The deaths of the Alataars, and why I've finally left the party

[DerekG]

Disclaimer: This is not the most articulate rant, but I'm so angry with the state of things I could cry.


When I came here four years ago, I was a 19 year-old yellow-dog Democrat; as of late, I've become completely disillusioned. What I read today, in its own way, encapsulates my trepidation:


Cindy Sheehan's Irish Interview
Sheehan to Sheehan
By RONAN SHEEHAN

http://www.counterpunch.com/sheehan01102006.html

--snip--

Ronan: Cindy, if I may, just of the benefit of some readers who might be reading this, I want to tell you a story which illustrates the power of the American government in this country. Ten years ago, I organized a protest when President Clinton shelled Baghdad and killed an Iraqi painter called Laila Alataar--who was the leading Iraq painter of the Middle East--and all of her children. That evening, I got an invitation to the American Embassy to an exhibition of paintings including one by my son James, who'd won a Texaco art competition. I happen to be a copyright lawyer, so I saw they were in breach of copyright, thus I wrote to the American Embassy saying "Take my son's painting off exhibition" because I didn't want the name "Sheehan" to be associated with murderers. I said the reason I'm doing that is to protest the unlawful killing of Laila Alataar, something that our present Minister for Justice condemned in the Dáil. So they had to take the painting down because it was in breach of copyright--they hadn't got permission. But no paper would publish the fact that I'd done that.

--snip--

http://www.counterpunch.com/sheehan01102006.html



Dostoevsky once wrote, "If any one could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with the truth."

There are posters--far more intelligent than I--who could explain to me why Clinton and his warlords were justified in approving this air strike (or any of their myriad onslaughts); just as there are many who could explain why Madeline Albright should not have been disparaged for telling Stahl, on 60 Minutes, that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children via economic sanctions was "worth it."

Perhaps these politicos were correct. But I don't want any part of it. I've had enough of comparing (D) and (R)'s body counts, and the breadth of their respective stalking grounds.

I'll continue to support progressives such as Feingold, Conyers, Kucinich, and McKinney, but after years of apprehension, I find I prefer to stay with the victims of war, and not with the Trumans and Eisenhowers, the Johnsons and the Nixons, the Clintons and the Bushes.

[eridani]

1. Imperialism has been bipartisan since WW II

The only way that will change is if you talk to your neighbors about it. And in that line, Dems have PCOs, and Greens, Libertarians and Socialists don't. Plus the Dems have mostly been better on domestic issues.

[1932]

3. Kennedy made an anti-imperialism speech in the Senate (re Africa) and

was extremely critical and suspicious of the CIAs activities during the Eisenhower administration. As president, his policy in Latin America was to abandon support for right wing dictators because he said that the people would ultimately not support any of them and it could only result in chaos.

Anyone who thinks Kennedy was an imperialist should read The Pinochet File and Richard Parker's biography of John Kenneth Galbraith.

[eridani]

4. He was a standard Cold Warrior for his term as president

But I think he may possibly have turned the policy around had he lived.

[1932]

6. No he wasn't. Read Richard Parker's JK Galbraith biography.

Do you know that speech he gave at American University -- the anti war speech?

Parker describes the circumstances around that speech. Kennedy had to prepare that speech in secret with only his closest advisors. He had to hide its preparation from the State Department and, IIRC, the Defense Department -- which was emblamatic of the problems in his administration.

Kennedy was an anti-imperialist and wasn't a Cold Warrior. However, he had a state department and defense department that worked against him from the beginning. They went so far as to ingore his directives. However, towards the end of his administration, Kennedy started to get the upper hand.

Parker's book goes into a lot of detail on these points, and has documentary evidence supporting his argument.

If you have an Amazon.com account, you can search the text of Parker's book. Search "American University," search State Department too.

Also read the first chapter of The Pinochet Files if you want to know about his Latin American policy.

[eridani]

13. OK , I'll put that on my list

Can't very well argue the point with you if I haven't read it.

Chomsky's take on it--
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0503chomsky.htm

It is useful to have some historical perspective. So let’s go to the opposite end of the political spectrum, the Kennedy liberals, about as far as you can get. In 1963, they announced a doctrine which is not very different from Bush’s national security strategy report. This was in 1963. Dean Acheson, a respected elder statesman, a senior adviser to the Kennedy administration, delivered a lecture to the American Society for International Law in which he instructed them that, no legal challenge arises in the case of a U.S. response to a challenge to its position, prestige, or authority. The wording was pretty much like that. What was he referring to? He was referring to the U.S. terrorist war and economic warfare against Cuba. And the timing is quite significant. This was shortly after the missile crisis, which drove the world to the edge of nuclear war. And that was largely a result of a major campaign of international terrorism aimed at what’s now called regime change, a major factor that led to the missiles being sent. Right afterwards, Kennedy stepped up the international terrorist campaign, and eson informed the Society for International Law that we had the right of preventive war against a mere challenge to our position and prestige, not even a threat to our existence. His wording, in fact, was even more extreme than the Bush doctrine last September.

Now, it's possible to argue that Kennedy might have resisted that kind of advice if he had lived, but the bottom line is even if he had pushed back, there would have been limits placed by imperial apologists on how far he could have gone.

[1932]

14. Someone on DU wrote about a debate Chomsky had with some other

left wing intellectual about the Kennedy Administration. The DUer's impression was that Chomsky lost the debate.

Check the archives.

Also, read the Parker book. I'd love to read your impressions of it. I've been pimping this book here for months. It's the best political biography I've read in a decade. A few people here have said they'd read it, but I have read any posts from anyone who has actually read it.

[1932]

2. You're right about Truman. Johnson -- what a mixed bag! Probably the best

president ever on domestic issues (he cut the number of Americans in poverty in half), but one of the worst on foreign policy. You'd think that all presidents who followed would have learned a lesson from him.

[Bridget Burke]

7. I think Johnson trusted the "smart boys" too much.

He was obviously strong on domestic issues but didn't have a strong international background. All of JFK"s bright boys thought that fighting communism in Southeast Asia was vitally important. He went along.

LBJ declined to run for another term & retired--haunted by Vietnam. Macnamara lived long enough to publically say that he was wrong.

[1932]

9. That was exactly Richard Parker's assessment of Johnson.

Johnson was never in Kennedy's inner circle of foreign policy advisors so he had no idea that JFK's adminstration was waging a heavy battle with the state and defense departments over vietnam policy. He had no idea that JFK believed that ending imperialism abroad was a key compenent to his progressive domestic policy.

Parker says that before JFK took the temperature of JFK's inncer circle, he already made promises to key people in state and to the American public that the US would persist in Vietnam. The rest of his administration was spent ungracefully winding down from that early bad decisision.

[Cults4Bush]

5. I think you articulated very well indeed...

However as Im sure you realize by now, the yellow dogs hate people like you (and me) because we dont blind faith our leaders anymore. The hypocrisy that is self evident at times is easy enough to take, what the killer is is not making changes within yourself upon evidence of such hypocrisy. You have overcome that, and I say that is awesome.

Good job.

[Bridget Burke]

8. Great principles.

So what if your refusal to vote continues to put Republicans in office?

You can continue to quote Madeline Albright & claim it was "worth it."

[1932]

10. Somewhere in Dem party is the anti-imperialist spirit of FDR and JFK

and I'm not giving up on the possiblity that that strand of progressive thought will not come back to be the dominant theme of the party.

I strongly encourage people to read Richard Parkers JKGalbraith biography if they think all is lost.

There is an arc of progressiveness within the party that I think has been repressed and I thnkt it's going to start bending towards justice again very soon. I think the party of the New Dealers and the anti-imperialists and of Keynesian (and Galbrathian) economics still has its greatest days in front of it.

[librechik]

11. there is another hierarchy that runs all the governments

Eisenhower called it the military industrial complex. It was old and well-established by his day. that's why he tried to warn us against it's influence. Clinton was as deeply in thrall to them as all the other presidents have been and are now. They are, it seems, unstoppable.

Politicians get in a position to "do something" about the problem, and some of them try--politics is not bad; it is our one realistic chance to try to control the growth of this bloody monster.

Nevertheless nowadays the field is crowded with shills for the monster, almost all are monster minions. They have sneaked into the lawmaking body and changed the laws to favor themselves and to hobble opposition. It seems hopeless.

Yet at the same time they reveal monstrous incompetence. They are so lame, they are easy to beat in a fair fight. As Americans we have to get back the ability to fight fair somehow, though the easiest way, to get back the media representation we used to have, seems impossible.

I don't know what to do either, and I too am almost hopeless. Yet, as a young person you of all people must fight to regain your American legacy, the world we had in the 50s and 60s when we forced the Pukkkes to respect workers, nad education was a deeply honored value. I hope you never give up.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Vote issues, not parties, or politicians.

I'll be splitting my vote come November as an anti-war voter. My rep(D) will get my vote. I'll be voting Green for senator because my senator(D) sold out and voted for the war.

My nose is plumb worn out with voting for the "not as bad" candidates that are just part of a corrupt system.