NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9913

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From: Hank Roth <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pardon Me President Bush
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{From THE VILLAGE VOICE, January 6, 1992}
MOVING TARGET
   by James Ridgeway

PARDON ME: Polite to the End, George Bush Walks the Existential
Plank

WASHINGTON---George Bush has pushed his lieutenants aside and
shouldered the blame for the Iran-contra scandal. It is a most
touching gesture of fealty to the right wing of his party, which,
after all, had provided the Republican decade with a conservative
ideological spine---a true cause to live or die for.

What the conservatives have long wanted is a social
reorganization of America that would give them political and
cultural dominance without the inconvenience of the vote.
"The common ingredients of the Iran and contra policies were
secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law," the Congressional
committees summing up the experience wrote. "A small group of
senior officials believed that they alone knew what was right.
They viewed knowledge of their actions by others in the
government as a threat to their objectives....Wehn exposure was
threatened, they destroyed official documents and lied to Cabinet
officials, to the public, and to elected representatives in
Congress. They testified tha they even withheld key facts from
the President."

>From birth, George Bush has been a a man of wealth and station, a
public figure who echoed the mores and hierarchical values of
America's ruling class. Democracy to these people remains a
foreign imposition. Their loyalty is not to a system of
government but to their friends and allies---and that's what the
_pardon_ is about.

THE ORIGINS of the _Reagan_Doctrine_, as it became known, go back
to President Jack Kennedy's enthusiasm for guerrilla warfare as
the best way to figtht the brush wars of the future. Although
Reagan's political goals and his personnel roster bore little
resemblance to those Camelot, the American military architects of
the war in Central America gained their experience as minor
players in Indochina and, this time, they wanted to win.

The cutting edge of the conservative coalition's crusade became
the Reagan Doctrine, a foreign policy initiative that aimed to
block, then roll back communism in the Third World. It argued the
U.S. must fight Soviet expansion on the peripheries of their
empire by supporting or creating "revolutionary democracy," be it
in the form of Jonas Savimbi in Angola, the mujahedeen in
Afghanistan, or the contra freedom fighters in Nicaragua.

The Reagan doctrine argued that the U.S. could intervene in
seeking to overturn existing communist or other governments
because the U.S. does not see them as legitimate. The basic idea
was to harass the Evil Empire at it's periphery and to foster
American-style revolution through "moderate" proxies like Aquino
in the Phillippines or Duarte in El Salvador, which hopefully
would be both inexpensive and politically sanigtary. The
cheerleader for these pocket wars was not Reagan himself as much
as his vice-president, former CIA director George Bush.

This policy evolved from within the conservative coalition. The
pragmatists in the State Department were ineffective; they were
losing the war on the ground and, worse still, at home among the
president's critics. So the administration took action,
initiating a broad program of guerrilla warfare in Central
America and, at home, starting a new propaganda drive. Reagan
went before Congress. Military maneuvers were expanded in
Honduras, providing the U.S.with a permanent presence in the
region by means of rotating national guard units that provided
intelligence, training, and infrastructure for war. In October of
1983 the U.S. invaded Grenada, and the administration hoped that
the campaign of destabilization that had culminated in the marine
landing there could be repeated in Nicaragua. >Oliver North< became
the point man for the Reagan doctrine in the White House
basement, urging the invasion of Grenada, working with Elliott
Abrams to get Baby Doc out of Haiti, coordinatinog Western
intelligence policy, and providing a back channel around the
Pentagon for the Americna military mission in El Salvador. He
oversaw the contra war.

To prosecute its Central American policy, the White House needed
to find the money to finance the war from administration friends
and wealthy allies abroad because Congress, through the Boland
amendment, had cut off all official funding. North was
everywhere, shuttling from Washington to the contra training
camps, conducting fundraisers among Reagan's wealthy backers,
meeting with Congress, writing the president's speeches, even
composing a pamphlet on the rights of prisoners of war.

When the scandal finally got into the press, it was not a
presidential commission, nor the Congressional investigations,
but the independent watchdog organization the NATIONAL SECURITY
ARCHIVE that pulled together the one serious, unbiased, and truly
public chronicle of what had happened. (That group's work, under
Scott Armstrong, remains a tiny indication of what a truly free
and unfettered citizenry can do if it so desires.)

These acts are not the sort of thing that can be corrected by the
justice system; they represent a broad, coordinated, persistent
attack on the foundations of American democracy. Because of this
assault, the National Security Council, which repeatedly
circumvented the Congress and the law; the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
AGENCY, which was an equal partner in this; the Justice
Department, which helped to conceal these acts and to stifle
domestic opposition to them; and the State Department, whose top
officials cooperated in promoting these schemes, all lost THEIR
legitimacy in the eyes of the public. The credibility of
Congress--where the appropriate committees either knew or should
have known about the illegal contra arms network and the secret
dealings with Iran since the mid 1980s---was also undermined.

With Reagan gone, and the Soviet "Empire" revealed as a sham, the
_Reagan_Doctrine_ nonetheless lurched ahead, a sort of headless
chicken that continued to run without its brain: first in Panama,
where dope was promoted as a replacement for the communist
empire, then in Iraq, where oil replaced the Reds, and most
recently in Somalia, where starving people provide a cover for an
attack on Muslim fundamentalism.

For years the conservatives have sought to institutionalize the
changes of the Reagan revolution, first by simply daring the
Democratic Congress to make a move against Iran-contra. (There
never was any real question of impeachment, for example--the
hearings themselves were circumscribed.) Conservatives sought to
achieve power through the Supreme Court, most notably through the
appointment of Robert Bork. They attempted to wreck the New Deal
institutions, turning Housing and Urban Development into a graft
mill and the Justice Department, once the champion of civil
rights for all Aemricans, in an utterly corrupt institution.

The conservatives have succeeded in many ways. There is no better
measure of that success than all the special prosecutors
shuttling around Washington in lieu of an independent and honest
Justice Department. The *pardons*--as well as the _incursion_into
_Somalia_ and the one that may well come in _Bosnia_ are direct
challenges to Bill Clinton. The conservatives seriously doubt
Clinton will usher in any real reforms. _Restoring_democratic
institutions---and not the up-an-down economy of the world's
richest nation---should be the first order of business in the
Clinton administration. Already Washington doesn't take seriusly
the idea that a new attorney general, a relatively young woman of
40 years, can make much difference in the recalcitrant Justice
Department.

The report of the Congressinal committees investigating the Iran-
contra affair includes a quotation from Supreme Court justice
Lousi Brandeis: "OUR GOVERNMENT IS THE POTENT, THE OMNIPRESENT
TEACHER. FOR GOOD OR FOR ILL, IT TEACHES THE WHOLE PEOPLE BY ITS
EXAMPLE. CRIME IS CONTAGIOUS. IF THE GOVERNMENT BECOMES A
LAWBREAKER, IT BREEDS CONTEMPT FOR LAW, IT INVITES EVERY MAN TO
BECOME A LAW UNTO HIMSELF, IT INVITES ANARCHY."

Since John Kennedy we have endured six presidents who have
brought us painfully little in richness of spirit or material
wealth. Those of us who were young then can remember the defining
momment: the riderless horse, spurs cocked to the rear; the
children, General de Gaulle, and Haile Selassie standing regid at
the passing of an era.

Today is our August 1914, both a terrible end and an uncertain
berginning. We were familiar with Nixon. He seems now, looking
back, like an old dog-eared gab guest on a television program,
foolish and toothless, a lonely man out of step with his times.
But that's because even HE was no preparation for the undiluted
venality of the Reagan-Bush era.

And now it is over and we are left with a small picture of a man
well-bred from a time past, whose entire life has depended on
wealth and station, who for reasons of his own has decided to be
remembered in history as a right-wing anarchist.
----------------------------------------------
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