The 2004 Elections: War, Terrorism and the Need for Regime Change
By Carl Davidson

“It is a time for truth, writes Pat Buchanan, the conservative columnist on May 14. “In any guerrilla war we fight, there is going to be a steady stream of U.S. dead and wounded. There is going to be collateral damage – i.e., women and children slain and maimed. There will be prisoners abused. And inevitably, there will be outrages by U.S. troops enraged at the killing of comrades and the jeering of hostile populations. If you would have an empire, this goes with the territory. And if you are unprepared to pay the price, give it up.”

Bush’s reactionary approach to the problem of terrorism, moreover, reaches beyond Iraq. It has spurred, for instance, Israel’s Sharon regime to new recalcitrance and atrocities in its occupation of the Palestinians and new cycles of terrible violence from both sides of the conflict there.

Less Secure Than Ever

The net result so far: the U.S. and other countries, most recently Spain, are still the target of al-Quaeda’s terrorists. The U.S. is further bogged down in failing occupations in two countries, has never been more despised in the Islamic world, and has never been more isolated and estranged from many other peoples, countries and traditional allies across the globe.

Still Bush urges us to “stay the course.” Despite a “few bad weeks,” he claims “steady progress” is being made in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to questioning the patriotism of his critics, he and his underlings are clearly playing the fear of terrorism card to win support. National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice raised the specter of the bombings in Spain and the defeat of the conservative government there as a forecast of what might happen here between now and November. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Bush himself are making the rounds, warning of domestic terrorists and calling for more restrictions on civil liberties by making the so-called Patriot Act more repressive and “permanent.”

Yet hardly a day goes by that another top official of the national security establishment doesn’t break ranks and challenge the administration’s direction. They expose factional strife and deceptions, either by leaking information to the press, testifying in hearings, appearing on news shows or writing books challenging the White House line. Sidney Blumenthal, former Clinton advisor, writing in the May 13 Guardian (UK), shows how the divisions are even erupting in the officer corps and the Pentagon:

“William Odom, a retired general and former member of the National Security Council who is now at the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank, reflects a wide swath of opinion in the upper ranks of the military. ‘It was never in our interest to go into Iraq,’ he told me. It is a ‘diversion’ from the war on terrorism; the rationale for the Iraq war (finding WMD) is ‘phony’; the US army is overstretched and being driven ‘into the ground’; and the prospect of building a democracy is ‘zero’. In Iraqi politics, he says, ‘legitimacy is going to be tied to expelling us. Wisdom in military affairs dictates withdrawal in this situation. We can't afford to fail, that's mindless. The issue is how we stop failing more. I am arguing a strategic decision.’” More >>