On “The Obama-Cheney ‘debate’ and the threat of dictatorship in America”
You are quite right to point out the similarity between Cheney and the military-intelligence complex’s threats against Obama and the situation that existed after the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. In those days it was the “communist threat” that led the paranoia and resulted in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Today it is the “war on terror.”
It is to be wondered at that the American people do not recognize the full meaning of Cheney’s threats. While, as you know, I hold no brief for the Democratic Party since they are spineless creatures in thrall to the two-party oligarchy, I am amazed that they and their dewy-eyed supporters have offered no protest at Cheney’s words. But it seems that they have abandoned rationality completely.
Then again, it may be that they are so terrified of Cheney and his CIA cabal and that this group of criminals may be capable of doing to them what was done to Paul Wellstone and Kennedy, that they are obeying to cover their asses. What they don’t realize is that any promises given to them by Cheney and his cohorts in exchange for their silence will ultimately be worth nothing.
Cheney can absolutely be called an enemy of the people and it behooves all of us to recognize him as such.
Carolyn
California, USA
22 May 2009
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I have never been so frightened reading anything as I am reading this. I have been saying this for years and derided as a nutball and kook. Has anyone ever considered the fact that these few people are being denied a trial because of what may come to light? Is it possible that these people are innocent precisely because no terrorists were ever on the jets that hit the WTC and Pentagon? Is that what they’re afraid of? Certainly, if low-security prisons housed Nazis from coast to coast during WWII, then a few prisoners in a supermax jail pose no threat to anyone, except maybe those fearing a trial.
Why couldn’t Mr. Obama simply arrest Mr. Cheney without cause? What reasons would Mr. Cheney’s lawyers use to get him a trial? He deserves one? Well, the law that everyone deserves a trial is clearly full of holes and the folks in Cuba are a glaring example of this. Thank you for pulling the curtain away and exposing the truth for what it is and this isn’t just “bantering” or “entertainment” or “political disagreements” as seen on Crossfire. This is the future of the viability of the USA.
PK
22 May 2009
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You’ve written a fine article on the Cheney-Bush debate, in which the shadow government selects its spokesperson to warn the figurehead-in-chief that his continued employment is dependent upon his picking up his grades. You correctly speak of the contradictions faced by a “liberal” president whose goals dovetail with his antagonist and so cannot expose their shared corruption, especially regarding the “war on terror” that underlies their surface differences about whether it is best to manage the folk from a constitutional or totalitarian posture. Unfortunately for your aims, you and WSWS share with Cheney and Obama at least publicly the premise that 9/11 was an attack on American by Arab terrorists, an assumption that cripples Obama vs. Cheney and reduces most criticism of Cheney to the irresoluble sphere of whether or not he and colleagues are “overreacting” in their efforts to keep America safe. Not surprisingly, Cheney’s approval ratings soared following his defend-America-at-all-costs speech from 20 percent to 38 percent as the American public is being persuaded to embrace totalitarianism openly in the service of national security. From my perspective, when I am not wrenched with angst and keep a more ironic public face, it is amusing to see this battle about “democracy” and the “war on terror” waged with one if not both hands tied behind your back.
Michael G
22 May 2009
On “Panetta and Washington’s endless war”
The allusion to Orwell’s 1984 is spot-on. Readers should refresh themselves with this work, especially the section written by the fictional Emmanuel Goldstein (clearly a figure based on Trotsky) titled “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.” War is Peace, and it is not meant to be won but to be waged continuously. Another key work in this regard is Randolph Bourne’s, “War is the Health of the State.”
That nothing has changed with America’s colonial wars under the new administration shows just how out-of-touch and unresponsive the political structure is to the will of the American people, how the whole set-up is designed to serve a tiny minority, the financial overlords, who wield the power, run the show. The capitalist structure needs to be thrown out and replaced with a system responsive to the needs of ordinary working people, not the cupidity of a corrupt financial elite that continues to loot the public treasury at the expense of everyone else.
Rob M
20 May 2009
On “The lies of the CIA and Nancy Pelosi”
If, as Bill van Auken says, “The fight to hold accountable those who ordered, participated and covered up for these crimes can only be seriously undertaken by working people themselves as part of the struggle to build their own mass political movement fighting for socialism,” well, it seems clear to me: The ICFI should carry out a peoples’ tribunal and, even if this international pack of “bipartisan” wolves cannot be properly punished by such a tribunal, it would go a long way toward filling the media and political vacuum around the crimes of the Bush administration—as well as those before and after.
CH
Texas, USA
17 May 2009
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Pelosi and Reid are puppets for Bush, always were, and it remains the same. They knew about the torture and approved it, the same as Pelosi and Reid approved everything that Bush wanted. Now they decide they will side with the Democrats while still playing the GOP war crimes game under the table. Except now they got caught. All criminals get caught sooner or later!
Paul W
18 May 2009
Patrick, great article, but scary.
James Carville on “This Week” very clearly signaled the real story beneath these last “Seven Days in May” when he said, “I don’t think that Democrats really want to be at war with the CIA. We had that, you know, before and that’s not particularly productive.”
Naturally, Carville did not have to specify that that Democratic President was JFK, nor that that war with the CIA was the president’s refusal to be rolled by the Empire of the national security state to engage in the Bay of Pigs invasion, nor the outcome of that war between that elected US president and the ruling-elite ‘corporate financial Empire’ which then (and now) controls what has variously been called several things—by Eisenhower the military industrial complex, by Chalmers Johnson the national security state Empire, and by many (including myself) the ruling-elite corporate financial Empire hiding behind the facade of its two-party, sophisticated ‘Vichy’ sham of democracy.
Never has the outcome of this last election and the battle it has unleashed been so clear in a public forum on TV.
Unfortunately Obama campaigned for the highest office in our supposed democratic Republic without telling the American people, who might vote for him, that he would have to confront the corporate financial Empire that actually runs what they think of as ‘their country’, and now that he is the president of a supposedly democratic Republic ruled by the sovereignty of the people and by laws (and particularly the Constitution of that democratic Republic) he is encountering the existential conflict incumbent in just that dilemma between political facade and operational reality.
Alan M
Maine, USA
17 May 2009
On “Right-wing rampage by Obama administration”
The only way forward in my opinion is to show the way the whole issue of “race” is cynically and unscrupulously exploited by America’s ruling class for its own insidious reasons.
Of course these reasons are to psychologically disorient the masses of workers at home and abroad into thinking that there is something progressive about the Obama administration simply because of the so-called “race” of the chief executive.
“Race” was a concept invented out of whole cloth by the Anglo-American ruling elite in the early phases of the colonial era to 1) Justify the wholesale extermination of Native Americans 2) Legitimize slavery in the American South as well as the Anglo-American slave trade that supported it; 3) Justify the colonial policy of Britain in its rule over India.
The point is that what we are dealing with here is a social construct that has been bought into by the masses and that still continues to hold people within its powers owing to its unique ability to mystify.
We need to change the whole nature of the debate here!! That is the only way forward.
Charles K
18 May 2009