From: Hank Roth <odin@world.std.com>
Subject: Pardon Me President Bush
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 20:26:17 GMT

<<<< via P_news/p.news >>>>>
{From THE VILLAGE VOICE, January 6, 1992}
MOVING TARGET
   by James Ridgeway
 
PARDON ME: Polite to the End, George Bush Walks the Existential 
Plank
 
WASHINGTON---George Bush has pushed his lieutenants aside and 
shouldered the blame for the Iran-contra scandal. It is a most 
touching gesture of fealty to the right wing of his party, which, 
after all, had provided the Republican decade with a conservative 
ideological spine---a true cause to live or die for.
 
What the conservatives have long wanted is a social 
reorganization of America that would give them political and 
cultural dominance without the inconvenience of the vote.
"The common ingredients of the Iran and contra policies were 
secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law," the Congressional 
committees summing up the experience wrote. "A small group of 
senior officials believed that they alone knew what was right. 
They viewed knowledge of their actions by others in the 
government as a threat to their objectives....Wehn exposure was 
threatened, they destroyed official documents and lied to Cabinet 
officials, to the public, and to elected representatives in 
Congress. They testified tha they even withheld key facts from 
the President."
 
>From birth, George Bush has been a a man of wealth and station, a 
public figure who echoed the mores and hierarchical values of 
America's ruling class. Democracy to these people remains a 
foreign imposition. Their loyalty is not to a system of 
government but to their friends and allies---and that's what the 
_pardon_ is about. 
 
THE ORIGINS of the _Reagan_Doctrine_, as it became known, go back 
to President Jack Kennedy's enthusiasm for guerrilla warfare as 
the best way to figtht the brush wars of the future. Although 
Reagan's political goals and his personnel roster bore little 
resemblance to those Camelot, the American military architects of 
the war in Central America gained their experience as minor 
players in Indochina and, this time, they wanted to win. 
 
The cutting edge of the conservative coalition's crusade became 
the Reagan Doctrine, a foreign policy initiative that aimed to 
block, then roll back communism in the Third World. It argued the 
U.S. must fight Soviet expansion on the peripheries of their 
empire by supporting or creating "revolutionary democracy," be it 
in the form of Jonas Savimbi in Angola, the mujahedeen in 
Afghanistan, or the contra freedom fighters in Nicaragua.
 
The Reagan doctrine argued that the U.S. could intervene in 
seeking to overturn existing communist or other governments 
because the U.S. does not see them as legitimate. The basic idea 
was to harass the Evil Empire at it's periphery and to foster 
American-style revolution through "moderate" proxies like Aquino 
in the Phillippines or Duarte in El Salvador, which hopefully 
would be both inexpensive and politically sanigtary. The 
cheerleader for these pocket wars was not Reagan himself as much 
as his vice-president, former CIA director George Bush.
 
This policy evolved from within the conservative coalition. The 
pragmatists in the State Department were ineffective; they were 
losing the war on the ground and, worse still, at home among the 
president's critics. So the administration took action, 
initiating a broad program of guerrilla warfare in Central 
America and, at home, starting a new propaganda drive. Reagan 
went before Congress. Military maneuvers were expanded in 
Honduras, providing the U.S.with a permanent presence in the 
region by means of rotating national guard units that provided 
intelligence, training, and infrastructure for war. In October of 
1983 the U.S. invaded Grenada, and the administration hoped that 
the campaign of destabilization that had culminated in the marine 
landing there could be repeated in Nicaragua. >Oliver North< became 
the point man for the Reagan doctrine in the White House 
basement, urging the invasion of Grenada, working with Elliott 
Abrams to get Baby Doc out of Haiti, coordinatinog Western 
intelligence policy, and providing a back channel around the 
Pentagon for the Americna military mission in El Salvador. He 
oversaw the contra war. 
 
To prosecute its Central American policy, the White House needed 
to find the money to finance the war from administration friends 
and wealthy allies abroad because Congress, through the Boland 
amendment, had cut off all official funding. North was 
everywhere, shuttling from Washington to the contra training 
camps, conducting fundraisers among Reagan's wealthy backers, 
meeting with Congress, writing the president's speeches, even 
composing a pamphlet on the rights of prisoners of war.
 
When the scandal finally got into the press, it was not a 
presidential commission, nor the Congressional investigations, 
but the independent watchdog organization the NATIONAL SECURITY 
ARCHIVE that pulled together the one serious, unbiased, and truly 
public chronicle of what had happened. (That group's work, under 
Scott Armstrong, remains a tiny indication of what a truly free 
and unfettered citizenry can do if it so desires.)
 
These acts are not the sort of thing that can be corrected by the 
justice system; they represent a broad, coordinated, persistent 
attack on the foundations of American democracy. Because of this 
assault, the National Security Council, which repeatedly 
circumvented the Congress and the law; the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE 
AGENCY, which was an equal partner in this; the Justice 
Department, which helped to conceal these acts and to stifle 
domestic opposition to them; and the State Department, whose top 
officials cooperated in promoting these schemes, all lost THEIR 
legitimacy in the eyes of the public. The credibility of 
Congress--where the appropriate committees either knew or should 
have known about the illegal contra arms network and the secret 
dealings with Iran since the mid 1980s---was also undermined.
 
With Reagan gone, and the Soviet "Empire" revealed as a sham, the 
_Reagan_Doctrine_ nonetheless lurched ahead, a sort of headless 
chicken that continued to run without its brain: first in Panama, 
where dope was promoted as a replacement for the communist 
empire, then in Iraq, where oil replaced the Reds, and most 
recently in Somalia, where starving people provide a cover for an 
attack on Muslim fundamentalism.
 
For years the conservatives have sought to institutionalize the 
changes of the Reagan revolution, first by simply daring the 
Democratic Congress to make a move against Iran-contra. (There 
never was any real question of impeachment, for example--the 
hearings themselves were circumscribed.) Conservatives sought to 
achieve power through the Supreme Court, most notably through the 
appointment of Robert Bork. They attempted to wreck the New Deal 
institutions, turning Housing and Urban Development into a graft 
mill and the Justice Department, once the champion of civil 
rights for all Aemricans, in an utterly corrupt institution. 
 
The conservatives have succeeded in many ways. There is no better 
measure of that success than all the special prosecutors 
shuttling around Washington in lieu of an independent and honest 
Justice Department. The *pardons*--as well as the _incursion_into 
_Somalia_ and the one that may well come in _Bosnia_ are direct 
challenges to Bill Clinton. The conservatives seriously doubt 
Clinton will usher in any real reforms. _Restoring_democratic 
institutions---and not the up-an-down economy of the world's 
richest nation---should be the first order of business in the 
Clinton administration. Already Washington doesn't take seriusly 
the idea that a new attorney general, a relatively young woman of 
40 years, can make much difference in the recalcitrant Justice 
Department.
 
The report of the Congressinal committees investigating the Iran-
contra affair includes a quotation from Supreme Court justice 
Lousi Brandeis: "OUR GOVERNMENT IS THE POTENT, THE OMNIPRESENT 
TEACHER. FOR GOOD OR FOR ILL, IT TEACHES THE WHOLE PEOPLE BY ITS 
EXAMPLE. CRIME IS CONTAGIOUS. IF THE GOVERNMENT BECOMES A 
LAWBREAKER, IT BREEDS CONTEMPT FOR LAW, IT INVITES EVERY MAN TO 
BECOME A LAW UNTO HIMSELF, IT INVITES ANARCHY."
 
Since John Kennedy we have endured six presidents who have 
brought us painfully little in richness of spirit or material 
wealth. Those of us who were young then can remember the defining 
momment: the riderless horse, spurs cocked to the rear; the 
children, General de Gaulle, and Haile Selassie standing regid at 
the passing of an era.
 
Today is our August 1914, both a terrible end and an uncertain 
berginning. We were familiar with Nixon. He seems now, looking 
back, like an old dog-eared gab guest on a television program, 
foolish and toothless, a lonely man out of step with his times. 
But that's because even HE was no preparation for the undiluted 
venality of the Reagan-Bush era. 
 
And now it is over and we are left with a small picture of a man 
well-bred from a time past, whose entire life has depended on 
wealth and station, who for reasons of his own has decided to be 
remembered in history as a right-wing anarchist.
----------------------------------------------
P_news is a conference for progressive news, articles and views 
on Fidonets. If you have access to a Fidonet BBS and want to read 
and post to P_news directly, ask your sysop to get it for you (It 
is on the zone 1 backbone). Tell your sysop P_news is available 
from his/her HUB where [s]he receives his/her regular mail 
packet. And, p.news is a parallel, but separate 
conference on Peacenet. You may subscribe to this worldwide 
network by calling Peacenet at: (415) 442-0220. (Both conferences 
are limited to *LEFT* wing participation. If you would like to 
volunteer to provide both conferences with articles and news from 
your favorite *LEFT* wing publications or theoretical journals, 
or have comments about this article or others, send comments to 
me: <Hank Roth> odin@world.std.com (On Fidonets at 151/101). My 
address on Peacenet is pnews@igc.apc.org. Help establish new 
conference on FidoNets called W_news (World At Risk). Details upon 
request. 

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive