Soldiering
On
October 16, 2002
By arendt
 In
a speech leading up to the vote on Iraq, Senator Kennedy described
the situation in America for the last twenty years as "a Cold
Civil War". This is not merely a metaphor; it is a dangerously
unappreciated reality. The reactionary right-wing has been
firing live ammunition for quite some time now, and the incoming
fire on our Constitution has escalated dramatically since
9/11.
P.M. Carpenter has already stated
this in the clearest possible terms:
"...ultraconservatives once again are demonstrating
that the real war in which they see themselves is a domestic,
not a foreign, one...the Right's rush to confrontation isn't
hysterical at all; its methodical, premediatated, simply
another chapter in its playbook of ever-escalating warfare
against domestic opponents....Conservative extremists...
cannot and will not tolerate so much as an inkling of dissent
because theirs is a fundamentally paranoid and authoritarian
ideology."
So, think very carefully before you decide to vote against
a Democrat in the election. The leadership of the Democratic
Party may be incompetent, but the vast majority of them and
of the party are genuine small-d democrats.
Voting for a Republican would be like a Union soldier joining
the Confederate Army because he was tired of risking his life
for incompetent Union generals.
We must remember that we are fighting to preserve the Constitution,
while the Republicans are fighting to destroy it. We are fighting
for open trials, habeus corpus, separation of powers, separation
of church and state, open access to government records, campaign
finance reform and SEC enforcement to end crony capitalism,
and media re-regulation to restore a genuine free press instead
of corporate conglomerate media for hire only to the Right.
We are also fighting to preserve the middle class, while
the Republicans are fighting to loot it. We are fighting for
balanced budgets, progressive taxation, a viable and decent
healthcare system, a functioning and secular public education
system, a science policy that is neither oil industry environmental
Lysenkoism nor theocratic creationism, and a non-looted Social
Security system.
If we cannot preserve this infrastructure, the middle class
will die; and our demographics will come to resemble Haiti
or Mexico City: a few billionaires and their minions living
in walled compounds with the wretched, uneducated masses living
in polluted slums and working for chump change in maquiladoras.
Our cause is desperate; and we will need some kind of miracle,
like the Taxicabs at the Marne in WW1, or the Dunkerque evacuation
in WW2. It is that desperation which exacerbates our sense
of betrayal in the Iraq vote.
The dismal failure of the Democratic leadership (as opposed
to some members of the party rank and file) to fight for the
U.S. Constitution has demoralized the Democratic constituency
and all non-Democrats who looked to them to stop the reactionary
juggernaut.
But U.S. and U.K. history are full of tales of bravery by
the ordinary footsoldiers, even when their leadership was
incompetent. The Union generalship at the beginning of the
Civil War was abyssmal: the dithering McClellan, the incompetent
Burnside (whom Lincoln said "snatched defeat from the jaws
of victory"), the commanders at Bull Run. British generalship
against Rommel's Afrika Korps was equally outclassed. And
yet, the soldiers fought on; they endured bad generalship
and heavy casualties because they believed in the cause they
were fighting for: democracy.
The lesson we need to extract from these tales is that soldiers
can endure some incompetent generals, but the leadership must
be seen to be trying to find good fighters. (Eventually, the
Union found Grant and Sherman; and the British found Montgomery.)
Nobody should be questioning the patriotism of Democrats
who would rather stay alive politically than die for nothing.
Especially in the House, rigid Republican discipline guaranteed
passage of Bush's Iraq Bill. Democrats in marginal districts
saw no gain in committing hari-kari. Likewise, in the Senate,
the same type of situation prevailed, although armchair quarterbacks
could argue for a Hail Mary pass. However, where Democrats
held solid seats, they should have "fought their front". This
is what happened in the House, where the majority of Democrats
voted "no". But it did not happen in the Senate.
The Senate rules offered the potential for delaying the vote
and educating the public to change the political balance;
and some senators tried to use those assets. Senator Byrd
deserves to be long remembered as a principled defender of
the Constitution. Senator Kennedy deserves respect for his
long and consistent fight for genuinely progressive causes.
But these patriots were hung out to dry by a de facto Democratic
Senate leadership (plus Speaker Gephardt) that cut and run.
The key words here are "de facto". While Senator Daschle
is the Majority Leader, his situation is precarious. He has
a one vote majority, preserved by an Independent. He has a
gang of presidential wannabees (Edwards, Kerry, Lieberman,
and perhaps Hillary Clinton) to mollify, and a few potential
deserters, like Zell Miller, to keep an eye on. The man is
busier than a one-armed paper hanger with hives. His collegial
leadership style is too low-key for the shooting-war situation
he finds himself in. So, as much as I regret the senator's
"yes" vote, anger does not rise high against the man who converted
Senator Jeffords and thwarted a complete steamroller of the
Constitution a year ago.
The de facto leadership I refer to consists of the high-profile
people who are looked upon or promote themselves as "presidential
material". (Clearly, Byrd and Kennedy are not in this group.)
If Senator Daschle is the logistics officer that keeps the
supplies rolling, the presidential aspirants are supposed
to be the armored divisions that do the heavy fighting. And,
somewhere, there is supposed to be a general staff making
strategic plans.
It feels as though the de facto leadership is channeling
General McClellan:
"McClellan excelled at preparation, but it
was never quite complete...the enemy was always larger and
better prepared. McClellan wrote 'The enemy have from 3
to 4 times my force'..." - James McPherson, "Battle Cry
of Freedom"
The Congressional mail ran 10:1 or more against the Iraq
Bill; but the de facto leaders chose to believe the absurd
polling numbers and the totally biased corporate media. (Who
are you going to believe? Me or your own lying ears?) These
are the same poll numbers that say most Americans still think
the dyslexic warmonger in the White House is doing an "overall
good job", even as his own military and CIA explode his fabrications
and the economy drops like a MIG hit by a Sidewinder.
Of all the de facto leadership, the biggest disappointment
has to be John Kerry. Senator Kerry comes from the safest
of safe states - Massachusetts, whose entire Congressional
delegation is Democratic. He has an impressive military record
as well as anti-war credentials. He has vast personal wealth
via his marraige to Teresa Heinz. He is very smart and has
a track record in Congress. He knows what is up with the Bush
Oil Cabal because his commission investigated drug dealing
in the Iran-Contra era. Senator Kerry had all the necessary
cover to open fire on the chickenhawk warmongers, but he cut
and run. One can only conclude that his presidential ambitions
(and the need for Red State votes) clouded his allegiance
to the Constituion.
Get a clue, Senator (and all you other presidential aspirants).
You can't run for president in someone else's police state!
Or, are you expecting us footsoldiers to bail out the Constitution
so that you can then run on our heroism?
In conclusion, the current-day Democratic Party is first
and foremost about the right of the common working citizen
to self-government. The leadership of that party belongs to
those who defend those ideals at some personal cost. True
small-d democrats should vote against Republican authoritarians,
theocrats, corporate crooks, and warmongers in the coming
election battle. Once we have won that battle, we can work
for regime change in the Democratic Party - the party whose
rank and file upholds the Constitution instead of eviscerating
it. If we start showing the courage of our convictions, we
might actually convince the principled genuine conservatives
to trust us to uphold the Constitution and their rights to
free speech.
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