Now
Available!
Dime's
Worth of Difference:
Beyond the
Lesser of Two Evils
Order Here!
Today's
Stories
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
Sex, Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
August 20, 2004
Jennifer Van
Bergen
National
Security Courts and Torture Warrants
Lisa Taraki
Boycotting the Israeli Academy
Greg Bates
Racial
Profiling and National Security: Back with a Vengeance
Joshua Frank
Monkeywrench Hope: an Interview with Jeffrey St. Clair
John L. Hess
Play It Backward
Norman Solomon
Rumsfeld's Return
Diane Christian
Holy
Places
Website of the Day
Go Tell Cerebus: 50,000 Dogs Slaughtered for Olympics?
August 19,
2004
Lance Selfa
To
ABB or Not to ABB?
Christopher
Brauchli
The Edicts of President Bush
Mike Whitney
The "Rebel Cleric" and the Siege of Najaf
Jason Leopold
The
Oily Parachute: How Cheney Got Away with $35 Million Before the
Feds Launched a Probe into Halliburton
Jeff Nicholson-Owens
Why We Need "Free Software" Voting Machines
Bill Linville
If
the Republicans Are Funding Nader, Who is Funding the Democrats?
Well, Try Halliburton for Starters
Diana Barahona
In the Minds of the Rich, the Venezuelan Poor Aren't Even Members
of Society: Guess Who's Laughing Now?
Alan Cisco
The
Discreet Charm of the Venezuelan Opposition
Dave Lindorff
Gitlin
Tells Anti-Bush Protesters to "Cool It"
August 18,
2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Mordechai Vanunu
Adrian Kuzminski
The
Death of American Politics: Why Perot Was the Last Serious Challenger
of the Political Duopoly
Uri Avnery
Israel
and the US Elections
Dave Lindorff
Librarians as Wimps: "Sorry, Sir, Some Readers May Find
Your Book Inflammatory"
Toni Solo
After the Venezuela Referendum: Bush's Dien Bien Phu?
John L. Hess
Laying Odds on Armageddon: a Midtown Hiroshima?
Rodney Thomas
Patti Smith, Another Take
Sean Donahue
Kerry
and Bolivia: To the Right of Bush?
Website of the Day
Presidential Polls: David Cobb (at 0%) is Exceeding Expectations
August 17,
2004
Norm Dixon
Darfuris
Made Pawns in Western Power Play for Oil
Alan Farago
In
Charley's Wake: Opportunity from Misfortune
John L. Hess
The
Meaning of Venezuela
Lisa Taraki
/ Omar Barghouti
Presbyterian Church Divests from Israel
Allen Thompson
Et Tu, Patti? An Open Letter to Patti Smith
John Ross
Mexicans
Dying in Bush's War
Website of the Day
List of Civilian Contractors Killed or Missing in Iraq
August 16,
2004
Gary Leupp
The
Attack on Najaf: the Ultimate Stupidity
Ron Jacobs
Iran
Through an Iraqi Mirror?
Mike Whitney
The
Guantanamo Mock Trials
Zvi Bar'el
Theater
of the Absurd in Iraq: Chalabi, Feith and Israel
John Blair
A
Culture of Waste
Sharmini Peries
Chavez
Triumphs; Crushes Opposition
Tariq Ali
The Importance of Hugo Chavez
Website of
the Day
Hurricane City
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
August
27, 2004
"To
the Swift Boats!"
(Or
Anything Else That Will Keep Us Occupied Until November 2)
By
MIKE FERNER
Months ago when it looked like JFK-lite
was going to get the Democrats' nomination, some prescient pundit
somewhere commented about Kerry's combat medals, predicting the
campaign would consist largely of arguments for and agin' the
veracity of his stories, the severity of his wounds, the claims
and counter-claims of people "back in the day."
Call me naïve, but I thought
that was pretty darn skeptical. OK, I'm naïve and wrong.
It's not that I'm uninterested
in the Viet Nam war, or unimpressed with combat ribbons and purple
hearts. I spent three years as a hospital corpsman during that
war, taking care of hundreds of young men returning in pieces
from Viet Nam and Cambodia. And they were supposedly the lucky
ones who survived.
That's why, despite my disinterest
in John Kerry's candidacy, I was at least glad to see that the
general election campaign might well include an airing of many
things Viet Nam that are particularly relevant today.
For example, were we veterans
of that war really "defending freedom" and "helping
the Vietnamese build a democracy?" Were we even (gasp) "serving
our country?"
Or, as many of us raised on
John Wayne movies in the 50's and 60's have come to find out
the hard way, were we the young foot soldiers of empire, idealistic
(some), unlucky (most) commoners sent off to fight another rich
old man's war, that BELIEVE IT OR NOT, MA! turns out to have
been based on a thick web of lies?
Now THAT would make for some
rip-snorting campaign debates. It would have some relevance to
what's going on today in another corner of the world. Who knows,
it might also help us finally face some of the lies and some
of the truths about Viet Nam; help us repair some of the damage
done to our society's soul. You don't send 1.5 million youngsters
to a place like Viet Nam, have them participate in killing over
two MILLION Vietnamese and lay waste to the land for generations
without SOMEthing strange happening to our national psyche.
What a novel idea! That a campaign
in 2004, by including even a modest attempt at dealing with the
truth from 35 years ago, might be both riveting and beneficial.
But instead, we have the "Battle
of the Swift Boats."
It is, to be sure, a grand
way to keep from addressing anything relevant (like today's war
on which, coincidentally, both candidates agree) until...oh,
mid September or so. Then the "527" ads will delve
into other weighty matters like, "Has the Heinz Foundation
stopped funding blood-sucking monkeys to do evil things to little
kiddies...?" Or, "Why DID John Edwards see that psychiatrist
in 1991...?" Then for the Democrats, Moveon.org will tell
us to something crucial to the survival of Western Society, such
as "The lost files from Bush's Cocaine Anonymous classes:
Where WAS he during those two meetings in September 1974?"
Any one of these will keep
things going until mid-October. Then of course, there will be
nothing left of a 2-year long campaign except the "Sprint
to the Finish" and hourly poll numbers, culminating with
the "Three Day Campaigning Marathon" wherein both candidates
get hoarse repeating stump speeches and we watch, fascinated,
to see if one of them collapses, proof positive he doesn't really
have "the right stuff," thereby making up the minds
of all seven undecided voters in Ohio and determining the election.
NOW...I challenge anyone to
dispute that this is a brilliant election campaign process. First,
it was created by the Free Market-two years of TV ads are certainly
better for the economy than two months-and secondly, it automatically
selects for us the one candidate who, by being able to withstand
the rigors of an extended campaign, can then withstand the rigors
of the office.
Case closed. Whatacountry.
Mike Ferner is a member of Veterans for Peace
from Toledo, Ohio. He returned from a second trip to Iraq earlier
this year. He can be reached at: mferner@utoledo.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|