s something we can win with.