What's
Wrong with Kerry's
Foreign and Domestic Policy...
So far?
PressInfo #
198
June
17, 2004
By
Richard
Falk,
TFF Associate
Albert G. Milbank Professor of
International Law Emeritus, Princeton University;
Visiting Professor, UCSB, 2002-2004 and Chair, Board,
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Falk is the author, of The
Great Terror War (2003)
and Declining World Order (2004).
See other books by Richard Falk in "The
100 Best Books"
The depravities displayed to the
world at Abu Ghraib prison pose an historic challenge to
John Kerry: He needs to offer America something more
politically attractive than 'a pale Republican' seeking
entry to the White House. Subtly positioning his
candidacy but a micro-meter to the left of George W. Bush
is not what America urgently needs (or wants)
now.
This is the most important
presidential election of my lifetime: Unless we rid the
country and the world of the Bush leadership, our future
prospects are grim, and could include a slide toward
global fascism abroad and the risk of a police state at
home.
The precariousness of the situation
is highlighted by the Bush unwillingness, even now, to
acknowledge failure in Iraq, heightening the prospects
for years more of bloodshed under the vapid label of
'staying the course.' To allow this defiant Bush posture
to go unchallenged as the campaign unfolds is
symbolically and substantively to embrace an approach
that reeks of misguided opportunism.
It is misguided because it yields
to the Republicans the high ground of meaning what they
say and doing what they say, of appearing to have a
conception of anti-terrorism that is coherent, if costly,
and of being challenged, only trivially, at the outer
margins of policy.
Ever since the end of the cold war,
the Democratic Party has been afraid of its own core
values, especially the party's honorable identification
with social justice and sophisticated internationalism,
and has been avoiding the so-called L-word, revealing a
shameful retreat from advocating big-ticket liberal
programs in health, education, and welfare.
Bill Clinton, with his great
political savvy, sensed the mood of the 1990s, as well as
the insensitivity of Bush Sr. to the realities of
domestic America, and so was able to prevail by moving
rightwards of center. Unfortunately, as president,
Clinton did not let these constituents down, working
furiously for Republican/Wall Street priorities such as
NAFTA, fiscal discipline and market-driven economic
globalization, while backing down on health care and
welfare. But, as the vicious GOP impeachment debacle
illustrated, Clinton, despite all his efforts to co-opt
the Republican agenda, never achieved credibility on the
right, but did alienate (to various degrees) his base of
support among liberals and progressives.
Then there was his would-be
successor, Al Gore: Putting aside for the moment the
issue of electoral fraud, the vice president went down to
defeat following an even more callous electoral strategy,
even sidelining Clinton in order to appease the
family-values crowd who were apparently more appalled by
the Lewinsky sideshow than by rampant homelessness and
the rising number of Americans below the poverty line.
Given the economic problems in America, the election
should never have been even close if Gore had not
demoralized so much of his base, a blunder that had the
secondary effect of emboldening Ralph Nader and his
supporters. The truth is that Nader's negative impact on
Democratic prospects is far less than the futile and
demoralizing mainstream Democratic bid to win over
citizens situated to the right of center. From the
standpoint of both pragmatism and idealism, a truly
principled Democratic campaign this time might make Nader
redundant and in fact persuade him to drop
out.
Of course, there are risks of
taking a position rooted in opposition to the Iraq
policy, but they are diminishing with each passing day.
Moreover, by subscribing to the staying-the-course line,
Kerry locks himself into a totally discredited policy
that has undoubtedly and perversely strengthened the
appeal of Al Qaeda's message around the world, especially
in Arab countries. Kerry, already ultra-sensitive about
flip-flopping allegations, is understandably reticent
about seeming to switch yet again on a major policy
issue. For Iraq, he could, however, appear persuasive by
treating Abu Ghraib and its related fallout as a wakeup
call that alerted him to the reality of Iraq as the
long-feared, nightmarish Vietnam Redux. And it would not
be out of place to say that his earlier support of the
Iraq policy was based on gross misrepresentations by the
Bush White House and Pentagon, if not outright lies.
Kerry must be more than a
warmed-over, slightly less right-wing Bush. The senator's
'plan' - as it now stands - merely calls for an enlarged
UN role. This not only resembles what the Bush people are
themselves advocating, it tacitly accepts an approach
that has failure written all over it. Why should the UN,
so long rebuffed by the Bush administration, bother to
step in at this stage? And, were it so foolish to jump
in, why would not the Iraqi resistance view this new
presence as no more than a continuation of the American
occupation under different cover?
Indeed, what else can
staying-the-course mean except finding a way to continue
the foreign occupation, at least until a political
solution for Iraq is found? This is incoherent advocacy
at this stage: For the only plausible stabilization plan
that might work, as prefigured in Falluja, is the
re-Baathification of the governing process, and this
would put Sunni leadership back in charge of the entire
country. This 'solution' would likely trigger a civil
war, unless it was to become as brutally authoritarian as
its predecessor. Given these realities, therefore, the
American goal of democracy in Iraq is an absurd paradox:
Indeed, the more democratic the polity was allowed to
become, the more anti-American (and anti-Israeli) it
would undoubtedly turn out to be.
What's worse, Kerry has already
gone out of his way to express his unqualified support
for Ariel Sharon's policies - this implying an evident
indifference to the Palestinian ordeal, and reinforcing
anti-Americanism. Again, the ugly face of electoral
opportunism is exhibited for all to see -- and it may get
worse, especially if Kerry decides to compete with Bush
for support of the AIPAC (right wing pro-Israeli)
lobbying crowd. The truth is that Sharon's government,
guilty of daily war crimes against the Palestinian
people, is detested in much of the world. At the very
least, Kerry might have coupled his support for the
security of Israel with sincere expressions of anguish
about the suffering of both peoples, and the need for a
new vision of peace with security for both Israel and
Palestine. I do not think it is too late for such a
statement, and it would signal a willingness to put
principle over short-sighted pragmatism.
Domestically, Kerry can no longer
beat-around-the bush, so to speak: He must appeal to the
variously dispossessed in America, not just to the middle
classes. He should continuously remind Americans of
Bush's fiscal hypocrisy in handing huge tax cuts to the
ultra-rich, while piling up a dangerously large deficit
that threatens to pull down the world economy and burden
future generations of Americans.
But a positive vision is more
important than criticism at this stage. We need bold
commitments to overhaul the health system so that it
works for all Americans. And we need to restore
educational opportunity both by lowering the economic
obstacles to gaining quality education, especially at
college levels, and of expanding the resources available
to allow American education to recover its loss of ground
to Europe and Asia in the sciences, math, and other
fields. Is it not time to throw down the gauntlet of
'compassionate liberalism' as a direct challenge to the
Bush campaign?
Domestically, too, a more humane
and coherent approach, while underscoring the weaknesses
of Bush policies, would offer a more hopeful vision. It
should begin by repudiating the erosion of civil
liberties at home promulgated by the Patriot Act and
related legislation. It should also draw attention to the
shocking failure of the Bush administration to support
large appropriations to guard soft homeland targets in
the United States, as well as stockpiles of weapons-grade
uranium and plutonium in poorly protected Russian storage
facilities. The dangers of dirty bombs and WMD have all
along been much more severe in Russia and Pakistan than
in any of 'the axis of evil' countries; the possibilities
of diversion by theft or sake on the black market sales
are high.
To help 'denuclearize" the
international atmosphere, the United States should desist
altogether from its efforts to put weapons of mass
destruction into space and turn away from developing new
categories of nuclear weapons, including battlefield
weapons openly intended according to recent Pentagon
documents to be available for possible future wars.
Fighting wars to prevent the acquisition of phantom
nuclear weapons, as in Iraq, and supporting a crusade
against nuclear proliferation seems at odds with our own
weapons labs that are advocating new military roles for
nuclear weapons -- and even proposing the resumption of
nuclear weapons testing in the near future.
A Democratic candidate that would
move unreservedly in these directions is what these times
demand. But I have a confession to make: The outcome of
this election is so important that whatever Kerry does or
doesn't do, he will get my vote. Indeed, I have been
urging friends not to listen to what he says, because it
is so likely to be so awful as to undermine the morale
needed to raise money and work for the registration of
young and minority voters that will be required to defeat
Bush.
But this degrading descent into the
bowels of 'lesser of evils' politics has its dangers. It
produces the sort of apathy that creates public space for
the kind of rightist demagoguery that can descend into
political extremism. The American people need more than
ever a dose of Jeffersonian vigilance: The opposition to
Bush should be based on principles that allow for
essential public debate as to the real choices. I agree
that the U.S. mass media too often fails to elevate
citizen understanding, but a republic that is coaxed to
sleep, during this historic election, by the appearance
of consensus on the most vital issues of the day will be
betrayed by a dishonorable opposition. Our democracy
deserves better if it deserves to survive!
© TFF and the author 2004
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