Smirk's top 10 Cold War Retreads
Gandalf Grey
George W. Shrub's Top 10 Cold War Relics
Two weeks ago, on the eve of a major address by the "president," the
Associated Press cited administration officials as saying the Shrub would
speak against a Cold War-era relic. The next day, the Shrubnut issued a call
to arms for those who are stuck in the past: The old paradigm, he said on
May 1, "ignores the fundamental breakthroughs in technology during the last
30 years. It prohibits us from exploring all options for defending against
the threats that face us, our allies and other countries."
I thought to myself: Finally, leader of the free world has spoken out
against our addiction to fossil fuels and demanded that we create new
technologies that would point us toward renewable energy. That's certainly a
Cold War relic that needs to be changed for the good of the country.
I was disappointed, to say the least, when I realized the president was
actually talking about scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and
investing in a pie-in-the-sky Star Wars plan that will halt Russia's
reduction of nuclear warheads and fuel China's rapid development of these
weapons (for previous articles against the missile shield, click here and
here).
I understand that I expect too much from Incurious George. After all, this
is a man who on Friday declared Timothy McVeigh -- whose trial we now know
was bungled by a prosecution more eager for judgment than for the truth --
guilty as charged because the Oklahoma City bomber confessed in a recent
book. "I take him at his word," the "president" said. Interesting that he
would take a convicted murderer of 168 people, many of them children, at his
word. I was surprised Bush didn't follow up with, "He's a good man. He's got
a good heart."
Anyway, all this talk about Star Wars got me thinking that if Dubya was
truly interested in eliminating Cold War-era relics from our domestic and
foreign policies, there are a few that make more sense than commonsense arms
control. In addition to fossil fuels, here's the rest of "George W. Shrub's
Top 10 Cold War Relics."
Donald Rumsfeld
Want to eliminate a Cold War relic? Why not go right to the source. Now,
Rummy, unlike the Major League Dick, has argued on the surface for the use
of new technologies, rather than those that were in place the last time he
was defense secretary (back in the days, we might remember, when our young
and irresponsible "president" was young and irresponsible). But the
underlying principle that's guiding him is that the world is an enemy that
is constantly trying to destroy us.
When you begin with this principle, you begin to think about turning outer
space into a gigantic battlefield where, if we ruin our environment, can
also be a terrific vacation spot or a nice place to escape to. Of course,
you may need $20 million like Dennis Tito, but life isn't always fair.
Rumsfeld and his worldview are best left in an era where the government was
packing a lifetime supply of saltines into tin cans in order for our
citizens to survive in fallout shelters.
Star Wars
Let us not forget that this in itself is a Cold War relic. "The quest for an
anti-ballistic missile system had begun shortly after World War II," Frances
Fitzgerald reminds us in Way Out There in the Blue. Around 1962, according
to Fitzgerald, the Army ran some tests, and oddly enough the system "proved
incapable of discriminating between warheads and other metal objects," so it
was prone to falling for decoys. But at least the Army's tests at that time
were somewhat successful, unlike last year when an interception test failed
for the second time in three chances.
The Reagan dream of interstellar defense (and war, quite likely) is the
stuff of legend and does not need to be expounded here. But it's eerily
mimicked by Rumsfeld's commitment to weapons in outer space. Embracing
technology is one thing; allowing machinery to do the work of human
diplomacy is unconscionable. Let's throw Star Wars back where it came from
and move ahead with the real work that will make the world safe for
democracy.
John Negroponte
Yes, Reagan's ambassador to Honduras has been nominated to be our ambassador
to the United Nations. You think it sounds bad? Check out this article in
the L.A. Times: "Negroponte failed to report human rights violations in the
early 1980s in Honduras, including one U.S.-backed operation that resulted
in the execution of nine prisoners and the disappearance of an American
priest, according to interviews--including ones based on newly discovered
Honduran military correspondence--and declassified documents obtained by The
Times."
This info is corroborated in an earlier piece in The New Republic. And in a
subsequent L.A. Times piece, it's suggested that a Honduran general was
deported recently because he knows too much about Negroponte.
Some of this may be circumstantial evidence, but check it out for yourself.
It seems our "president" has chosen for chief U.N. diplomat a man whose
career is deeply rooted in Cold War-era covert support for Latin American
suppression of human rights. That sounds like a relic worth doing away with.
Nuclear Power
Who would have thought that over 20 years after Three Mile Island we'd have
an administration that believes nuclear power is superior to conservation?
That lie was exposed very simply this week by two different articles in The
New York Times. "Seattle has saved enough energy to power the entire city
for 18 months," one article said in laying waste to Major League Dick's
contention that conservation is not a viable component of energy policy.
As well, according to the Times the power industry has been ramping up
production and infrastructure to achieve greater supply -- because that's
what companies do. The article cites many executives who say it's ludicrous
to suggest that the government has to destroy environmental standards to
encourage energy production.
Even more damning is the reminder that deregulation led to smaller companies
that couldn't invest in the long term nor survive price fluctuations. So
instead of biding their time when prices went down, many power companies
simply went out of business or hoarded their money instead of investing in
the future. Of course now that prices have hit the roof these companies have
the cash to move forward and increase supply.
Now, nuclear power doesn't emit greenhouse gasses, and many people say the
amount of nuclear waste created is very small so storage isn't necessarily
an issue. But the risk to the public is huge. If there's one Cold War relic
we should NOT do away with, it's public pressure against the resurgence of
nuclear power. We cannot trust this industry to regulate itself -- and we
know we can't trust what's left of our government to do so either.
The Drug War
There have been plenty of articles in the last 20 years showing this up for
the war on civilians that it really is (see this piece in theSpleen). The
recent killing of American missionaries in Peru is simply the latest in the
insanity. As well, The Washington Post noted last week that our "friends" in
the war -- like Peru and Colombia -- sometimes don't look all that friendly.
In Peru, for instance: "Many of the people the United States worked with
most closely to accomplish its goals -- especially in the drug war -- appear
to have been working both sides of the street, forming a network of
corruption right under the noses of their U.S. partners." That the article
doesn't even mention the recent downing of a civilian aircraft -- and the
CIA's role in it -- seems less an oversight than a symptom of their being so
much information to choose from.
Bush last week picked John P. Walters as his drug czar -- a man who served
under William "Family Values" Bennett under the more senior of the Shrubs.
While Walters did not technically serve during the Cold War, the mentality
is straight outta Reagan: " Walters has stressed the importance of criminal
penalties for drug users and opposed the use of marijuana for medical
purposes," the Post said.
At a time when American public opinion is moving the other direction and
supporting treatment and liberalization, this move seems to go against the
commitment to remove out-moded relics.
Ronald Reagan
Here's to hoping Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Va., don't give in to
conservative nuts' demands that the National Airport Metro Station signs be
changed to "Reagan National Airport." It was criminal enough that the
airport's name was changed. Luckily, according to The Washington Post, it
looks like the GOP may be dropping its demand that the local people
(remember the Bush "local control" mantra?) will get a say in how their
businesses will be conducted.
Of course, this is just one battle in an unwinable war. As The Nation puts
it, Grover Norquist is involved in a "quirky effort to name things, almost
anything, after Ronald Reagan." Among these things would be a gigantic
Reagan memorial on the Mall -- before the Gipper croaks -- as well as the
actor's face on the $10 bill. Dennis Hastert wants the boyhood home declared
a national monument. The list goes on. Some of this shit is going to stick
to the wall, if for no other reason than we'll just get tired fighting it.
A more fitting memorial to the man who supposedly won the Cold War would be
for us to stop acting like we're in the middle of one. But the Shrub is a
wet dream for supply-siders and defense fanatics -- the type of people whom
Dubya's father couldn't stand.
Voodoo Economics
I feel silly even mentioning this. Just bear it in mind: The majority of the
tax cuts -- not the benefits but the cuts themselves -- only affect the
rich. Bush hasn't used a supply-side argument, which at least demonstrates
that he knows we won't be fooled again. Instead he just lies and says it
will help everyone. It won't.
The estate tax only really affects people with assets over $2 million.
Meanwhile, the income tax cut doesn't help poor people who don't pay the
tax. The child credit only works for people who pay enough in income tax --
so while it might cost me and my neighbor each $1,500 to raise our children,
the government will pay me that money because I make enough to have it
affect my income tax. If my neighbor makes $20,000 per year, and thus pays
little to no income tax, then she will not get a penny to help raise her
child, even though she needs it more than I do.
Is this fairness? Or is this class warfare? Either way, it's a Reagan-esque
austerity program the justification of which should have been cast aside
with the Red Menace.
Henry Kissinger
Whenever there is a pronouncement on foreign policy, a good word from the
former secretary of state (and, according to Christopher Hitchens, war
criminal) is never long in coming. About missile defense: "If [Bush] sticks
to his course, I think he'll be successful," he told The Washington Post.
About getting kicked off of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights: "A lot of
these votes come from countries that aren't friendly to us," he told the
Associated Press.
Hitchens' book The Trial of Henry Kissinger is a laundry list of dirty
assassinations and killings of civilians perpetrated sometimes in the name
of U.S. interests -- and sometimes in the name of personal caprice. Let's
send him back to the days when we could stomach the overthrow of
democratically elected leaders in order to sell arms and open markets.
The China Syndrome
Seems that no matter the administration, we're perpetually perplexed by how
to deal with this country. It seems to me that China, if dealt with in an
even-handed way, would be a country that we could justifiably pressure to
clean up its efforts in human rights. A few weeks ago The New York Times
reported that a community of farmers was gunned down because it refused to
pay taxes it felt were unfair. Reports like this can be denied easily, but
the reporter's claim was quite powerful.
Unfortunately, our actions when it comes to China make us seem silly when we
raise human rights issues -- and these problems are Cold War-era relics
indeed. As a communist country, there's no question China was "the enemy" --
except that we simultaneously saw it as a counter to the Soviet Union. So at
the same time we killed thousands and suffered thousands of deaths in
Vietnam, partly to save the peninsula from the influence of the Chinese,
"we" (that is, Kissinger and Richard Nixon) were also trying to further
relations with them.
Today, of course, we have a different kind of contradiction. On the one
hand, right wingers use China in order to sell the need for a missile
shield. On the other hand these same right wingers are interested in the
vast market China represents. So we can't openly state our China "policy"
because the combination of defense and global capitalism leads us in two
directions.
Hitchens reminds us in this article that China was also seen as fertile
ground for the conversion of millions to Christianity. To this day, our
Congress seems interested in criticizing as human rights violations the
Chinese government's restrictions on protestant evangelists who go into
their country to save the souls of the people. This is not the ground on
which we should be fighting the war for greater openness.
If we could be honest about what we want, both for world security and for
our economy, then perhaps we could carry on relations with the Chinese
without making them -- or us -- paranoid about our intentions. Let's make
this secret double-diplomacy a thing of the past.
Dishonorable Mention
I know that this is only a partial list, so feel free to visit the bulletin
board and let us know what your "favorite" Cold War relic is.
The Shrub himself might list as relics: environmental protection; arms
control; energy conservation; investment in education; social safety net.
What would you list?
--
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." George W. Bush, Televised Newsconference
December 18, 2000