The Populist Review

Bobby's Legacy

   When JFK tapped his brother to be Attorney General, most saw it as a sinecure. Bobby was thirty-five. His legal experience was limited to a year at Justice and a few years as Chief Council to the Senate’s “Rackets” Committee, investigating such organized crime figures as David Beck and Jimmy Hoffa. It was a brash move, but JFK needed someone he could trust. He had narrowly defeated Richard Nixon in the election and Nixon loyalists were everywhere: generals and key figures in the intelligence community with a stake in preserving the Cold War, gangsters employed by Nixon while orchestrating political assassinations as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president―a tradition carried on by successive Republican V.P.’s―mobsters in business and organized labor resolute on retaining their toehold in commerce and stranglehold on the American worker, industrialists with a stake in expanding their military contracts, Texas oil men with links to foreign nationalists, right-wing extremists hell-bent on destabilizing the nation, and Americans who saw in Nixon’s red-baiting imperative a sanctuary from the fear he created.

   But Bobby rose to the occasion. And in this America of 1960, an America steeped in racism and powerful special interests, with a shadow government whose barbarous methods had been demonstrated in places like Iran and Guatemala, John and Bobby used their collective power to change the status quo.  

  Predictably, Bobby used his office to target many of the same people he had before. “If we do not,” he said in his days at Justice. “on a national scale, attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.” And he was right. Syndicates in America posed a virulent threat to our democracy and needed to be stopped. But organized crime had grown so powerful by that time―with the help of J. Edgar Hoover―and had forged so many ties with government officials that it was virtually impossible to stop them. Organized criminals held the key to America’s dirtiest secrets, and with them, the compromised careers of our public servants.

  So, it was perhaps apropos, given the fact that J. Edgar Hoover obstructed any effort to prosecute his criminal associates, that Bobby broadened his focus to include those issues over which he might ply more substantive influence, most notably integration. And in that arena, there was plenty to do. By 1960, blacks in the South, exasperated at what they saw as reluctance on the part of the federal government to enforce existing integration law, took matters into their own hands. Four blacks in North Carolina staged a sit-in at a lunch counter reserved for whites, inciting similar acts of defiance. “Freedom Riders” rode buses throughout the South, exposing the institutionalized hatred that met them at every station. James Meredith defied the State of Mississippi and enrolled in the state university, sparking widespread violence and prompting JFK to send in federal troops.

  But it was Bobby who really defined JFK’s commitment to civil rights. “We will not stand by or be aloof,” he said. “We will move.” And, in a similar comment on those who maligned the cause of integration: “What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.” In hindsight he might have changed that phrase to ”what they do about their opponents," given the fact his assassination, and the assassinations of JFK, Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and others could hardly be seen as random (the LAPD took twenty years to release their report on the RFK assassination, despite persistent requests. When they did, photos were missing, evidence discarded, key suspects were never interviewed, including a couple seen fleeing the Mayflower Hotel shouting, “We shot him! We shot him!”) The threat of stigma cannot dissuade the inference that powerful forces were at work to silence our leftist leaders.

  Yet it was a measure of his character that Bobby Kennedy risked his life and favor with entrenched special interests to serve a greater good. And it was that willingness to fight for the little guy, to stand firm in the face of bigotry, violence, exploitation, and political expediency that fueled his lasting legacy--a legacy made all the more poignant by the schemes of our current administration.

  And as we look back today, thirty-eight years after his death, at a time when calls for our withdrawal overseas seem almost anachronistic, it’s tempting to temper our image of Bobby Kennedy with sentimentality. But if we do, we miss the passion that captivated our imagination in the first place. Bobby was nothing if not a fighter. His was a true liberalism, battle-born yet founded on a respect for human dignity. And his life embraced the wisdom of that oft-forgotten adage: Liberties are never granted. They’re taken.

                                                

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

Our Man, Chavez

   Whatever you think of Hugo Chavez, you have to admit he’s entertaining. Anyone who castigates the president (“our president,” the Democrats squawked as they rallied to his defense) while waving a copy of Noam Chomskey’s latest book can’t be all bad. And he’s clearly an improvement over Carlos Perez who used the military to kill thousands of protestors during the social uprisings in 1989.

   But what exactly has Chavez accomplished since taking office in 1998 (in what President Bush calls “an elected dictatorship”) and can his “revolution” really be called populist―empowering the poor and middle class―or is it a transfer of wealth between warring elites with support from a poor rapacious for change?

   To be sure, Venezuela was ripe for the picking in 1998. The dual political system that comprised the old Venezuelan guard was rotting on the vine. Allegations of corruption and pilferage from the country’s vast oil wealth, leading to harsh economic measures, had the campesinos seeing red. Chavez, already a folk hero for staging two ill-fated coups against Perez, had only to play to his fans―fans who cheered at the prospect of any revolution.

  But six years later, Chavez’s “socialist revolution” remains largely rhetorical. Most Venezuelans still live in poverty (about 60%). Many live in shanties around the nation’s capitol, as they had before. Unemployment remains endemic despite the country’s massive oil and mineral reserves, and the country’s per capita murder rate is the highest in the world [U.S. State Department, Nov. 24, 2006]. True, education has been expanded. The nation’s literacy rate has increased dramatically. Efforts are underway to improve housing in the worst slums of Caracas. And 17 million Venezuelans are receiving free health care for the first time in their lives. But whether these efforts will suffice to lift the poor from their intrinsic squalor has yet to be seen.

  Chavez’s revolution is also more autocratic than socialist, at least from our perspective. He split the country’s oil company in two in response to industry attempts to mobilize their workers against him. He sacked a thousand workers from the industry to bolster loyalty. He threatened to revoke the licenses of television stations that “foment conspiracies” against his government. And the unaccounted deaths of his detractors add an aura of fear, if not panic, to his opposition in the upcoming elections.

   And yet, Chavez continues to inspire. He pulled Venezuela from the School of the Americas (the U.S. torture school at Fort Benning, GA). He’s avoided an unknown number of assassination attempts, including a call for his head by Pat Robertson. He meets with heads of state more regularly than the Pope and he's offered low-cost fuel to the downtrodden in Europe and America.

   But it's his message, rather than his actions, that strike a resonant chord with the poor in Venzuela, and indeed the world. Like JFK, whose record on helping the poor paled when compared to his military budget, Chavez has a silver tongue. He knows what the people want to hear and he knows how to say it. Whether or not he can translate that gift into an unprecedented eleventh term will have to be seen on Dec. 3rd. Barring a candygram from Pat Robertson, our guess is he's a shoe-in.

                                             

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

Our History of Gratitude

On June 15, 1585, before there were English settlements in America, Richard Grenville landed on the shores of Virginia at Secotan with seven boats. The “Indians” he met greeted him with food and drink. Indeed, according to his log the next day, “we were well entertained there of the Savages.” Yet when a single silver cup went missing, Grenville burnt their village to the ground and “sployed their corne.”

  Twenty-two years later, Jamestown was erected. In the face of servitude and starvation, many of the settlers―prisoners, slaves, indentured servants― escaped to settle with the Indians. In 1610, the governor of Jamestown asked for the runaways back. The Indian chief, Powhatan, left the choice in their hands. None agreed. In response, a garrison was dispatched to wreak havoc. Houses were burned, sixteen braves were killed, corn was hacked to ribbons, and the female leader of the tribe was taken hostage with her children. The children were shot in the head. The mother was stabbed to death. Thus began our illustrious history of gratitude.

   Word of the barbarous newcomers spread quickly through the Indian villages and they retaliated in kind. When it became clear that the tribes wouldn’t acquiesce to tyranny, the settlers embarked on a policy of genocide.

   In Massachusetts, the Pilgrims, driven to metastasize with a frenzy that matched their piety, invoked passages from the Bible to justify their excesses―not the Lord’s Prayer, as would have been apt, but Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” The Indians received just that.

   To quench their tantalian thirst for land and domination, the Puritans sent an armed expedition to Block Island to attack the Narragansett Indians. They returned to the mainland to attack the Pequot, burning crops and wigwams along the way. It’s estimated six hundred Pequots died that day. A fitting end to a nation whose only claim to the land was possession for ten thousand years. But the Pequots would not be the last.

  Over the next few years, colonists murdered over three hundred thousand Indians. In all, ten million native Americans were reduced to a million by English settlers. And yet, not all participated in the carnage. Some snuck off to fight with the Indians. Others fought grudgingly. It was the Puritan elite―the Religious Right of its day―who drove the bloodbath, hiding behind a cloak of righteousness. They believed in private property, a concept foreign to the indigenous people. They believed that children should be “beaten down,” according to John Robinson, pastor of the Puritan clan. They cheered the plaque that destroyed the Patuxet Indians as “The Wonderful Preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The thought of invoking these reprehensible characters belies the very essence of thanksgiving.

   Individually, we Americans are a grateful people. We give to charity. We open our homes to those stricken with illness. We hand a buck to the homeless guy on the corner. Yet, even today, we are easily waylaid by Puritans in our midst. Pat Robertson. Jerry Falwell. James Dobson. Men who support our murderous escapades while reciting scripture. Men who stoke the fears held by average people to increase their power. Men whose shallow hearts can only be placated by hate.

   This year, instead of invoking the Puritans, let’s offer ourselves to true kinship with man. And let's turn a deaf ear to those mercenaries who spew venom while claiming piety. In the end, it's only by developing that kinship that we can embark on a new chapter in the history of our republic.

                                             

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

The Comfort in Secrecy

   John F. Kennedy once said, “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people are inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.” Yet today, on this 43^rd

anniversary of his assassination, we have become that secret society. Even the case for our wars is unknown, as evinced by the myth that “sectarian violence” lies at the root of our conundrum in Iraq. Indeed, not a day goes by without some mention of the phrase in the press. But is the violence in Iraq the result of warring factions, struggling for dominance and revenge while a U.S. paper tiger plays referree―or is it a time-worn and calculated strategy to refocus resentment, fracture resistance, and compel our continued occupation?

  To be sure, few Americans get the real story. Military censorship began under Bush 41 with a tacit nod from the corporate media, and is now steeped in tradition. Journalists are hand-picked from sympathetic news outlets and journey with coalition forces with the understanding that they’ll be “briefed” after “exposure to sensitive information” on what “they should avoid covering” [Pentagon guidelines]. Interviews are on-the-record to discourage leakers. Photos, video footage, and battlefield dispatches are cleared by DoD censors. “Restricted” information ―information that might prove embarrassing―is only shared with journalists who agree to be vetted. And to further decrease the subjectivity of these journalists―and increase favorable reports―they’re embedded with individual units and undergo similar training.

   The result of this blanket secrecy is widespread confusion as to our role in Iraq and ignorance as to our methods. Pictures of mourners and blood-spattered walls are often accompanied with an implication that Iraqis are warring amongst themselves with “insurgents” stirring the pot. Noticeably absent are reports that the death squads who’ve murdered thousands of Iraqis opposed to our occupation are trained by the United States. Indeed, 1,536 Iraqis were murdered in September and another 3,700 this past month. That doesn’t count the thousands of men, women, and children who’ve been burned, blinded, disfigured, or blown to bits by our “smart bombs.”

  Also under-reported are the attrocities committed by our troops. In March, five soldiers from the 502^nd Infantry Regiment allegedly participated in the rape-slaying of an Iraqi girl and the brutal murders of her mother, father, and sister, before attempting to incinerate the bodies to conceal their crime. Also that month, 11 civilians died in the village of Ishaqi. Villagers claimed they were murdered deliberately by U.S. troops, but the Pentagon exonerated the men. In April, Marines entered several homes in Haditha and murdered the occupants in cold blood, including children. Last November, in the predominantly Sunni town of Haditha, U.S. Marines apparently went on a rampage, executing 24 civilians, including women and children. The Pentagon is still investigating.

    Would these atrocities be tolerated if they were broadcast on the nightly news? Would any segment of the American public support this war if they knew what was going on?

   “Change the channel,” Gen. Mark Kimmet said when asked how Iraqis should cope with TV images of civilians being killed by coalition troops.

  How chillingly apropos. For, in the absence of independent reporting, and any claim to moral ascendancy, the American public is left with the same option.

   "The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie," Kennedy said. "...but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

   If Kennedy was right, "we as a people" are comfortable indeed.

                                                

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

Are The Democrats Just Plain Stupid?

   First Nancy Pelosi fractures her party’s unity by supporting an ethically-challenged conservative whose only qualification for Majority Leader is his stance on Iraq. Now, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) plans to submit legislation to reinstate the draft. And not just for people aged 18 to 26, mind you, as he called for in 2003 with support from Pelosi’s Murtha―a proposal he voted against himself―but for people between the ages of 18 to 42. And why? To deter politicians from launching new wars.

  Notwithstanding his cryptic logic, or the fact Harlem voters sent him back to the House to extract their kids from harm’s way, Rep. Rangel continued his rant. “If we’re going to challenge Iran and…North Korea…and send more troops to Iraq, we can’t do that without a draft.” Even Lindsey Graham, the conservative senator from South Carolina who holds a colonel’s rank in the Reserves, disagreed. “I think we can do this with an all-voluntary Army…and if we can't…we'll look for some other option.” But Rangel continued undaunted. This morning, he expanded his inference that Congress will back a proposal for more troops in Iraq by declaring his support for Sen. John McCain, whose plan calls for an “overwhelming” number of troops for the region.

  Our question is this: Is this the same Charlie Rangel who voted against our intervention in Iraq and stated after the Iraq elections that Americans “don’t want their children to die for other people’s freedom”? If so, perhaps he should review the history of public sentiment toward conscription before sinking his party two months before taking their oaths.

  At the start of the Civil War, conscription resulted in wild demonstrations throughout the North and turned especially violent in New York where 50,000 people lit fires and terrorized neighborhoods in what came to be known as the New York Draft Riots. Though many factors contributed to the melees, protesters were particularly miffed at the fact that people of means could opt out of the draft by paying a “commutation fee.” This perception still haunts us today, exacerbated by the antics of George Bush going AWOL without reprisal.

  When President Wilson revived the draft in 1917, immigrant and socialist communities in the Northeast responded with widespread resistance. Violence erupted in the South as well, where rural whites and poverty-stricken blacks took matters into their own hands. In addition, nearly 2,000 conscientious objectors refused to cooperate in any way. John Whiteclaim Chambers, in his well-researched chronicle of the draft during World War I, “To Raise An Army”, estimates that between 2.4 and 3.6 million men avoided the draft in 1917 by refusing to register, countering long-held beliefs in the war’s popularity. His estimates explain the imperative Congress felt when it passed the Espionage Act that same year, expanding the powers of Justice to prosecute draft resisters and citizens who failed to register.

   The first peacetime conscription was instituted in 1940 with the establishment of the Selective Service Training Act. At that time, men were inducted into the army between the ages of 21 and 35 and could only serve in the Western Hemisphere or U.S. possessions or territories, a caveat Mr. Rangel might consider if his goal is to curb U.S. adventurism. Even during World War II, our most popular war by far, over 12,000 conscientious objectors refused to serve and were sent to Civilian Public Service camps throughout the United States.

  Following the "War to End All Wars," Congress extended the draft, then let it expire, then revived it in response to the Cold War. When hostilities broke out in Korea―hostilities in which Mr. Rangel participated―Congress extended the draft again by way of The Universal Military Training and Service Act. It was Barry Goldwater, of all people, who proposed ending conscription, the quintessential hawk. But when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and our destiny in Vietnam all but assured, the draft was extended indefinitely.

  Thus began the most divisive and unified draft resistance movement in U.S. history. Thousands took to the streets. Thousands more burned their draft cards or refused to register. An untold number fled to Canada. Some even severed their fingers or toes. In November, 1969, a quarter of a million people swarmed the Capitol to protest the draft and the war it supported. In response, an all-volunteer army was instituted in 1973. That volunteer army continues to this day.

  If Rep. Rangel thinks an increase in troop levels will lessen the chance of military adventures, we beg to differ. Massive troop expansions, on the scale he proposes, would only embolden the Executive branch. And with a third of our population overseas, employers would increasingly turn to undocumented workers to fill their positions (not that they need much prodding). We would therefore find ourselves in the untenable position of having citizens dying in far-off lands for non-citizens who’ve taken their jobs.  

   If a manager can’t manage with finite resources he’s not fit to manage. And if our leaders can’t win their unwanted wars with the current all-volunteer army, perhaps they should try diplomacy. The draft has been, and always will be, political suicide for anyone who supports it. One can only hope Rep. Rangel's fellow Democrats will take their cues from the electorate.

                                                 

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

Seoul Searching

   With missiles aimed at their cities and a wave of refuges set to cross the DMZ at the first sign of hostilities, is it any wonder President Bush was snubbed by the South Koreans in his attempt to rally support for a U.S.-backed plan to intercept inbound shipping to North Korea? The South Koreans know how their neighbors to the north escalated their technology to such a point as to pose a threat to their neighbors and the world (despite a U.S. embargo). They did it with the help of Rev. Sun Myoung Moon, the man who built his fortune using military mind-control tactics on our kids while claiming to be the new messiah, sent to finish the failed mission of Jesus Christ. 

  But is Rev. Moon still active?

  Sadly, the answer is yes. Most Americans are unaware of Moon’s sprawling presence, aside from his control of the Washington Times, but fronts for his Unification Church are everywhere: United Press International, American Family Coalition, American Council for World Freedom, American Freedom Coalition, Christian Voice―an organization that worked closely with Tim LaHaye’s Coalition for Traditional Values―American Parents Association, First Amendment Research Institute, International Coalition for Religious Freedom―which boasts Jerry Falwell as an initial board member―International Family Association, International Security Council, True World Foods, which provides much of the sushi served in American restaurants. The list goes on and on.

   Most Americans are also unaware that many players in the Religious Right have been linked to Moon, who himself is linked with South Korea’s neo-fascist intelligence service and violent anti-communist organizations. Jon Podhoretz of FOX television, Rod Godwin, who left Moral Majority to become business manager for Moon’s Insight Magazine, Louis Jenkins, who founded Friends of the Americas (FOA), identified by Contra leaders as a principle source of their supplies, Tim LaHaye, the best-selling Christian author who writes “rapture” fantasies and founded the Moral Majority.

  They’re also unaware of Moon’s intimate relationship with the Bush family, a relationship that dates back decades. It’s estimated that Rev. Moon funneled as much as $10 million to George Bush, Sr. during the course of the ‘80’s and ’90. Bush also received compensation for addressing Moon gatherings, as he did in Japan where he received “six figures” for his efforts see article.

   What did he have to say about Moon?  

   In one such address, Bush hailed the self-styled demi-god as “the man with the vision” even as Moon was calling American women descendents of a “line of prostitutes” and America “Satan’s harvest.”

  But the Bush family knows a good harvest when they see one and Moon’s rabidly right-wing, Washington Times―hailed by President Reagan as his “favorite newspaper”―has been nothing if not part of that harvest. They supported the illegal war against the Sandinistas and countered well-documented allegations of drug trafficking by the Bush-backed Contras. They led the charge against Lawrence Walsh, special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra hearings, when he threatened to expose the cover-up that protected George Bush. They published false rumors about Michael Dukakas’ mental instability when he outpolled the senior Bush and spread false rumors that Bill Clinton had been recruited by the KGB during a college trip to Moscow.

  And what has Moon received for his efforts? For one thing, taxpayer money. During the 2000 campaign, Moon operatives pushed hard for Bush’s “faith-based” initiative which most people assumed would funnel cash to more traditional organizations. But Moon’s organizations benefited handsomely from the program. Free Teens, an after-school celibacy program run by former high-ranking officials in the Unification Church, received a $475,280 grant for “abstinence education.” Another Moon front, Service For Peace, received $80,000 to provide support projects to coincide with the Martin Luther King, Jr Day of Service. Other Moon groups received money for “marriage improvement” seminars to promote Moon’s right-wing agenda to “purify our sex-corrupted culture” and rid the country of gays (who he calls “dung-eating dogs”). Indeed, James Towley, Director of the White House on Faith Based and Community Initiatives, speaking at a conference sponsored by the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace―another Moon front―announced without hyperbole that Bush’s faith-based initiative was “the centerpiece of the president’s domestic policy.” Such priorities, at a time when our national energy crisis was growing to crisis proportions, serves only to underscore the unholy alliance between Bush and the Reverend Moon.

  In 2003, Bush appointed David Caprara, a Moon operative from Moon’s American Family Coalition to head AmeriCorps. In 2005, as the bodies piled up in New Orleans, the Universal Peace Federation, another Moon front, gave $1 million to Bush’s Points of Light Foundation, ostensibly to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Moon's Washington Times Foundation then purchased education materials from Ignite! Learning, a company owned by Neil Bush that benefited nicely from Hurricane Katrina through donations “earmarked” for his products. This summer, the Houston Chronicle reported that Moon’s Washington Times gave $1 million to the Greater Houston Community Foundation at A&M University (home to Bob Gates)―money that reappeared in a donation to Bush’s presidential library. The connections are relentless and irrefutable.

  But what do Moon’s ties to the Bush family have to do with the North Koreans?

  According to Defense Intelligence Agency documents, Moon’s business empire paid North Korea’s communist leaders millions of dollars in the early ‘90’s at a time when the North Korean government was desperate for cash. The payments included a $3 million “birthday present” to communist leader, Kim Jong II, and offshore payments to the previous communist leader, Kim Sung II, in the order of “tens of millions” of dollars. The Washington Times then attacked President Clinton for failing to be more aggressive in defending the country against North Korea’s missile program. Whether or not that missle program could have been started without Moon’s help is up for debate.   

   But there's no debating the fact that Moon’s agenda has been greatly enhanced by the Bush family―an agenda that calls for Korea's reunification, presumably under fascist rule. And there's no doubt the South Koreans know this. They also realize their security, and the stability of the region, has been greatly eclipsed by this tip in the balance of power. Is it any wonder they're hesitant to provoke hostilities?

                                                   

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

Vietnamization II

   In a rare press conference that followed his party’s “thumpin’", George Bush was asked if he saw any parallels between the current situation in Iraq and our policies toward Vietnam in the late 1960’s. “First of all,” he said, “Iraq…voted on a constitution. Secondly…this is a volunteer Army. [And] thirdly, the support for our troops is strong here in the United States. So I see differences, I really do.” 

   But despite a constitution ratified beneath the watchful eyes of an occupying force, the lack of conscription in the U.S., and a support for our troops that in no way diminishes the widespread opposition to the war, parallels between Iraq and Vietnam persist.

    In both cases, support for the war was based on orchestrated sophistry. In Vietnam, Americans were told a nation of pre-industrial farmers could pose a security threat to the United States. In Iraq, we were told Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, though the pilots were Saudi nationals, and that he'd amassed a cache of nuclear weapons. In both cases, support for the war waned as distortions were exposed, casualties mounted, and evidence of U.S. attrocities surfaced in the mainstream press. In Vietnam, it was the massacre at Mai Lai. In Iraq, it was the abuse of prisoners at Abu Graib prison.

   In both cases, chaos gave way to a search for a “decent interval.” In 1969, President Nixon adopted a policy of “Vietnamization.” His policy called on the South Vietnamese to increase their participation in the war, setting the stage for an “honorable” U.S. exit. In 2006, the calls for a U.S. withdrawal and increased Iraqi participation can be heard from every quarter.   

  The nuclear card was also reserved in both cases. In 1968, to ensure North Vietnamese participation in peace talks, Bob Haldeman, Nixon’s right hand man and one of the chief U.S. negotiators for the talks, let it be known that the president was so unstable and staunchly anti-communist that he might, at any time, resort to nuclear weapons―the so-called “Madman Theory.” Today, it’s well known that the U.S., Israel, and Turkey are in the advanced stages of a plan to use nuclear weapons against Iran, widely perceived as a staging area for Iraqi “insurgents.” Whether that plan will be used as a bargaining chip remains to be seen.

  In 1967, Nixon created the Phoenix Program, a secretive CIA program to train South Vietnamese to infiltrate their peasant communities in search of NVA sympathizers. The sympathizers were then murdered by death squads. Today, death squads from Iraq’s Ministry of Interior, dressed as Iraqi police with an uncanny ability to get through U.S. checkpoints, have been killing “insurgent” sympathizers by the hundreds, mostly Sunni. Indeed, a U.N. human rights report released last year claimed the Interior Minsitry forces were responsible for an "organized campaign of detentions, torture and killings" and asserted that special police commando units who carried out these killings were recruited from Shia Badr and Mehdi militias, trained by U.S. forces. 

   In Vietnam, as with Iraq, generals on the ground insisted the country could never hold its own without a continued U.S. presence. It was Henry Kissinger, bowing to political pressure, who proposed withdrawing our troops back then. And as we made our exit from Danang and Saigon, pandemonium gripped the countryside and rockets rained down on the citizens as the NVA made their final sweep. Thousands of South Vietnamese lost their lives or committed suicide.

   It is therefore the similarities to Vietnam rather than its differences, I believe, that drive this president to stay the course in Iraq, as reaffirmed in his comments this morning from Hanoi. “We’ll succeed unless we quit.” But that similarity also infers a similar fate regardless of the president’s tenacity. The deceit that propelled us to war in both cases set the stage for a popular outcry. That outcry implies this president will find it difficult to prevent the inevitable.

                                                   

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

Jack, We Hardly Knew Ya

   There’s a scene in the film, Pulp Fiction, where Harvey Keitel arrives at Tarrantino’s door to help his unwelcome guests, Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, dispose of a body accidentally splattered across the back seat of their compact. Keitel smiles, offers a congenial hand, then says in his calm, reassuring manner: “Gentlemen, I’m The Wolf. I fix things.” A half hour later, the problem solved, Keitel drives off in his glistening Ferrari and our heroes are left in awe.

   Now, I don’t know if they’ll ever remake Tarrantino’s classic―I doubt anyone would even try―but if they do, I’d like to recommend Paul Huck for the part of The Wolf. He’s the U.S. District Court Judge in Miami who just sentenced Jack Abramoff to 70 months in jail for conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud―the equivalent, for this defendent, of a parking ticket―and effectively derailed a two-year Justice Department investigation that led right to the White House. Indeed, Jack Abramoff made over four hundred visits to the White House and counted Karl Rove among his many friends. His other friends included over 40 Republican congressmen and their aides. All have come under heavy scrutiny in the investigation. All could very well find themselves in similar straits. And that’s not to mention the Democrats still cowering in the wings.

  But all that changed when the gavel came crashing down on Tuesday. And as the man who might well have exposed the entire gamut of corruption in Washington was led from the room, Judge Huck declared from his bench, “It’s time to pay the piper.”

  But which “piper” was he referring to? If he meant the American public, I beg to differ. The American public, who consistently place political corruption near the top of their list of grievances, gains nothing by this decision. In fact, despite assurances that Abramoff's political corruption trial will begin the moment he steps from prison, their hopes have been dealt a death blow. If he means the hundreds of federal investigators and prosecutors who worked on this case and are now left to decipher mountains of encoded messages and make connections between political donations and actions by bribed officials without benefit of their star witness, he’s wrong again. Jack Abramoff won’t be available for questioning. He’s serving his term in Cumberland, Maryland, six hours away from the Justice Department and four hours further than the facility requested by prosecutors.

  No, it seems to me the piper alluded to by Judge Huck is a combination of White House officials and members of Congress aggrieved by the threat of exposure―the collective equivalent of Tarrantino’s bumbling hit men. And the losers, of course, are the American people who’ve been robbed once again of their chance to be rid of systemic corruption. And as for Mr. Abramoff, I'd keep my eyes open if I was him. Anything can happen in jail over the course of 70 months, especially if you're ready to sing your heart out the moment you step from the gates.

 

   Jack, my boy, we hardly knew ya.

                                                    

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

Terms of Impeachment

   Paul Weyrich, considered by many to be the architect of the neocon revolution who founded the Moral Majority, the American Legislative Exchange Council―a powerful lobbying group in Washington that generates “model” bills, resolutions, and policy statements to benefit a corporate elite―and the Heritage Foundation, a radical think tank that spawned such Bush appointees as Kay James, Elaine Chao, and Condolezza Rice, once said, “We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of the country.” He went on to characterize his neocon revolution as Maoist, saying: “I believe you have to control the countryside, and the capitol will eventually fall.”

   When the Bushies took power, Karl Rove announced to a gathering of right-wing leaders that the president “had asked the Heritage Foundation…to review all the executive orders put in place by President Clinton…and recommend which ones should be overturned.”

    It was clear this administration would be taking its cues from a radical base hell-bent on subverting democracy.

   Six years later our liberties hang by a thread. The National Security Agency, under orders from President Bush, is compiling a database of every phone call made in the United States [USA Today, May, 2006] despite a ruling that declared the warrantless spying unconstitutional. U.S. citizens can be jailed without charge for indefinite periods of time without access to counsel. They can be denied a trial by jury. They can be convicted without seeing the evidence against them. They can be whisked to secret prisons outside the U.S. and tortured to extract “confessions.”

    Six years later, a war based on fabricated intelligence and military policy directed by the subversive neocons at the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon is on track to cost the American taxpayer an incredible $2 trillion. How these expenditures served the Vice President through his massive holdings in Haliburton is clear to anyone.

    But are these impeachable offenses? Should the Democratic House and Senate start investigations to lay the groundwork for impeaching the President, Vice President, and Attorney General?

   The answer is a resounding yes.

   Article II, Sec. 4 of the U.S. Constitution states: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

  The phrase, “high crimes and misdemeanors” was expanded upon in a report released by the Justice Department in the midst of the Watergate crisis: “Two points emerge from the 400 years of English parliamentary experience with the phrase ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors.’ First, the particular allegations of misconduct allege damage to the state in such forms as misapplication of funds, abuse of official power, neglect of duty, encroachment on Parliament¹s prerogatives, corruption, and betrayal of trust. Second, the phrase ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’ was confined to parliamentary impeachments; it had no roots in the ordinary criminal law, and the particular allegations of misconduct under that heading were not necessarily limited to common law or statutory derelictions or crimes.”

   Damage to the state through the misapplication of funds? Abuse of official power? Betrayal of trust? Can anyone who knows the facts and holds even a passing interest in the preservation of our democracy claim this administration is not guilty of these impeachable offenses?

   And yet there is little hope the Democratic majorities will initiate impeachment proceedings. With a veto-proof House, the prevailing wind leans move toward pushing legislation and changing the course of the war in Iraq, a misguided strategy that ties the Democrats to the president’s unfolding nightmare and ensures their defeat in 2008.

    If our democracy is to survive we must realize that our nation is at a crossroads. If these crimes go unaddressed, and the perpetrators allowed to continue their march toward despotism, tokens like “troop redeployment” and minimum wage increases will pale in comparison to our lost opportunity. The case for impeachment is clear. Democrats would do well to attend to the business at hand before setting their sights on a giddy agenda.

                                                

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net

What Price, Bipartisanship?

   The president and his lapdogs in the corporate press have gone to great lengths to characterize Robert Gates, Dubya’s choice to replace Don Rumsfeld at the DoD, as a pensive academic, reluctantly leaving his post at A&M University to serve a country in crisis. The administration claims he’ll bring “fresh eyes” to an embattled Pentagon. ABCNews went so far as to call him the “new secretary of defense,” assuming his confirmation even as the president was calling the incoming Speaker of the House, “Congresswoman Pelosi.”

  But who is Robert Gates, and will his confirmation be as smooth as the press presumes?

  Sadly, in deference to a Democratic obsession to appear bipartisan, the answer to question two is probably yes. But the question of who best to run the Pentagon at a time when our military has spread to every corner of the planet―a military with nearly 800 bases around the world―and a time when the death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan has soared by some estimates to over 600,000 souls, is no less crucial. So, let’s take a closer look.

  Robert Gates was well known through the ‘80’s as man with a knack for spinning intelligence. Indeed, it was this knack that fueled his rise at the CIA from career officer to deputy to the presiding director, Bill Casey. According to Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, Gates spun intelligence on everything. From the Soviet Union to the Middle East, from Southwest Asia to Central America, Gates had a reputation for making hard intelligence fit the will of his political masters. And with the Reagan Administration selling weapons to Iran and Iraq and directing an illegal war in Nicaragua, politicized intelligence was a hot commodity.

  It was this knack, along with his role in the Iran-Contra fiasco―a role he denied, perjuring himself before the Senate Intelligence Committee―that led the committee to reject his nomination in 1987 as CIA Director by an overwhelming 31 votes, more negative votes than incurred by any CIA Director since the agency’s inception. Even Barry Goldwater voted against him, a bipartisan stance rarely invoked by the pundits who pine for the lost days of Reagan’s bipartisanship.

   But the Senate’s rejection wasn’t the end of Bob Gates. Dutiful public servant that he was, he went to work on David Boren―then-Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee―and Boren’s staff director, George Tenet, the man who would later spin the intelligence that led us to our current debacle in Iraq. Gates promised to run the CIA carefully and told Boren he’d work closely with the Senate Intelligence Committee, vetting covert operations and projects around the world. His guarantees worked. Boren eventually bought into the line and Gates was confirmed in a second nomination.

   As Bill Casey’s right hand man, Bob Gates was a busy guy. He wrote the director’s speeches, and supplied him with briefings and testimony. He offered backdated filings to keep Casey out of hot water with the Senate Intelligence Committee, a committee increasingly frustrated with the director’s antics. He was also well versed on the underhanded dealings of the Reagan Administration. He knew they were arming Saddam Hussein. He knew they were arming Saddam’s enemies in Iran through contacts they’d made during the arms-for-hostages swap engineered to topple Jimmy Carter. He knew the proceeds from those sales were being used to fund a war in Nicaragua, a war declared illegal by the American people. But Bob Gates was nothing if not anxious to please.

  When he left his post at the CIA to become Deputy National Security Advisor to the White House under George Bush, Sr., he was called on the carpet by James Baker for undermining U.S. policy through his efforts to serve his master at the NSA. In 1991, in recognition of his unwavering loyalty to political expedients, if not the American public, he was nominated to head the CIA where he served for three years. During his nomination hearings he denied ever having met with the Iranians to secure a weapons deal to fund our war in Nicaragua. Yet two years later, in a report by the Russians, commissioned by Lee Hamilton―Bob Gates’ compatriot on the much-touted Iraq Study Group―it was shown that he did have these meetings and did, in fact, play a role in the illegal weapons deals with Iranian operatives.

  Will these allegations surface in his confirmation hearings? Will Bob Gates come clean about his involvement in the Iran-Contra scheme? Or will the newly-elected Democratic majority sacrifice our demand for change at the Pentagon on the altar of bipartisanship―a bipartisanship negated by this very nomination?

  These questions remain to be answered. But if the Democrats confirm Robert Gates it will set the stage for a continuation of the war in Iraq, notwithstanding their rhetoric on “redeployment” or the findings of the Iraq Study Group. And if that happens, you can bet your last dinar, the tide of the electorate will swell again. The American public didn't vote for bipartisanship at any cost when they cast their ballots on Election Day. They voted for change. That change begins by rejecting this nomination.

                                                 

Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net