Analysis
U.S. Vote vs Bush,
Democrats’ Win?
Both the Democrats and
Republicans come from the same corporate elite which exerts a strong
influence on U.S. foreign policy. They may differ on some domestic issues
but they are of the same mold with regard to America’s global trade,
investment and security objectives.
By BOBBY TUAZON
Bulatlat
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ANY WHICH WAY: The defeat of Republican
candidates in this year’s U.S. senatorial elections cannot be
considered a vote in favor of the Democratic Party but rather an
indictment of the Bush regime’s misrule, including his government’s
war atrocities. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who years ago was
the Democrats’ most highly-placed man, gave his own party a dismal war
record. |
The Philippine
Daily Inquirer’s Nov. 9 banner, “America Junks Bush,” which broadcast
the Democrats’ regaining control of the U.S. Congress in the mid-term
elections as a result of President George W. Bush’s bungling of the Iraq
war does not capture the whole story. The Democrats only proved to be
better in using Bush’s setbacks in his war of aggression in Iraq as a
political capital to regain legislative control but the election – seen by
many as a referendum on Bush’s foreign policy – does not show that the
opposition party is blameless for the debacle, either. In fact if a
Democrat were seating as president instead of Bush, his party would have
been trounced as well in the November polls.
Although the U.S.
debacle in Iraq was a centerpiece issue in the elections, it is too early
to say that it alone decisively swung the votes in favor of the Democratic
Party. Opinion polls showed Bush’s public approval rating consistently
plunging months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and
suffering a sharp deep during the campaign period with the number of U.S.
soldiers killed reaching 2,800. Whether the typical American voter was
however aware that this figure is minuscule compared to the 655,000 Iraqis
killed (March 2003-July 2006, based on a Johns Hopkins University study),
35 percent of them directly by coalition forces, seemed to be immaterial.
More than the human
toll, Bush’s war in Iraq proved to be costly – with military expenditures
totaling $300 billion of taxpayers’ money – and this was something the
average American could not take given the economic recession, rising
unemployment figures and huge slashes in welfare programs under the
Republicans.
The U.S. electorate
is diverse and multi-ethnic with different expectations in the U.S.
elections. Immigrants, including the traditionally pro-Democrat Asian
Americans, usually vote on economic issues although this time, foreign
policy is not far away. As well, the Bush administration came out strong
vis-à-vis immigrant rights threatening to expel 11 million undocumented
aliens and erecting a wall on America’s south border with Mexico. This
immigration issue touched the political sentiments of Hispanic-Americans
and other immigrants who now comprise a big chunk of the U.S. electorate.
Devastating blow
A big part of
American voters, who are typically conservative at heart but patriotic
just the same, backed Bush in 2003 when he invaded Iraq but thrashing his
Republican Party’s grip of the Congress three years later is a devastating
blow to the president. On this aspect, the vote also represents indirectly
an indictment of the neo-conservative elite which was instrumental in
pushing Bush’s wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, intimidating
Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and other independent states and in
cementing U.S. hegemony throughout the world through pre-emptive and
unilateralist security strategies.
The public pulse on
the economy and disillusionment to the U.S. debacle in Iraq became a
fertile ground for the Democrats’ campaign to gain control of Congress
after 12 years of Republican domination. In their media blitz, the
Democrats depicted Bush as having too many failures: aside from Iraq, the
Katrina hurricane calamity, job losses, and – despite the war against
terrorism – greater insecurities. From our vantage point, the vote was
more an indictment of Bush’s presidential mismanagement rather than a vote
in favor of the Democrats.
This should not
surprise anyone who is aware of the Democrats’ war record. The war in Iraq
is as much Bush’s decision as the Democrats’. Not only did the Democrats
support the war but they themselves had a war of aggression in the Middle
East and elsewhere up in their sleeves before the Republican Bush became
president in 2001.
Reacting to
Republican attacks on the Democrats as “weak on security” or “soft on
terrorism” in the run-up to the November election, former President Bill
Clinton asserted that he had plans to conquer and occupy Afghanistan
before 9/11.
“After the (the
October 12, 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer) Cole,” Clinton said in an
interview, “I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the
Taliban, and launch a full-scale attack search for bin Laden.” “If I were
still president,” he continued, “we’d have more than 20,000 troops there
trying to kill” Osama bin Laden.
Clinton
Clinton was trying to
convey to U.S. voters that the Democrats cannot be accused of being weak
on global security issues. But his record as U.S. president from 1993-2000
attests to an armed interventionist and unilateralist policy which was
sustained by Bush albeit in a “cowboy” style and brinkmanship that
antagonized many of America’s allies and friends.
Throughout his
presidency, Clinton ordered, without UN mandate, bombing raids on Iraq
allegedly to demolish its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The
economic sanctions, called “sanctions of mass destruction” by critics,
that were imposed until Bush took over as president were more
catastrophic: More than a million deaths with another million Iraqi
children suffering from chronic malnutrition, according to a UNICEF report
in 1999.
In 1998, Clinton
ordered the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan. For several weeks the
following year, U.S. and NATO forces carpet-bombed Kosovo. The attack on
Kosovo, staged on the pretext of preventing ethnic cleansing, included
civilian targets such as hospitals, schools and industrial plants, museums
and medieval monasteries and churches.
During the same
period, Clinton knew about plans of a Southeast Asian ally, Indonesian
President Suharto, to interfere with the referendum in East Timor which
led to the massacre of thousands of civilians until the UN, responding to
international pressure, was forced to intervene.
All these should
quash premature speculations that the Republicans’ defeat in the
mid-elections could signal a radical shift in U.S. policy in Iraq since
anyway the Democrats have yet to wait two more years before they will be
able to take over the presidency. A total troop pullout is farfetched as
this will jettison a Middle East-wide clamor and other regions for similar
military withdrawal. Besides, both the Democrats and Republicans consider
the Middle East as ancillary to the U.S.’ global oil and other economic
interests aside from its being a strategic area for America’s imperial
hegemony in Asia, Europe as well as Africa.
Congress clout
With a stronger clout
in Congress, however, all the Democrats can do now is subject Bush’s
executive policies under closer scrutiny. They can keep throwing their
punches at Bush and his party until their next crack at the presidency.
The Democrats who in
2002 voted for a Congress resolution giving unprecedented war powers to
Bush, may however reach a compromise with the Republicans. One of the
neo-cons’ ideologues, Richard Haass who now sits as president of the
conservative Council on Foreign Relations, agrees that Bush’s Iraq policy
“is not politically sustainable” and that the choices “all involve
withdrawals of one kind or another of U.S. military forces from Iraq.”
Howard Dean, the
Democratic Party’s chief who ran for nomination and lost in the last
presidential race, has said likewise that while Democrats support a
pullout of the 150,000 U.S. troops in short order, “We’re going to have to
leave a special operations force in the Middle East in order to deal with
the terrorist situation.”
Both the Democrats
and Republicans come from the same corporate elite which exerts a strong
influence on U.S. foreign policy. They may differ on some domestic issues,
such as on immigration, labor, health and social welfare, but they are of
the same mold with regard to America’s global trade, investment and
security objectives.
Meantime, as the
ascendant party once again, the Democrats will now be under pressure to
show the U.S. voters they can save America from the quagmire that Bush’s
aggressive foreign policy dug. But Iraq is just one thorn in the U.S.’
global hegemonic interests and the Democrats – assuming their moments of
triumph will last until the next presidential contest – will be inheriting
a foreign policy badly in need of damage control and recovery from a major
Middle East disaster.
Both the Democrats
and Republicans haven’t learned their lessons from the Vietnam debacle –
more than 30 years ago. Bulatlat
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