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CounterPunch
January
4, 2003
The Bush Vision and the Culture
of Power
by SAUL LANDAU
"Why do
they hate us?" George W. Bush
asked. I waited for his answer as did millions of others after
the 9/11 events. We had lost our collective virginity when we
had to acknowledge that some serious characters did not have
our best interests at heart. As Bush spoke I conjured up the
image of they with the help of the cartoonists who had provided
me with stereotyped fierce-looking Arabs, wielding curved swords,
heads wrapped in kefiyahs and screaming anti-American curses.
W went on to say that they hate Americans
because we re free, referring, I presumed, to the great institutions
our founding fathers left us. He implied that the mass murdering
fanatics of Al Qaeda loved a non-free system. So, to show them
a thing or two, he advised us to fly somewhere for vacation,
like Disneyland, and shop; in other words, practicing the American
way of life would make us feel better and help the economy to
boot; imagine, going to Disneyland as a veritable act of patriotism.
And while he assured us of our safety,
Attorney General Ashcroft and Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge,
periodically warned us about the imminent threat of another terrorist
assault. Well, one learns to live with contradictions, but where,
I ask myself, does George W. Bush intend to lead us?
The head of a large empire needs a world
vision, some sense that he knows that his policies coincide with
the future, a road map that takes us beyond they hate us and
we love freedom. President Bush s speeches, remarks at infrequent
press conferences and occasional off the cuff quips, however,
don t offer much clarity about how he sees the coincidence between
his policies and say, the future of the environment or the fate
of the more than half the world s desperately poor people, factors
one must consider when thinking about the future in any reasonable
form.
I have observed, in the seemingly interminable
period of time since the Supreme Court elected him, some evolution
in W s behavior. From a rather crude and simplistic view of the
world as Texas Governor, he has built on his old prejudices and
added a few new twists. In his new mutation as imperial manager,
for example, criminals have come to play a crucial role in this
Texas-Yale weltanschauung.
As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush
didn t believe in rehabilitating criminals. Indeed, those on
death row didn t benefit from his compassionate conservatism.
In fact, as governor for five years he presided over 152 killings,
more executions guilty or not -- than any other State leader.
Bush felt that sense of certitude we ve all seen it on his face
on TV when he sets his jaw in that pose of religious conviction
-- that he seems to carry on every subject of policy. In February
2001, he proclaimed his confidence "that every person that
has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty
of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts."
As Anthony Lewis noted in the June 17,
2000 NY Times, however, in one-third of those cases, the report
showed, the lawyer who represented the death penalty defendant
at trial or on appeal had been or was later disbarred or otherwise
sanctioned. In 40 cases the lawyers presented no evidence at
all or only one witness at the sentencing phase of the trial.
In almost thirty other cases, prosecutors used psychiatric testimony
based on experts who had not bothered to even interview the people
on trial for their lives.
Bush dismissed serious studies that raised
doubts about the death penalty even brushing aside reservations
held by such staunch advocates of capital punishment as the Taliban-like
Pat Robertson, "We've adequately answered innocence or guilt,"
Bush declared smugly to an Associated Press reporter. He assured
reporters that every defendant "had full access to a fair
trial."
As with much of policy, Bush doesn t
rely on facts especially when life and death are involved. His
instinct tells him that when dealing with difficulty, whether
on policy toward terrorism, Iraq or the death penalty, think
of a joke. In November 2002, CNN s Crossfire replayed a tape
of a reporter asking him about his priorities, the war against
terrorism or the war against Iraq. Bush responded: Er, uh, huh,
I m trying to think of something funny to say. When Tucker Carlson
of Time magazine asked him how he felt in putting a woman to
death, he mimicked her plea to save her. `Please Bush whimpers,
wrote Carlson describing his demeanor as lips pursed in mock
desperation, `don t kill me.
As President, Bush has apparently reconsidered
his stance on criminals, well, certain kinds anyway. His new
rehabilitation program calls for the appointment to high policy
posts of former felons who have links to mass murder not just
simple homicide. These lawbreaker are also characterized by their
utter contempt -- not only for the lives of Central Americans
but for the Congress and US Constitution as well.
Take as examples Elliot Abrams, John
Poindexter, John Negroponte and Otto Reich, officials he recently
named to manage important policy positions. I exclude the newly
appointed Henry Kissinger to the Warren Commission on 9/11 because
K showed contempt for human life on several continents and belongs
in the bigger league of war criminals.
For those too young to recall or those
with short memories, the four above mentioned characters conspired
to circumvent congressional defunding of the Contras, the group
President Reagan had chosen in the early 1980s to depose the
government of Nicaragua. These four and their cohorts hatched
a plot to sell weapons to Iran (also prohibited) so that they
could funnel the proceeds to their beloved Contras ands then
cover it up.
In his testimony to Congress, the scrappy
Abrams made witness history when he declared: "I never said
I had no idea about most of the things you said I had no idea
about." The now 54 year old Abrams also explained in his
autobiography that he had to inform his young children about
the headline announcing his indictment, so he told them he had
to lie to Congress to protect the national interest.
The then Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State to Central America pleaded guilty to withholding information
from Congress and received two years probation and 100 hours
community work. Now, the 54 year old Abrams as the new White
House man on the Middle East, having learned that one can get
away with felonious behavior if you maintain close links to the
Bush family, will attempt to redraw the roadmap of the Middle
East. Secretary of State Colin Powell drafted a plan for designing
a peaceful solution and eventually a Palestinian state. The vision,
by deduction, amounts to a rubber stamp for Israeli repression
and expansion. It also coincides with Abrams stated belief that
Israel and the United States will benefit from tighter connections
between the far right fundamentalist Christians who want Israel
to prevail and occupy all of Palestine and US policy.
Former retired Admiral and National Security
adviser to Reagan John Poindexter was convicted of five felonies
involving conspiracy, obstruction of Congress, and making false
statements. The judge gave him six months in prison, but an appellate
court reversed the sentence because Congress had granted him
immunity. His slipping out of prison on a procedural error does
not change the facts of the case. Poindexter s vision runs toward
secrecy and circumventing law in the interests of protecting
the privacy of individuals not affiliated with terrorism, his
newest declaration.
Otto Reich ran Latin America policy until
this month and now holds a special appointment from the White
House for Latin America. Negroponte, now Ambassador to the UN,
also played the Iran-Contra game and escaped indictment. Reich
was minister of lying to the public from his Office of Public
Diplomacy and Negroponte as US Ambassador to Honduras had to
cover up now he has forgotten the dreadful behavior of our allies.
The liberals called it human rights abuse, but Negroponte understood
that you can t make an omelet without breaking the eggs, or some
such Maoism.
By appointing these characters, W's world
view becomes clearer. Those who participated in Central America
plots that caused the deaths of tens of thousands will have a
second chance to show the public what they really stand for.
Indeed, they remain as role models for the post republican United
States. Congress has little place in such an imperial government.
The media, epitomized by Fox and Rupert Murdoch s chains, plays
the aggressive war game and diverts the public. The National
Security Plan released by the White House further shreds the
republican fabric by placing the Bill of Rights into very second
class status in a search for full spectral dominance, hardly
one that relates to the nation or security for that matter.
Similarly gone are past notions of accountability
and openness when Administrations felt it necessary to cover
imperial expeditions with shreds of republican fabric and maintain
some semblance of the Bill of Rights.
The vision of the Bush White House promotes
unashamedly the American way of life, one shared by majorities
in Western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. For W, his
means that leisure, pleasure, and relaxation, based on the individual
s freedom to buy commodities will presumably satisfy any and
all reasonable human urges. Implicit in this paradigm is God
s reward for the wealthy in the United States who shouldn t pay
any taxes. God holds out a promise for the rest of the world:
they too can succeed by adopting the American set of values.
The US government in this under this
image exercises naked imperial power, saves the world from terrorists
and drug traffickers, makes it more democratic and protects our
interests which are usually classified, that is known to the
terrorists and drug traffickers but not the US public.
Those weak dissenters who demand changes
in Middle East policy that reflect regional realities and notions
of equality and justice feel vulnerable to attacks on their patriotism.
Those who demand attention to the immediate needs of the impoverished
three plus billion people, the screaming demands of the environment,
where the ice melting phenomena has scientists truly concerned
they just don t understand the culture of power.
In Bush s mind power derives from the
assumption that God has placed Nature in man s path for his immediate
and interminable use. Trees are for chopping down for packing
crates and tooth picks and furniture of course; animals are to
kill for meat, hide and sport; fish to catch; land to develop
and drill on and so on. Those who refer to income gaps incite
class warfare. However mad it may seem, this vision symbolizes
the nature of the people who currently manipulate power and wealth.
Their logic of power reigns as a cultural
imperative. This world view eschews consequences. They smirk
at references to increasing global poverty or ecological decay.
Similarly, Bush s appointees seem uninterested in the apparent
contradictions in US support of repressive regimes in some areas
and condemnation of similar regimes that display disobedient
tendencies in other regions
Bush relates to men who exercise power,
like Sharon, a man of peace, the Saudi King who shares a love
of Nature and the outdoors with the President because they both
enjoyed riding in a pickup truck over Bush s ranch. Both men
also, of course, play significant roles in the logic of the expanding
American empire. Sharon s vision of a greater Israel coincides
with Bush s theological supporters like the Reverends Jerry Falwell
and Pat Robertson, whose biblical mumbo jumbo demands that Israel
conquer the Middle East. The oily Saudis literally fuel the imperial
drive.
The logic of naked imperial power also
includes a world of bizarre contrasts. As Wade Davis underlines
in the July 6, 2002 Globe & Mail, Americans spend as much
on lawn maintenance as the government of India collects in federal
tax revenue.
The Bush vision of a world under the
thumb of US power requires a $400 billion defense budget, larger
than the entire economy of Australia. Yet, more than one sixth
of the world s population exists on less than $1 a day.
When Bush asked Why do they hate us?
I understand that he cannot imagine how playing video golf or
shaking hands with a six foot rat at Disneyland could offend
other people. Bush grew up with commercial values and knows only
one notion of development. He seems unable to understand that
this model has failed in the Middle East and throughout the third
world.
Those who have followed its commands
did not realize prosperity and happiness.
The model, based on high consumption
of energy and other resources that damage the environment, does
not coincide with the realities of Nature. The vision of power
and the facts of earth are on a collision course.
The vision of power assumes that science
and technology, the cause of some of the acute problems, can
solve whatever issues arise. Look how many babies now live that
once would have perished. The whole world enjoys increased life
expectancy, but if one looks deeper into the kind of lives that
third world people lead one sees something that obviously escapes
George W s visions. An Asian garment worker sewing jeans for
The Gap makes about $88 a month. That is they literally fall
into the gap, as their advertisement inadvertently tells us.
That gap has nothing to do with fashion
modes. Rather, as Davis describes, it means families of six share
one bed in one room off a warren of alleys strewn with human
waste and refuse.
The majority of the world however will
not share in Bush s world. Nor does he envision them participating.
In the Muslim world of a billon plus people, mostly very poor,
Osama bin Laden appeals to his kind of paradise, a supposed ideal
order in which harmony reined because people behaved in a properly
servile way toward God and their earthly masters. The calling
of the modern world is to forget the past, culture, values, language
and get with the commodity culture, the only one W can imagine,
the culture from which his vision of power has emerged. That
power rests on immense wealth and military potency.
What the innocent Americans have learned
through 9/11, however, is that neither our wealth nor military
power translates into security. We can continue to export Baywatch
into remote hamlets through the Middle East, but that will not
stop the melting of the ice, the warming of the globe or the
rising of the ocean levels.
Likewise, anti-Americanism will spread.
The December 5, 2002 Los Angeles Times describes a recent Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press public opinion study
in 44 countries. Called What the World Thinks in 2002, the report
found anti-American sentiment in Muslim countries profound. The
problems that concern the world s majority, according to the
report, included the gap between rich and poor, hunger, environment
and AIDS. Ironically, the majority in countries like Egypt and
Turkey like American technology and culture [but] they are displeased
over the spread of American ideas.
The ideas mean not just the exporting
of Baywatch and other T&A shows, but refer also to the exercise
of naked imperial power in the Middle East.
Under George W. Bush working with others
has meant bowing and scraping to the ultra right, subservience
to the gun and anti-abortion lobby, and the carte blanche for
the anti-Castro Cuban terrorists who helped elect him. Indeed,
in May, he ordered the Secret Service to let a Castro-hating
Cuban convicted of terrorism Reynaldo El Chino Aquit Manrique
was caught by authorities pouring gasoline on a Miami warehouse
in 1994 -- sit on the platform while he lauded the embargo against
Cuba.
Ironically, only criminal methods can
realize W s world vision. His culture of power means a government
of men, not laws, men willing to subjugate, dominate, and impose
their will on people and nature. And if you can t think of a
good answer for a pesky reporter, tell a joke.
If you agree with this analysis then
you ll conclude, as I have, that we face a dangerous situation
and you will thus be motivated to get off your ass and do something
about it.
Saul Landau
teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University, is a fellow at the Institute
for Policy Studies and has just completed a film: IRAQ:VOICES
FROM THE STREETS, available in English or Spanish from The Cinema
Guild, 1-800-723-5522. Landau can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
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