UNITED STATES NEWS DIGEST
Bush's 'Preemptive Strike' Speech Sets Off Alarm Bells
The danger of a "new empire" utopian war drive, about which Lyndon LaRouche has repeatedly warned, combined with the police-state measures being enacted by Attorney General John Ashcroft, and his FBI sidekick, Robert Mueller, are alarming some U.S. policy centers.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) was among the first to publicly oppose President George W. Bush's comments to West Point graduates on Sunday, June 2. In a guest appearance on the June 2 "Late Edition" CNN broadcast, Feinstein told reporter Wolf Blitzer that she was "disturbed" by Bush's call for "preemptive military strikes against nations which threaten the U.S.A." Feinstein, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told Blitzer, "I think this is a predicate for an attack on Iraq, and I'm very concerned about it. I think it would be a terrible mistake for the United States unilaterally to attack Iraq and to do so without any Congressional authorization."
Bush's call to "take the battle to the enemy, disrupt its plans and confront the worst threats," goes beyond the authority granted Bush after Sept. 11. "The authorization we gave the President with respect to 9/11 was precisely crafted to connect the use of force with those who either perpetrated or were connected to 9/11. Iraq was not. And, therefore, I think a preemptive attack without full debate in the Congress would be a terrible mistake." She added that the "whole Muslim Middle East" will turn against the U.S. if it attacks Iraq and "leaves unsettled the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.... We don't need this because we haven't won our own way yet in Afghanistan or in other places." Also reflecting the dialogue that was initiated by LaRouche's webcasts and other policy interventions in the U.S., veteran National Public Radio commentator Daniel Schorr rightly said that Bush's preemptive war marks the end of the nation-state, with its inviolable borders.
At West Point, the President's teleprompter adopted the Mussolini slogan of "action." Bush said, "Homeland defense and missile defense are part of stronger security, and they're essential priorities for America. Yet the war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. and this nation will act."
Bush added that the old Cold War doctrines of containment and deterrence are irrelevant in today's world, and that now, the United States must strike first to defeat America's enemies. "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," Bush said. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge." Even the Washington Post noted that the call for a preemptive military posture would dictate fundamental changes in U.S. military strategy, adding: "Historically, the U.S. military has not conducted preemptive or surprise attacks, such as Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 or Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941." The Washington Post reporter also wrote that the West Point cadets' parents were heartily applauding these bellicose statements, but that the cadets themselves were "pensive."
Rumsfeld Criticizes Utopian Doctrine on Iraq, But Not His DOD Utopian Warriors
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put himself and his Department of Defense in a strange position, when he harshly criticized those who say that a U.S. military attack against Iraq would be a cakewalk. Rumsfeld gave an interview to Washington Post editors and reporters at the Pentagon, which was reportedwithout extensive quotesin the June 4 edition in the form of several front-page news stories.
On Iraq, Rumsfeld harshly criticized those who say that a U.S. military overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be a cakewalk, and he also disputed claims that the Iraqi military would stage an insurrection to overthrow Saddam at the first sign of American military backing. "Listen, nothing is a cakewalk," Rumsfeld was quoted as saying. "Everything is unpredictable, and life is hard. Those folks have weapons that they'll use, and anyone who thinks it's a cakewalk isn't right."
But the "cakewalk" formulation comes from consultants, advisers, and subordinates who were appointed by Don Rumsfeld himself. The idea was first publicly delivered by Kenneth Adelman, a neo-con ally of Richard Perle, and has since been frequently repeated by Perle, the chairman of Rumsfeld's "Defense Policy Board." Adelman is also a member of the board. Another proponent of such utopian drivel is Deputy Secretary of Defense Doug Feith.
On the prospect of an insurrection against Saddam, Rumsfeld was quoted: "Will they rise up? I think that's not likely. Peole who rise up get killed." On Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said that al-Qaeda is still active in pockets inside the country, but many top al-Qaeda people escaped across the porous Pakistani border and are once again operating in other countries. He warned that he expected an upsurge in violence and instability in Afghanistan over the next days, as the loya jirga process is underway.
The strongest opposition to the utopian pipedreams about Iraq are known to come from the uniformed military services, which, columnist Mary McCrory asserted in the Washington Post of May 30, was the cause of Bush's "blow-up" in his joint press conference with French President Jacques Chirac. "Europe may not have broadened Bush's perspective or changed his mind [about Iraq]," wrote McCrory, "but the Pentagon surely did.... It wasn't the demonstrators on the streets of Europe who were eating away at Bush, it was probably a demonstration at, of all places, the Pentagon ... a demonstration of cold feet" about invading Iraq.
McCrory quoted retired Rear Adm. Gene Carroll, who said that, despite the drumbeat coming from the right, uniformed men like to prepare for situations where men will be fighting. "Amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics," Carroll said, adding that it is evident that "we wouldn't have the allies, supplies and bases that were available to us in the Gulf War." Lawrence Korb of the New York Council on Foreign Relations says that statements by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (see EIW #12) "burst the bubble of inevitability" around Iraq, that "it was all not if but when." Korb predicted that the "war fever in Washington" will now decline.
Virginia's 'Bush Democrats' Give GOP Senator a Free Ride
Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia got a free ride from the "Bush Democrats" in the state Democratic Party when it rammed through a the decision not to field a candidate against Warner in the U.S. Senate race this fall. The Democrats' principal argument was that no candidate could raise enough money to run a "credible campaign," according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch and to first-hand reports from party members. The RTD, generally a Republican newspaper, rubbed it in with the banner headline, "John Warner gets a free ride."
While the RTD reported that the Democratic Parrty Steering Committee unanimously voted for no-candidate, according to a Central Committee source, this was only possible because of numerous absences. Party chair Larry Framme (also the chair at the time of former Attorney General leading Democrat Mary Sue Terry's witchhunt against Lyndon LaRouche) announced this decision, feigning "a heavy heart," at the Central Committee meeting June 1, and demanded an immediate voice vote to ratify.
The ratification occurred, but was immediately challenged by what one observer estimated was 40% of those present. The uproar resulted in a reopening of "debate" on the issue, during which the opponents demanded to know what a "viable candidate" was, and at least one Central Crook member objected to the fact that prospective candidate Gail Crook was permitted to address the Central Committee, while the other prospective candidate, Nancy Spannaus, was not. (See article in EIW on the Spannaus campaign in INDEPTH.)
The Richmond Times-Dispatch concluded with the following paragraph: "Nancy Spannaus, a perennial candidate who is allied with political extremist Lyndon Larouche, is gathering signature to run as an independent against John Warner. She, too, was rebuffed as a potential candidate by the Democratic leadership."
Support for Death Penalty Dropping in U.S., Polls Show
Outside of Texas, where the execution of Napoleon Beazley on May 28 defied an international outcry, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, a number of developments show a continuing shift in public attitudes towards the death penalty. The execution of Beazley, who was only 17 years old (a minor) at the time of the crime, was opposed by the European Union, the American Bar Association, and Amnesty International, among others, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to use Beazley's case to revisit the issue of whether the Constitution permits minors to be executed. Among the developments showing a turn against the death penalty:
*A recent poll of New Jersey residents conducted by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University revealed that support for the death penalty has dropped considerably, and that the majority of residents support a moratorium on executions until issues of accuracy, fairness, and cost effectiveness can be examined. The following are among the poll's key findings: a) When given the option of life without the possibility of parole as a sentencing alternative, 48% support a life sentence, while 36% support capital punishment. This is a reversal from 1999, when 44% of New Jerseyites polled supported capital punishment and 37% favored life imprisonment. b) Six in 10 New Jerseyites support a moratorium on executions while the state's death-penalty statutes are reviewed. c) A quarter of those surveyed say that they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports a moratorium, while only 7% of those surveyed would be less likely to support him or her. The New Jersey legislature is currently considering a bill that would create a one-year moratorium on executions while a commission investigates potential flaws in the state's death penalty system.
*Oklahoma legislators have sent a bill banning execution of the mentally retarded to Gov. Frank Keating. The bill, which would make Oklahoma the 19th state to enact such a ban, passed with bipartisan support in the State House and Senate.
*Two U.S. Senators have called for a moratorium on executions. In a recent Baltimore Sun opinion piece, U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-Wisc) and Jon Corzine (D-NJ) called for a national halt to executions while an independent review of the nation's death penalty is conducted. The Senators cited "glaring flaws in the administration of capital punishment. The nation should conduct a thorough, nationwide review of the death penalty." They charged that the system is "so riddled with errors that for every eight people executed in the modern death-penalty era, one person on Death Row has been found innocent." The Senators are co-sponsors of the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act.
Members of Congress Challenge Ashcroft's Police State
The Justice Department's plan to give the FBI more domestic surveillance power "has gone too far," "effectively... going back to the bad old days when the FBI was spying on people like Martin Luther King," said House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc), a conservative normally aligned with the Bush Administration. Sensenbrenner made his remarks June 1 on CNN's "Novak, Hunt and Shields." Sensenbrenner has called Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller to appear before his committee "to justify why the 1976 regulations on domestic spying, that have worked so well for the last 25 or 26 years, have to be changed."
In fact, restoration of the police-state powers that the FBI was forced to curb after the abuses of the 1960s, has run into a phalanx of opposition. Representative John Conyers (D-Mich), top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, described the new guidelines as the Administration's "continued defiance of Constitutional safeguards." Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) referred to the civil rights abuses that occurred in the 1960s and '70s "under the name of law enforcement." Others who have attacked the new guidelines include:
*Shaker Elsayed, Muslim American Society
*Margaret Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights
*James X. Dempsey, Center for Democracy and Technology
*ACLU natonal director Laura W. Murphy
*Althan Theoharis, history professor, Marquette University
*Jason Erb, Council on American-Islamic Relations
A New York Times editorial titled "An Erosion of Civil Liberties" called the policy changes at the FBI "draconian," while Ashcroft tries to make them appear "seductively innocuous." But in reality, the FBI has been given "unbridled power to poke into the affairs of anyone in the United States, even when there is no evidence of illegal activity."
On the other hand, Roger Pilon from the supposedly "less government" Cato Institute told the Washington Post that FBI agents should "be able to do what ordinary Americans can do." And the same May 31 New York Times runs a commentary by Nicholas D. Kristof, who says that it was the attack on the FBI for its abuse of civil rights and agent provocateur operations, which "created" the pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures.
|