Year: 2020

You aren’t hearing much about this in the media, but Anthony Ferrill, the Molson Coors shooter, was black. Did he commit these killings because he was black? Of course not. However, as I demonstrated on my blog months ago (Everything Progressives Say About Mass Shootings is Wrong…and Racist), the effort to paint the problem of mass shootings as a “white male” phenomenon, part of the project to demonize that demographic, crashes on the rocks of the reality that white males are not statistically overrepresented in mass shootings. Killings are not caused by race. They have in back of them some motive, motives that may derive from ideologies (such as Islam) or from anger and resentment.

If we can stop the racist demonization of white men that would be nice. However, the project to keep the demonization going is intense. I had a Facebook post taken down for merely observing that the “white privilege” rhetoric is really just cover for the old “white devil” demagoguery.

“White people really don’t like being generalized about.” Robin DiAngelo claims. Do black people like being generalized about? If we say “yes,” we’re already generalizing.

DiAngelo in action (video): Robin DiAngelo on “White Fragility”

I suppose there are white people who love to be generalized about. DiAngelo, perhaps? It seems so. But does she think it is right or wrong to generalize about people based on race? Here’s DiAngelo’s article in the International Journal of Critical Pedagogy on “white fragility”.

DiAngelo began her career in racial politics as a “diversity trainer.” She constructed her worldview in order to justify her work. DiAngelo is explicitly telling people—some people, at least—that it is wrong to see themselves as individuals. White people must see themselves as a race and learn what they are supposed to be thinking as the “white race.”

DiAngelo is not working to emancipate any individuals from racial categories. On the contrary. She is essentializing racial categories and generalizing about what people think who belong to those categories.

This is a new religion with white people (who buy this nonsense) simultaneously existing as folk devils and salvation seekers. Yet our rational institutions—corporations and universities—are compelling employees and students to participate in indoctrination sessions. They are being told how to think under penalty of discipline or dismissal. If they don’t agree with DiAngelo’s politics they are “fragile.”

Where it is not required, the masochism is sought out by affluent white women, hosting dinners in their homes for other affluent white women (at $2500 a dinner), their unconscious racism pulled from them (or at least constructed) by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao. “If you did this in a conference room, they’d leave,” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”

They call the program “Race to Dinner.” Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility supplies the scripture.

For some, this is a joyful place to be. It comes with a psychological wage. For others, it is undignified. But then what does Proverbs say? Pride goeth before destruction? 

Of course, tribal stigma of this sort has a name. It’s name is racism. 

But woe to you who have ever made a provocative statement, had a deviant opinion, played devil’s advocate, had a change of heart, or articulated a half-formed thought in working out a full one. The progressive archeologists may be excavating your past for evidence of transgression.

If you are ever called up, you will be called to an impossible position. This is characteristic of inquisitions. Even if exonerated, you will always have been accused. You may get the same treatment if you defend the accused.

It is an act of cruelty, beyond the obvious fallacy that the color of one’s skin—the stain of whiteness—makes her eternally suspicious. People are terrified to talk honestly for fear of making a faux pas. I mean committing a “microaggression.” (Part of antiracism is learning a jargon. Rituals must have myths and spells.)

Ignoring social pressure, autonomous individuals might brush all this off as the work of insecure narcissists looking for strokes. Except that, because he is useful to somebody, the antiracist has assumed command of the disciplinary machinery of the institution. He is, like the priest and his church, an authority appointed to defend doctrine and secure compliance. He seeks obedience. And he is on the prowl to make examples of people while ingratiating himself to the “community.”

Antiracism is the new theology. It proliferates councils with clergy who minister to those in need of saving. It has scripture for you to recite. It lets you see what a piece of shit you are. It instructs you to loathe yourself for things you did not do and cannot change. 

Failure to seek its wise counsel is proof that you are more than unwise. Failure to seek help makes a bad person an even worse person.

The US military is not socialist. Socialism is generalized worker ownership of and control over the workplace. Even the standard dictionary definition of socialism (“a political and economic theory of social organization advocating that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”) precludes the military from being socialist. Neither soldiers nor the community control the military. In the United States, the military is run by bureaucratic elites appointed by bourgeois politicians bankrolled by corporate power who use these means to keep the world open for capitalist markets.

The military is an instrument of production. Indeed, military systems in themselves are remarkably similar across modes of production. They are neither capitalist or socialist (same with government programs, which is why the concept of a “mixed economy” is a propaganda term not a social-scientific one). The military establishment serves the ruling class and the character of the ruling class and its needs are determined by the character of the mode of production in which it appears and operates. The United States is a capitalist society. As capitalist societies go, it is one of the least democratic. But it is not at all socialist.

Programs like Social Security were purposely designed to steal the play away from the socialists by removing objections. If socialists complain that capitalism is objectionable because it leaves old people to suffer after having exploited their younger bodies for profit over the life-course, then Social Security is there to make capitalism look humane. Public provisions of the social surplus have always been a part of capitalism. That isn’t at all the same thing as saying infrastructure, social services, and the military are “socialist.”

That your taxes pay for the military and all the rest of it is a manifestation of the phenomenon of externalization of costs. The public subsidizes the capitalist mode of operation. That’s not socialism. That’s capitalism.

When right wingers tell you that we need to cut social services because they are “socialist,” they are using a scare word to generate public support for devolution of public function in a particular area or domain. That’s why, when folks on the left call these programs “socialist,” claiming that the right wing already supports socialism in a vain attempt to shame the shameless into supporting the public function in question, they give the right wing ammunition to do the opposite. That’s assuming these left-wing voices are operating in good faith. At best, it’s ignorantly counterproductive.

Of course, progressive Democrats call government programs “socialism” in order to keep working class people from demanding an actual socialist party. “Pay no attention to the real socialists! Here, have some food stamps!” But the right wing doesn’t give a shit about the Democrat’s sheep-dogging. They love it that some Democrats self-identify as “socialist” and claim their policies are “socialist,” because that functions to keep them relevant and socialism on the run.

And the ruling class is down with all that because the two-party system going–owning and condemning socialism keeps the populace within the narrow hegemonic frame that perpetuates the capitalist mode of production.

For those who see the legacy of Reagan as uniquely awful (i.e. those more likely to share memes of Jimmy Carter with a hammer in his hand), it must feel like the world is coming apart. 

That was one helluva State of the Union. 

Folks question the president’s intelligence. They’ll be thinking the man is stupid all the way to his reelection. But they’re wrong.

While progressives drone on about what an awful place America is, the protest of ladies in white making the disdain all the more obnoxious Trump projects confidence, optimism, and patriotism. People prefer the latter. 

The Democratic Party can’t even pull off a caucus let alone an impeachment. All night Pelosi looked like the loser she will be today when the Senate acquits the president of charges Democrats should never have brought to that body. Her tearing up his speech punctuated his victory. 

The president has thin skin? 

Trump eclipsed Reagan last night. He is delivering on the spirit Reagan exuded. Bestowing the Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh was the master stroke. Wet eyes across America. (Not from me.)

Look, I’m a Marxist and a socialist. Don’t think I’m pleased. But we have get real here. The situation we’re in is the fruit of globalism, neoliberalism, and progressivism: the failure (really, inability) of left bourgeois elites to represent the interests of the ordinary American—to protect livelihoods and respect culture.

Want to know why wages are rising for workers? Because Trump cut immigration nearly in half. There are hundreds of thousands fewer surplus workers in our labor markets. Less competition means higher wages because labor becomes more valuable. Democrats want open borders. It’s a contrast deepened by the progressive’s penchant for white-bashing. One could see progressives telling themselves how fascistic, racist and xenophobic is all was. That’s the way the see the Heartland. They believe the people made a bad decision. It’s why Adam Schiff can’t trust 2020. 

To be sure, workers will not find salvation in rightwing populism. But they won’t find it in progressivism, either. They can see Democrats striving to undermine their way of life and they’re rejecting it. (This is why the British working class demanded withdrawal from the EU and handed conservatives their largest majority since the 1980s.) Indeed, working people see the progressives getting more detestable everyday. AOC, Omar, Tlaib.

Tragically, this squad represents themselves as socialists. With nationalist populism, workers in the United States (and the UK) at least keep their country for a while longer yet.

If the left would only recognize that defending national integrity represents a core proletarian value, that defending the Republic is in the worker’s interest, that we cannot move forward without a common culture and language, then they might find the ground for articulating a vision that would resonate with Americans across the country.

The average US resident consumes roughy 100 times the energy of the average resident of India. Imagine the US with 1.339 billion people (the US population is currently around 330 million). Would we have the same standard of living? Would we have the same acreage of forest? Would we have the same levels of resource depletion and environmental degradation? Of course not.

Fortunately, at 1.73 per person (total fertility rate), fertility in the US is considerably less than it is in India, at 2.4 per person. (The Indian rate is a lot less today than it was in 1960, at 6 per person, so progress there.) To the extent that we can consume less and maintain a high standard of living, we should look into consuming less. But we should not be looking to impoverish ourselves. We need to keep an eye on population. We need to work on raising the standards of every person whose conditions are below the average.

Studies show that family planning plays a key role in human development, population growth, and poverty reduction. Failing to introduce or sustain family planning programs leads to increased poverty and poorer health outcomes. Family planning is associated with an array of benefits for human beings, including maternal and infant survival, disease reduction, higher levels of educational attainment, better nutrition, increased status for women, and protection of ecosystems. Family planning is also a huge boost in freedom, empowering women to control their reproductive capacity and their lives.

This has been a message brought to you by family planning, birth control, and abortion. Let’s keep it free and legal.

I teach in the department of Democracy and Justice Studies (DJS) at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. For my junior-senior level criminal justice course, Criminal Justice Process, I use Jeffrey Reiman’s The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. In this blog, I explore the strengths and weaknesses of what has become a seminal text in the study of the US criminal justice system and a text with which my students have to engage.

Criminal Justice Process explores policing, corrections, and, to a lesser degree, the court system in Western society, focusing primarily on institutions and practices in the United States. Major components of the criminal justice system are theoretically linked to larger social arrangements—class, race, and ethnic stratification. Ethical problems, such as deadly force, police corruption and brutality, disparities in arrest and sentencing, and unequal representation, are given special attention. The history and function of criminal justice is examined from various standpoints (mine is Marxian) and alternatives to the current structure of law and punishment are considered.

I use Reiman’s text in the first quarter of the semester to raise awareness of the realities of the criminal justice system in the United States, especially the failure of the state to protect ordinary people from what Edwin Sutherland calls “analogous criminal activity,” deviant acts perpetrated by the capitalist class and its managers. For example, sixteen workers die every day on the job from unsafe working conditions, conditions that exist for the sake of the corporate bottom line.

As a historical materialist by training and in standpoint, all my courses employ a critical-theoretical approach to the historical material and contemporary issues. On this basis, I tend to look for books that share this approach or at least make it available. My goal is to unsettle students, to challenge their commonsense understanding of the world. What probably stands out most about the The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Prison is the effect it has on students.

For students already aware of the inequities in the US criminal justice process, Reiman’s book reinforces their belief that a major American institution is fundamentally flawed, unjust, and needs reforming (or abolishing). They leave the class with more ammunition to use on their opponents. Reiman provides readers with a great many useful and fact-rich arguments.

More than a few students react to the text ideologically; understanding that the book defies their lay theories of crime—indeed that Reiman means to shake their faith in the legitimacy of the institution of criminal punishment in the United States—Reiman perturbs them. They a priori reject the book’s premise, but they can neither easily reject the validity nor the soundness of its arguments. They resent having been required to read it.

The third group is comprised of those changed by the text. Though initially skeptical of the book’s thesis, they nonetheless open it with a curious mind and close it with a different sense of the justice—even if they do not adopt it. The existence of this third group is unique; most other texts aimed at undergraduate students change neither conscience nor consciousness.

Before moving to an appraisal of Reiman’s work, I preface my remarks by noting that The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison is an outstanding critique of the criminal justice process. This is a book that needs to be read by anybody invested or interested in this issue. Tragically, the text is as relevant today as when it first hit the market in 1979. Thus, the following remarks emanate from a position of admiration and appreciation. Indeed, it was in part my reading a dog-eared copy of the first edition of The Rich Get Richer… in my father’s office years ago that drew me to the field of criminal justice. I believe I have read every edition (how many are there now?).

Reiman proceeds by bold ideas. He demonstrates the persistence of injustice in the criminal justice system by playing with a literary device: the notion of a “Pyrrhic defeat.” A Pyrrhic defeat is the image of the Pyrrhic victory turned upside-down—battles are not won at so great a cost as to militate against war, but rather are lost at too great a benefit to avoid war. The logic of the argument is that, since crime war benefits the powerful, there is little or no incentive to do those things that would actually reduce crime. Instead, the state pursues policies that are, in effect, designed to fail. Or at least function that way.

What are these benefits of crime war? Because crime control targets the economically disadvantaged and racialized and ethnicized segments of the population, the powerful benefit from the creation of an ideology, namely crime as the work of the poor and minorities. Thus the war on crime is really a war on the poor, amplifying conflicts at the edges of the social order to draw public attention from injustices in the social order, preventing the masses from blaming those at the top for the inequities that, in part, generate street crime.

Reiman is aware that his arguments suggest a conspiracy theory, one where the elite are seen as designing criminal justice policy to engineer this effect. Anticipating this charge, he emphasizes that these effects are the unintended consequences of public policies, policies that originate in a utilitarian desire to do public good.

His explanation of how such consequences emerge from well-intentioned policy is organized in a second major conceptual device: “historical inertia.” These effects are largely emergent not purposeful. As I read the text, blame for unjust public policy is to be laid more on the failure to change direction and less on those who institute the various measures.

The work here would benefit from additional literature and analysis. The literature I have in mind are studies by Michael Lynch and associates on the effects of capitalist accumulation on crime and punishment, as well as David and Melissa Barlow’s work on social structures of accumulation and the production of the criminal law.

The material organized as the appendix, “The Marxian Critique of Criminal Justice,” should appear at the beginning of the work, laying the basis for an in-depth explanation of capitalist structures and criminal law and enforcement to show how the law functions to secure the necessary conditions for capitalist accumulation. Reiman might then trace the process through which law and policy are constructed and implemented to serve the material interests of the ruling class.

Doing this—effectively bridging the gap between structuralist and instrumentalist perspectives—might permit Reiman to avoid any suggestion of conspiracy, while at the same time eschew the overly functionalist elements that haunt his explanation, seen in the rhetoric of unintended consequences and (albeit qualified) homage paid to Emile Durkheim and Kai Erickson.

The assignment of blame should be addressed more thoroughly and pointedly; it should go beyond system blaming. However unplanned the effects of some criminal law and enforcement may be, the disparate effects of the war on crime are known to those who make the policy, and their collective failure to change crime control policy in light of the brute facts makes their behavior intentional by Reiman’s standards.

Looking at the matter this way aligns Reiman’s tacit judgment of the culpability of political elites with his own superb critique of the “Defenders of the Present Legal Order.” Elaboration of Reiman’s argument in such a fashion would likely give readers not only a better understanding of the author’s main thesis, but also (hopefully) produce an expanded sense of Reiman’s ethical argument. I read this text to be as much a treatise on social justice as it is a book about disparities in the US criminal justice system.

On this last point, the text would benefit from incorporation and elaboration of thinking long the lines of Michael Tonry’s ethical argument presented in Malign Neglect, where the aurthor brings the logics of mens rea to bear on the question of responsibility—an argument Reiman puts central to his moral argument concerning white collar crime, where he appeals to Hyman Gross’s categorization of culpability (falling under the rubric of intentional action).

Bringing Tonry into the discussion would moreover allow Reiman to interrogate Tonry’s insistence, notably shared by Randall Kennedy (in Race, Crime, and the Law), that blacks are more criminal than whites. Since the lion’s share of criminal behavior, especially as analogous social injury, is shown to result from the actions of wealthy white persons, blacks are in fact less criminal than whites as a group. Stressing this point goes a long way in demonstrating the problem with William Wilbank’s “myth of a racist criminal justice system” thesis. The reality that the crime control system is not unleashed on the harmful acts of force and fraud committed by affluent whites damns his ideas even more than pointing out the discrepancy between racial identity of perpetrators recorded by the Uniform Crime Report and the National Criminal Victim Survey (itself a devastating critique).

Individuals are responsible for the predictable consequences of their actions–and those who formulate and implement crime control policy in a nation with deep and transparent economic and racial inequities are in a position to know such things.

As the historical inertia argument now stands, the argument is incomplete. Granted, later on, Reiman stresses the point that he is focused on the contemporary system and is unconcerned with presenting a historical analysis of the piecemeal development of the criminal justice structure. I understand the desire to avoid historical analysis because this would thicken a book that has as one of its selling points its brevity. But it seems that a few well-placed caveats would allow for a lucid historical overview.

Such an overview would accomplish two objectives. First, it would give substance to the historical inertia argument. Reiman would then not have to ask the reader to trust him in such matters, but will have put before the reader a historical overview with a wealth of resources that the reader may follow up on for further investigation.

Second, a historical chapter would provide the preconditions from which flows the contemporary logic of the criminal justice process. For, however much the racist-capitalist system changes in its specifics, there is little alteration in the dynamics and broad outlines of its structure over time. Plus ça change plus c’est la méme chose.

Summarizing to this point, there are three broad matters given too little attention in the beginning of the text: an explicit and up-front discussion of the structure of capitalism and how the criminal law and enforcement are designed to reproduce this structure by managing some of the problems this structure generates, namely street crime and violence; an overview of the historical development of the system sufficient to ground the historical inertia thesis and demonstrate continuity of bias in the criminal justice system; and a deepening of the moral argument and a broadening of the logic of crime as social injury to produce an indictment of dominant political actors and the capitalist system they personify.

This third matter brings us to another problem with the text: Reiman’s movement over successive editions of the book towards a more consciously Marxian standpoint while holding fast to an advocacy of progressive (i.e. welfare-liberal) reforms. I do not in principle disagree with reforming systems, and I am in agreement with Reiman’s specific reforms (these are the least that should be done), but I am not convinced Reiman fully understands that capitalism inevitably spawns not only the inequities that result in street crime but also the imperatives that drive the wealthy to injure society.

To put the matter another way: if I grant that Reiman grasps the reality that capitalism is an exploitative mode of production (he has said so much in other writings), he nonetheless fails to communicate this to the reader in terms sufficient to provoke them into questioning the legitimacy of the system in its totality. I don’t see a choice between reform and revolution, but rather consider both means to an end, to be pursued simultaneously, the end being a fully democratic republic in which significant inequalities are eliminated or substantially reduced. We should strive for policy to ameliorate poverty and race-ethnic and economic inequities, but we should at the same time struggle to transform the system fundamentally. That means struggling for socialism.

This is no small matter. The high point of the book is when Reiman raises the ethical point that a state’s legitimate right to monopolize violence is not automatic but instead depends on the ends the state or, more concretely, state actors pursue. Admitting that some aspects of US criminal justice function properly, Reiman finds that the system fails to develop policies and practices that could significantly reduce crime and enhance personal safety, and that the system fails to provide equal protection and justice. Since it does not treat those subject to its power equally, the criminal justice system is unjust and its legitimacy is called into question. In some ways, in principle, it becomes criminal in itself.

But this argument is one of the most frustrating aspects of the book, for it seems to follow from it that the moral legitimacy for the official wielding of any instrument of force depends fundamentally on whether the society in which the state acts is a just society. If the society is unjust, then the instrument of force is necessarily used unjustly.

The greatest flaw of this book is perhaps the disjuncture between the logic of the analysis taken to its logical conclusion, on the one hand, and the limits in reform, on the other, reforms that are restricted to the criminal justice system, a system that is itself understood in a restricted manner. The criminal justice apparatus becomes an island and the reforms stop at the water’s edge. It may be that the criminal justice system in a capitalist social order cannot be made sufficiently just to warrant a claim of moral legitimacy–this because capitalism it an unjust historical system. In any case, this possibility should at least be wrestled with.

Finally, I find the character of the intersection of race and class, especially racism as a relatively independent force in world capitalist society, to be undertheorized in The Rich Get Richer…. Reiman states that he believes it is possible to treat racism as a proxy for class oppression, describing it as “simply one powerful form of economic bias.” He writes, “I use evidence on differential treatment of blacks as evidence of differential treatment of members of the lower classes.” He then proceeds to show how blacks are made to suffer in the criminal justice system, and although he speaks truth with these facts, the picture he describes is not the collective experience of all poor people but of blacks specifically.

Can race-ethnic oppression be reduced to class oppression or economic bias? There are moments when Reiman collapses the latter into the former. To be sure, racism involves material disadvantage. But it is more than this. One must at least confront W.E.B. Du Bois’s “wages of whiteness” where it is observed that to be poor and white is not the same thing as being poor and black. Blacks across the wealth and income spectrum find themselves targeted by the police, while whites in all social classes are not as easily perceived as Skolnick’s symbolic assailants. Being identified as a black man carries its own effects relatively independent of class.

In failing to address racism as a relatively independent force, critical scholarship in this vein fails to make a sufficient theoretical commitment to interrogating the possibility of the objectivity of race-ethnic structures. The criminal justice system represents the most explicit mechanism of race oppression—criminal justice in America is not only about controlling the “dangerous classes” along economic lines, but also about reproducing the racial caste system by controlling the dangerous races—and in this sense it provides a model analysis to get at other forms of race oppression. Reiman misses an opportunity to amplify the point that criminal justice is one element in the coercive side of race-class oppression. 

Reiman may disagree with the argument that racism should be conceptualized in this manner and accorded a greater role in warping Reiman’s “carnival mirror,” but there is a body of scholarship, found in the works of Manning Marable, David Roediger, and Howard Winant that provides key insights into how we might move to a more comprehensive understanding of oppression under racist capitalism. (I have developed a model of the intersection in “Mapping the Junctures of Social Class and Racial Caste“). At the very least, the point should be made that the law secures the racial order just as it functions to reproduce class relations. 

At the same time, there are many poor whites who find themselves tangled in the criminal justice web. Indeed, more whites than blacks by the numbers. I have focused quite a bit on the matter of the problem of only focusing on race on Freedom and Reason (see, e.g. “The Problematic Premise of Black Lives Matter” and on the Freedom and Reason podcast (see Freedom and Reason Podcast #7: The New Jim Crow) so I will leave the matter there.

Let me close by reprising my prefatory remarks: The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison is an outstanding contribution to the critique of the American approach to crime control. With this book, Jeffrey Reiman may have made the most important popular contribution to the ongoing project to raise awareness about the injustices of the US criminal justice system.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in response to popular pressures, nation-states began more deliberately regulating the flow of people and things across their borders. In the United States, the Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act) sharply restricted entry into the United States, effecting an 80 percent reduction in volume, incorporating and extending quotas from earlier legislation, and establishing the consular control system. Aliens seeking to enter the US were now required obtain visas from US consular offices outside the United States. These restrictions were not desired by industrialists and the urban elite—the bourgeoisie—and in their resistance to populist sentiment they sought to shape the popular meaning of the nation-state, to move collective sentiment away from the nationalist sense and towards a more cultural-pluralist sensibility, to shift the American creed from “melting pot” to “salad bowl.”

The bourgeoisie had resisted because large numbers of immigrants coming to the US on steam ships had reversed the fall in the rate of profit that marked the post-Civil War period (see below chart). The surplus of low wage labor had successful pushed down wages for industrial workers. The industrialist wanted to keep that going. Moreover, persons from different cultures speaking different languages functioned to disorganize the proletariat. Opposition from powerful sectors of the propertied classes notwithstanding, the restrictive law, enjoying broad popular support, passed Congress by wide margins and was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge. According to the US Office of the Historian, “In all of its parts, the most basic purpose of the 1924 Immigration Act was to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.” This is what the people wanted. And so a blow for democracy was struck.

In back of this development is the dynamic of class struggle. The capitalist’s interest of maximizing surplus value production via the increased exploitation of human labor power, accomplished either by wage repression or by augmenting and replacing workers with machines and efficiency regimes, is opposed to the proletariat’s interest to keep a larger share of the surplus value produced by its labor and, moreover, to enjoy protection from unemployment and economic insecurity. Hence, nation-states are associated with organized proletarian movements seeking to democratize the labor process either through unions and collective bargaining or through the socialist transformation of society.

By 1920, over half of manufacturing workers were immigrants or their immediate offspring, and the standard of living of native-born workers was in decline, as was their political power. However, in the absence of a sophisticated ideological response to unionism and socialism, union density had grown from less than 10 percent in 1910 to nearly 20 percent by the early 1920s (see below chart). Labor was organizing its power, and it targeted the strategy of capitalists to undermine their solidarity through mass immigration. The 1924 immigration law was thus a triumph of democracy over what would become known as globalism. Proletarian victory came in the face of capitalist resistance to labor power. After a decline in union density during the prosperity years of the 1920s, the Great Depression sparked a rapid rise in unionism, reaching one quarter of the workforce in the late 1930s and peaking at a third of labor during the 1940s-late 1950s.

After the immigration restrictions of the 1920s, industrialists recruited native-born workers from the South, millions of whom where black, enticing them to leave the backwards and violent region of their birth for northeastern and midwestern urban centers (see below chart). In 1920, around 85 percent of blacks lived in the South. By 1970, this figure had fallen to nearly 50 percent (it started to tick up after the 1980s). While industrialists were seeking cheap labor through the strategy of internal migration, black Americans were provided opportunities to improve their lives and escape poverty and racial oppression.

This development necessitated efforts to combat racism among the ranks of workers to build a more unified working class and increase union density. In the Cold War context, this struggle was aided by the perceived advantage among elites of projecting an image of a just America to the world to refute communist propaganda that was spreading through the Third World. Moreover, to gain and deepen popular support for capitalist arrangements and for propagandistic reasons, the nation-state progressively granted civil, political, and social rights to the general population. These developments were accelerated by growing unionization of the workforce and rising expectations among blacks and women for the expansion of rights and greater social opportunity. The result was higher wages, expanded personal liberty, and limited sharing of the social surplus in the form of income support, antipoverty measures, and medical care, as well as a significant degree of industrial democracy, especially in unionized spaces. At the same time, the share of income going to the top 10 percent dropped sharply. tracking the rise of union membership.

After World War Two, the trans-Atlantic capitalist elite fashioned a framework for world commerce, finance, and monetary activity, governed by a network of international and transnational institutions in order to entrench capitalist arrangements. Part of the imperative to create this world order was the global struggle between capitalism and socialism, the latter embodied by the Soviet Union and China and their satellites. Global restructuring accelerated the trends of delocalization, regionalization, and globalization. The social democratic developments associated with securing capitalist hegemony appeared to set western society on an evolutionary path to socialism or at least significant degrees of social democracy. Indeed, the rapid development of socialist countries fostered the development of popular democratic ambitions worldwide.

However, the emergence of social democracy was associated with a at first stagnant and then falling rate of profit. Compensation was keeping pace with productivity and public investments were being financed largely by the wealthy. To restore the rate of profit would require weakening organized labor and finding a different way of financing the public sector or a different way of carrying out its functions. Thus, beginning in the 1960s, the capitalist class in the United States collected its energies to undermine organized proletarian movements by changing the structure of taxation to concentrate wealth and income in the upper class, opening the nation to cheap foreign products, and abolishing immigration quotas. These changes came on the heels of Europe’s creation of the common market in the 1950s.

The emergence of containerization, new forms of communication, and other technological innovations increased capital and knowledge exchanges. The world was becoming smaller and the possibility that a global proletariat movement could emerge and exploit a smaller world greatly concerned the capitalist establishment. The means to achieve this lay in national-level union power capable of cooperating with labor worldwide. Union density in the United States was approaching 40 percent in the private sector and the public sector was unionizing. Union power was such that wage gains where tied to production gains leaving little room for surpluses to be used to globalize production. Tax cuts and open borders triggered a downward spiral for labor at home and abroad.

By the 1970s, a trilateral relationship between the US, Europe (Germany primarily), and Japan was directing the transnational capitalist economy and labor unions were under duress. Political realignment in the United States saw conservatives leaving the Democratic Party for the Republican Party and the Democratic Party becoming increasingly subservient to corporate interest over against the interests of labor. With these changes there was a shift in political consciousness. The left abandoned the politics of equality and working class concern for the corporate bureaucratic politics of diversity and identity. Gone was the struggle against capitalist exploitation; it was undermined by a corporate-driven culture industry that splintered the proletariat into sophisticated consumers organized by identitarian marketing.

The promise of making the world smaller was the cultural, economic, and scientific enrichment of the world population. Capitalist globalization was sold as the solution to the world’s problems. International and transnational institutions predicted the eradication of poverty in the 21st century. Of course, this did not happen. Indeed, investment of foreign capital in developing countries and the introduction of new technologies exacerbated local and global inequalities. Open markets facilitated the movement of capital from developed nations to developing countries simultaneously undermining standards of living in both. Open borders facilitated the movement of populations from developing countries to developed nations with the same effects. Austerity, globalization, and neoliberal restructuring did not solve the problems of poverty and economic uncertainty in the developed world. It also did not solve the problem of falling profit rates (see below chart).

Accompanying the spread of capitalism and technology was a rapid increase in world population. Rapid growth in world population over the second half of the 20th century, from 3 billion in 1960 to more than 7 billion by the end of the century, was a harbinger of a growing ecological catastrophe. As noted earlier, the world population is approaching 8 billion people, threatening to exceed the earth’s carrying capacity. Capitalist globalization thus creates the pressures and avenues for large-scale migration of human populations. Open borders have become a mechanism for depressurizing overpopulated regions. This does not fix the problem, but rather moves the problem around. Indeed, it makes the problem worse, as those migrating from underdeveloped parts of the world to the developed parts increase the number of those who consume a disproportionate share of resources and leave a disproportionate share of the waste. Spontaneous migration of large numbers of people affects labor markets, presses public budgets, and undermines social cohesion.

The humanitarian response, shorn of concern for native-born populations, or for environmental sustainability, is to open the borders even more. To the extent that has response has been manifest in policy and practice, disaster has been the result (Europe is the paradigm). The other response is to increase restrictions on the movement of people, increased screening of those seeking to enter countries, vetting flight manifests, more police, more checkpoints, more surveillance, the deployment of biometrics and other human tracking technology, and more border walls and fences. Indeed, the latter response is as much to what the developed world can anticipate as it is to address current problems.

With more than 320 million people, the U.S. is already the third largest country in the world. Many of its citizens consume resources at levels necessary for a rewarding yet modest life. Globalization has imperiled these, but the United States remains an affluent country. At the same time, millions of its citizens are living in poverty and without work. The possibility of raising everybody out of poverty and providing them with the dignity of work, while avoiding overshoot and collapse, is rapidly receding. If the nation were smaller population-wise, then more people could consume at the level of a comfortable family without increasing human environmental impact. If the US population were half of what it currently is, and resources were equitably redistributed across the population, standards of living would dramatically improve while reducing the nation’s ecological footprint. For the sake of progress towards these goals, we should promote negative fertility rates simultaneous with sharp reductions in immigration, including legal immigration.

It is no accident that an article would appear in the midst of the current border crisis with this title: “US fertility rate is below level needed to replace population, study says.” It has been advanced by capitalist establishments throughout the West that immigration is necessary to provide the necessary support for aging populations in societies with low fertility rates. Or this article: “These U.S. industries can’t work without illegal immigrants.” It’s as if inner-city blacks and Appalachian whites and the desperate situations so many of them find themselves don’t exist. It’s as if everybody who should know better has forgotten that when immigration was restricted in 1924 millions of black people left the backwards and violent South for northeastern and midwestern urban centers. It’s as if a national effort to help connect millions of unemployed Americans with jobs in America is something that is inconceivable—so inconceivable that it doesn’t even occur to most minds. It’s as if the nation has accepted that there should be a permanently unemployed/underemployed segment of the population, disproportionately black, living in desperate conditions. Could it be that economic empowerment of black Americans might bring with it rising expectations and renewed political movements of the character that emerged from the Great Migration? We know it is an economic strategy, but is it also a political strategy to super-exploit illegal immigrants rather than tap the labor of black America?

The evidence suggests that the answer is yes. Tragically, the transformation of leftwing consciousness from rational class-based politics to irrational postmodern paralysis, a transformation shaped by cultural managers in the academy and the media working at the behest of the capitalist establishment, precludes a genuinely progressive vision, let alone the realization of this vision in a workable politics. At this point, the socialist dream is dead. The left is no longer capable of recognizing the paramount necessity of organizing the proletariat at a national level and raising standard of living to the point where expectations are high enough and consciousness is deep enough to see the benefit to transcending capital.

Still, objectively, we must transcend capital. For here is the problem we face: The tendency of the rate of profit to fall requires expansion of capitalist markets to restore the volume of profit. Barriers to expansion result in crisis. Overcoming crisis requires innovation. Innovation itself becomes a source of crisis. Thus capitalism must expand and innovate to overcome (but not transcend) contradictions that result in periodic crises of various sorts (e.g. realization). Innovation is driven by desire for efficiency. Efficiency means progressive elimination of jobs. Capitalism means that the efficiency gains are not popularly shared. Global capitalism is not a system that will provide for people displaced by automation. At best, capitalists are only interested in meeting the needs of people to extent that doing so perpetuates their hegemony—and they don’t need to elevate all the people to do that. Moreover, wage gains and productively gains are decoupled in the current phase of globalization via the war on labor. Capital seeks to eliminate necessary labor in production in order to maximize surplus value. What are people going to do to earn a living when robots and automated systems produce most things? They are going to be looking for food and other necessities of life. And they will take from those who have them.

Capitalism is ultimately incapable of solving the problem of its internal and external contradictions. A market-based system with an imperative to maximize surplus value will always in the end disemploy the vast majority of the population. That we can see no technological limits to achieving this, we can be absolutely certain of the conclusion. A system that requires growth to overcome crisis is a cancer to the planet. Only replacing capitalism with a rational mode of production that simultaneously meets the needs of the people and insists on a sustainable ecological footprint can transcend these contradictions.

Capitalism will end in one of three possible ways: (1) it will eliminate the very basis of commodity markets through the end of work (though automation and robotization); (2) it will exhaust the planet’s carrying capacity; or (3) it will be overthrown in a proletarian revolution. (2) may come first at the current pace of environmental calamity. (3) seems hopeless with a left obsessed with and paralyzed by identity. (1) is inevitable—if (2) doesn’t come first. Thus globalization has reached a terminal point in the capitalist epoch and misplaced humanitarian concern and postmodern anti-class politics have negated the socialist possibility. Socialism was our only way out. And the left abandoned it.

In light of the impeachment trial of the populist president Donald Trump by the establishment and the role neonservative John Bolton is clamoring to play in thwarting the popular desire for an end to endless war, I thought it would be helpful to readers to remind themselves—or learn about if they didn’t know—the character of the establishment. This is my 2004 analysis of George W. Bush’s Middle East policy, published in Devastating Society: The Neo-Conservative Assault on Democracy and Justice, with Pluto Press and the University of Michigan Press.

Joined by British military forces, the US invaded the Central Asian country of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001.  In what was tagged “Operation Enduring Freedom” (originally “Operation Infinite Justice”), the US overthrew the ruling clique, the Taliban, and destroyed training camps of the terrorist organization al Qaeda located in the mountains of Tora Bora.  The US emplaced an interim government led by Hamid Karzai, weapons financier for anti-Soviet moujahedeen and close associate of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

On 17 March 2003, again in concert with British forces, the US military invaded Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party.  The US formed an interim national government, the Iraqi Governing Council, led by Ahmad Chalabi.  Chalabi, a US-educated banker and leading member of the Iraqi National Congress (a London-based nationalist group), is a protégé of current high-ranking Pentagon officials.

On 7 September 2003, President Bush asked Congress for 87 billion dollars to cover costs of operations in Central Asia and the Middle East and reconstruction of Iraq.  This was in addition to 79 billion dollars Congress already budgeted for the military campaigns. These expenditures would come against the backdrop of the largest federal budget deficit in US history, projected to be 500 billion dollars in 2004 (with an accumulated national debt forecasted to be in the 5-6 trillion dollar range over the next decade), a national economy mired in recession, and thirty-five million Americans living in poverty.  Despite this, Congress approved Bush’s request less than two months later.

Marc Herold, a professor at the University of New Hampshire estimates civilian Afghan deaths to be between 3,125 to 3,620 persons.  Afghan fighters and fratricide have killed several dozen US troops and injured many more.  As of 27 September 2003, the independent organization Iraq Body Count estimates civilian casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom to be between 7,352 and 9,152. On January 19, the number of US soldiers killed surpassed 500, representing the most casualties in any US-involved conflict since the Vietnam War.  The official number of US soldiers wounded total more than one thousand.^[1]  How many Iraqi military personnel US and British forces have killed or injured is unknown, but observers suspect it is in the several thousands.

The Bush administration justified the military invasion of Afghanistan on the grounds that the terrorist organization believed to have masterminded attacks on the United States on 11 September, al Qaeda, enjoyed the protection of the Taliban.  The government defended its invasion of Iraq based on two claims: Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and the Ba’ath party had ties to al Qaeda.  

The principled basis for these interventions was set forth in the September 2000 report, The National Security Strategy of the US of America.  This document detailed a preemptive strike policy appealing to the principle of anticipatory self-defense.  Preemption represents a dramatic departure from America’s previous defense posture. Historically, a grave and imminent danger to national security triggered the right to self-defense.  While a justifiable anticipatory self-defensive action must indicate a credible and imminent threat to national security, preemptive self-defense need indicate only a potentiality or probable eventuality. Under the new policy, official belief that a nation desires to acquire weapons of mass destruction is enough to justify the use of force.  “We cannot let our enemies strike first,” the document averred.  

The authors of the report, led by National Security Advisor (NSA) Condoleezza Rice, characterized the new defense philosophy as “a distinctly American internationalism.”  The report pledges the use of military force to encourage “free and open societies,” to fight for American ideals and values, especially private property, and to win the “battle for the future of the Muslim world.” Policymakers tied the doctrine of preemption to imperatives of regime change and nation building in a “post 9-11 world.”  A solution to the alleged problems “rogue states” present for national security is the possibility the government may have to unilaterally overthrow an existing government.

In the current world order, law on the use of armed force, the jus ad bellum, prohibits discretionary and unilateral military force and tightly constrains use of reactive force of arms to self-defense or a collective decision by the UN community to prevent unlawful aggression. Moreover, any retaliatory action by a country should be proportional.  It is also a recognized principle in international law that while self-defense is a legitimate response while under attack, it is not legitimate post facto—once an attack has ended, self-defense is prohibited.

Bush’s justification for invading Afghanistan based on the 11 September 2001 attack is deeply problematic with respect to jus ad bellum.  The administration never adequately explained why destruction of government buildings, infrastructure, towns and villages, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians, was necessary to apprehend bin Laden and dismantle al Qaeda.  Harboring terrorists may have made the Taliban complicit in the criminal behavior of al Qaeda, but it is insufficient for determining direct responsibility necessary to warrant retaliatory military action.  That the US promised the UN “surgical strikes” against Taliban targets to minimize “collateral damage” (military language for harming innocent civilians) does not negate Bush’s tragic moral lapse and his flaunting of international law.  In any case, targeting was poor, targets were misidentified, bombing was often indiscriminate, and weapons used, such as cluster bombs, led to numerous civilian casualties.  Military action has thus far failed to bring bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants to justice.

Justification for launching an invasion of Iraq was equally problematic.  The policy of regime change is, from the point of view of the White House, a corollary to preemptive self-defense.  If there is a regime pursuing weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems capable of threatening America at some distant, albeit uncertain future point, then a preemptive self-defensive action would be regarded as a means of preventing this eventuality.  While instances of anticipatory self-defense are numerous in history, historical instances of preemptive self-defense are not.^[2]  It is widely regarded as necessary for the international community, operating through the UN, to consent to the use of preemptive force. International law prohibits unilateralism in preemptive self-defensive action.  Therefore, the US was obliged to secure UN sanction for a military strike against Baghdad.  The US, joined by a small number of other countries, defied the consensus of the international community and invaded Iraq without UN authorization. 

Even if we set aside international law, evidentiary reasons given for preemptive action in Iraq were insufficient, incomplete, and, in many cases, fabricated.  Authorities have found neither weapons of mass destruction nor effective delivery systems in Iraq.  And, in any case, credible evidence for WMD would have to exist beforemilitary action.  The consensus of the international intelligence community is Saddam destroyed such weapons at the conclusion of the US-Iraq war in 1991. And any claim the US invaded Iraq in retaliation for 9-11, however illegitimate according to international law, had no evidentiary basis.  The administration admitted during a meeting with congressional leaders on 17 September 2003 that it never had evidence connecting Saddam to 9-11.

If the Bush administration’s reasons for invading and occupying two countries seem irrational, it is only because observers have failed to identify the real reasons behind war.  The ulterior motives for going to war are to (1) control gas and oil supplies in two regions and (2) reshape power in the Middle East, particularly to create conditions for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

* * *

No understanding of Bush’s foreign policy ambitions is adequate without a grasp of the central importance of US’ dependency on fossil fuels.  The chief sources of energy in America are petroleum (30 percent), natural gas (24 percent), and coal (23 percent).  North Americans consume over 21 million barrels of oil per day, the largest amount of oil used by any other region in the world. Domestic oil and gas production cannot meet public demand.  Given this situation, securing cheap and available sources of fossil fuels is an imperative, particularly for an administration beholden to gas and oil companies—many Bush administration officials are part of the fossil fuels industry. 

US interest in gas and oil in Central Asia became clear with the pullout of the Russian military from Afghanistan in 1989 and the sudden collapse of the Soviet system in 1991.  By 1992, mostly US-based companies, Amoco, ARCO, British Petroleum, Exxon-Mobil, Pennzoil, Phillips, TexacoChevron, and Unocal, controlled half of all gas and oil investments in the Caspian region.  The industry acquired several high profile political figures to advise company operations in the region.  Former NSA under President Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski was a consultant for Amoco.  Bush’s vice-president Cheney advised Halliburton.  Former Secretary of State under presidents Nixon and Ford, Henry Kissinger, and former State Department counterterrorism official, Robert Oakley, were consultants for Unocal.  NSA under Bush Junior, Rice served on the board of TexacoChevron. The industry sought to develop the “Stands” (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), with their some ten trillion cubic meters of gas and 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, permitting the west to undermine the hegemony of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries).

Within less than five years of the fall of the Soviet Union, Unocal, in association with Delta Oil (Saudi Arabia), Gazprom (Russia), and Turkmenrozgas (Turkey), began negotiating with various Afghan factions to secure the right to construct a trans-Afghan pipeline to move fossil fuels from the Caspian Sea basin to the Arabian Sea.  Outside of the Middle East, the Caspian Sea region contains the largest proven natural gas and oil reserves in the world (Central Asia has almost 40 percent of the world’s gas reserves and 6 percent of its oil reserves).  The US has long desired not only to secure these reserves for its increasing energy appetite, but it is also seen as an imperative US companies control transport, as this permits control over prices.  The desired routes are through Turkey to the Mediterranean and through Afghanistan to Pakistan, thus bypassing routes through Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. 

Unocal worked closely with the Taliban in developing plans for the pipeline.  In 1997, Unocal met with Taliban leaders to “educate them about the benefits such a pipeline would bring this desperately poor and war-torn country.”  However, Unocal withdrew from the consortium in December 1998.  A 21 August 1998 Unocal statement cited “sharply deteriorating political conditions in the region” and the reluctance of the US and the UN to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan as reasons for pulling out.  Unocal denied their association with the Taliban in the days following 9-11.  In a press release dated 14 September 2001 Unocal averred, “The company is not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan in any way whatsoever.  Nor do we have any project or involvement in Afghanistan.”  

After the US invaded Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban regime, and emplaced an interim government, oil companies and interim ruler Hamid Karzai and Mohammad Alim Razim, minister for Mines and Industries, restarted the pipeline project talks in the spring 2002.  Razim stated that Unocal was the frontrunner to obtain contracts to construct the pipeline with funds from the reconstruction of Afghanistan, funds supplied by the US taxpayer.  

Crucial to these negotiations is the presence of US envoy to Kabul, Afghanistan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, formerly a lobbyist for the Taliban and the oil companies. As special envoy, he ostensibly reports to Secretary of State Colin Powell.  However, as a National Security Council (NSC) official and Special Assistant to the President for Southwest Asia, Near East and North Africa, he reports to NSC chief Condoleezza Rice.  Khalilzad has a long history working in Republican governments.  He headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Department of Defense.  He served as Counselor to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.  Under George Bush Senior, Khalilzad served as Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning.  He served under Reagan from 1985 to 1989 at the Department of State, where he advised the White House on the Iran-Iraq War and the Soviet War in Afghanistan. 

In August 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed and Khalilzad promptly changed his position on the Taliban.  In a widely read article, he presented what would become key elements of the Bush policy on Afghanistan.  He wrote that administration officials under Clinton in 1994 and 1995 underestimated “the threat [the Taliban] posed to regional stability and US interests.”  He noted Afghanistan’s importance “may grow in the coming years, as Central Asia’s oil and gas reserves, which are estimated to rival those of the North Sea, begin to play a major role in the world energy market.”  Afghanistan would serve as a “corridor for this energy.”^[3]  He impressed the Bush administration, becoming an advisor to the president, and enjoying appointment to the NSC.  The US has indeed established a military presence throughout the Caspian Sea region. The trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline currently being negotiated will stretch 1,650 kilometers.

The second largest proven oil reserves in the world are in Iraq (only Saudi Arabia has a larger reserve).  In 1978, Saddam Hussein, then vice chairman of Iraq, boasted, “One of the last two barrels produced in the world must come from Iraq.”  As late as spring 2002, the US was obtaining from Iraq 800,000 barrels per day, making that country the sixth most important source of oil for North American consumption.  As Bush rattled sabers over its differences with the regime of Saddam Hussein, petroleum companies switched to other sources, cutting Iraq exports by some 70 percent.  Petroleum companies anticipated the oil would flow again after tensions subsided, and possibly after UN sanctions were concluded, thus reducing oil prices.  

The possibility of a massive and cheap source of fossil fuel moved Russian, European, and Chinese companies to secure contracts with Saddam’s regime.  Lukoil (Russia) negotiated a 4 billion dollar deal with Iraq in 1997 to develop the West Qurna field in south Iraq.  As late as 2001, Total Fina Elf (France) was negotiating to develop the Majnoon field near the border of Iran.  The regime of Saddam Hussein, once a dependable client state in the region, had become uncooperative with US interests, and the US sought a new client state in Iraq.  The need to control Iraq became even more important after Saudi Arabia became less dependable to the US.  By overthrowing Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party, the Bush regime nullified the contracts negotiated by other countries.  Former CIA directory James Woolsey noted, “If they throw in their lot with Saddam,” he warned, “it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them.”^[4]

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Faisal Qaraghoil, the director of the London office of the INC, maintained the new Iraqi government would not be beholden to any previously negotiated contracts.  INC leader, Ahmed Chalabi, stated that a US-led consortium would develop Iraq’s oil fields.  All this coincided with revelations that Iran and Russia were negotiating a 40 billion dollar economic cooperation deal and that Iraq was selling oil to Syria in contradiction to the OFF program.  To make matters worse, crude oil prices were rising from a low of 10 dollars a barrel in 1997 to 30 dollars a barrel by 2000.  Projections indicated prices would remain at that level without a change in the structure of the world oil markets.  From the standpoint of energy interests, the war was necessary to establish US control over Iraqi oil and to stabilize world oil prices.

* * *

The Jerusalem Post has described the neoconservatives in the Bush White House as “Arik’s American Front.”^[5]  Neoconservatives Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle are identified in particular as principle members of Sharon’s organization in Washington.  Wolfowitz has a long history of public service in the United States.  He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs from 1977-1980 under Carter.  He was head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff from 1981-82 under Reagan, where he played a major role in shaping Reagan’s Cold War strategy.  From 1989-93, he served as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under Bush Senior.  Wolfowitz is the current Deputy Secretary of Defense under Bush Junior. A Pentagon special unit, the Office of Special Plans (OSP), headed by Wolfowitz, developed much of the initial information that found its way into Powell’s controversial script of his testimony before the UN Security Council.  Wolfowitz organized OSP to counter doubts about CIA’s Iraqi intelligence.

In 2002, Wolfowitz received the Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson Distinguished Service Award from JINSA.  Senator Jackson was the Democrat’s preeminent hawk in the 1970s and early 1980s.  So dedicated was he to the military industrial complex that his colleagues nicknamed him the “Senator from Boeing.”  His understanding of Israel’s war against the Palestinians shaped his foreign policy thinking.  In 1979, at the Conference on International Terrorism, sponsored by the Jonathan Institute, Jackson characterized terrorism as “a modern form of warfare against liberal democracies.”  The goal of this warfare, he said, “is to destroy the very fabric of democracy.” Jackson praised Israel’s suppression of Palestinian terrorists.  “In providing for her own defense against terrorism, Israeli courage has inspired those who love freedom around the world.”  He rejected the premise that the targets of terrorism should negotiate with terrorists.  Referring to the ambitions of the PLO, Jackson said, “To insist that free nations negotiate with terrorist organizations can only strengthen the latter and weaken the former.”  He also rejected the premise of Palestinian statehood.  “To crown with statehood a movement based on terrorism,” he said, “would devastate the moral authority that rightly lies behind the effort of free states everywhere to combat terrorism.” 

Democrats had moved away from confrontation with terrorism, seeking instead to defuse the source of the conflict they believed spawned terrorists. The Party’s position, according to the hawks, inevitably meant laying blame on those states that had become the terrorists’ targets.  More “realist” Democrats saw the broad anti-war stance of their party as a “blame America first” approach, since it forced the public to consider the possibility terrorism was a reaction by oppressed people to colonialism and imperialism.  This shift in the party forced many of Jackson’s aides, including Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Perle, and, most importantly, Wolfowitz, to switch to the Republican side of the aisle, obtaining offices in the Reagan and Bush administrations.  No figure in Washington was therefore more deserving of the JINSA Distinguished Service Award than Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz used the JINSA awards ceremony as an opportunity to show that Bush was following in the footsteps of Jackson.  Describing Bush as a leader “determined to move forward strategically, pragmatic step after pragmatic step toward a goal that the faint hearted deride as visionary,” Wolfowitz said Jackson “would have been proud and pleased to know our President.”  The Deputy Defense Secretary admonished media characterizations of Bush’s inner circle as “hawks,” noting that Jackson rejected the label.  “I just don’t want my country to be a pigeon,” Jackson reportedly once remarked.  Wolfowitz joined him in condemning appeasement.  “Freedom cannot be defended, much less advanced by the faint hearted who shun all risks,” said Wolfowitz.  “And it cannot be advanced if we believe that evil dictators can be brought around to peaceful ways without at least the threat of force.” 

In 1992, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney requested versions of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) directive from Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Wolfowitz.  The grandness of Wolfowitz’s thinking presented in his version of the document enthralled Cheney.  Wolfowitz was critical of the way Bush Senior handled the 1991 Iraq War.  He believed the continuing presence of Saddam Hussein clearly indicated Bush had ended the war prematurely.  Wolfowitz proposed that the US militarily intervene in Iraq to guarantee the US access to raw materials, especially oil, and to remove the threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.  Wolfowitz “proposed that with the demise of the Soviet Union, American doctrine should be to assure that no new superpower arose to rival the US’ enlightened domination of the world.”  To achieve this goal, Wolfowitz “called for preemptive attacks and ad hoc coalitions.” Moreover, the US must be prepared to go it alone when “collective action cannot be orchestrated.”^[6]  Not coincidentally, much of Bush Junior’s current national security strategy embodies the principles Wolfowitz laid down in his version of the DPG.  Although Bush Senior went with Powell’s more pragmatic plan, Cheney and Wolfowitz believed they were on the verge of realizing their dream of Pax Americana.  However, a long and deep economic downturn erased Bush’s wartime popularity.  To their dismay, the electorate selected Arkansas governor Bill Clinton for president in 1992.  The neoconservatives were out of power.

In 1997, Wolfowitz and several other intellectuals formed a think tank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). They did so “to make the case and rally support for American global leadership,” a task at which they felt Bill Clinton was failing.  Top corporate, military and political figures aligned themselves with PNAC, including Elliot Abrams (Reagan State Department), Cheney, Frank Gaffney (president of the Center for Security Policy), William Kristol (Dan Quayle’s chief of staff and editor of the conservative publication Weekly Standard), and Rumsfeld. Powerful economic interests threw their support behind PNAC.  PNAC’s list of contributors includes the John M. Olin Foundation, (munitions and chemicals interests, with Samuel Huntington directing its Institute for Strategic Studies), the Sarah Scaife Foundation (big oil), and The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (Reagan’s Star Wars project).  PNACemerged wielding a document calling for the US to “take its place in history as the dominant global force and achieve greatness by being bold and purposeful.” PNAC asked in their statement of principles, “Does the US have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?”  This they doubted.  “We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan administration’s success,” they wrote.  Those successful elements were a “military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the US’ global responsibilities.”

In 2000, PNAC released the report Rebuilding America’s Defenses.  This document would become the blueprint for Bush’s National Security Strategydiscussed above. According to Rebuilding America’s Defenses, America “has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in the Gulf regional security.  While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”  Subduing the region required more stable launching points into the various countries.  Saudi Arabia had become, PNAC argued, problematic as a staging area because of its “domestic sensibilities.”  Moreover, after removing Saddam from power, “Iran may well prove as large a threat.”

The judicial coup of 2000 that led to the Bush presidency provided the opening the neoconservatives had been waiting for: an ideological president receptive to their ideas.  The administration appointed Wolfowitz to his current post. Under the direction of Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon created the Defense Policy Board (DPB), an ostensibly informal working group composed of former government officials and military experts serving as an advisory body to the Pentagon on defense issues, put Perle in charge, and plugged the Project for the New American Century directly into executive power.^[7]  Not taking a second Bush term for granted, Wolfowitz, according to Time magazine, pressed the White House to go to war with Iraq just four days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.^[8]  He would have to wait until after the invasion of Afghanistan, but, in the end, he got what he had long desired: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the occupation of Iraq, and the removal of US military bases from Saudi Arabia.

In 2002, The Jerusalem Postreflected on Wolfowitz’s JINSA Distinguished Service Award: 

Wolfowitz, who is now one of the principle architects of the US war against Islamic terrorism, comes from a pedigree of successful strategists schooled by Henry Jackson….  They acknowledge realistically that as the land of freedom and liberty, the US is locked in a constant and never-ending struggle against movements and ideologies that would murder innocents and blot out freedom.  As their teacher, Henry Jackson made clear, the inspiration for much of what they stand for comes from watching and emulating Israel.  It is the legacy of the Jewish state, indeed of the Jewish people as the solitary fighter combating terrorism against innocent civilians that captivated these men’s attention thirty years ago.  It was Israel’s struggle that made them recognize that terrorism, like Communism—the major threat of that day—must be fought without compromise.^[9]

Thirty years lurking in the shadows, Perle, tagged by comrades and enemies alike as the “Prince of Darkness,” has been at the forefront of foreign policy thinking about the Middle East.  Like Wolfowitz, Perle was among those Jackson devotees who hitched their political career to the conservative Republican wagon, serving as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy from 1981-1987 under Reagan.  During the 1980s, Perle criticized the Reagan and Bush administrations for their support of Saddam during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, and as early as 1991 he advocated overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein. Until recently, he was chairman of the DPB.  Due to conflicts of interest, Perle resigned that position.  However, he remains a board member and directs Bush’s foreign policy from the wings.  Additionally, he has served in non-governmental elite organizations, such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).  

Perle has pursued his Middle East vision by working for countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.  In 1996, while serving with the prominent Israeli think tank, The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), Perle, along with Douglas Feith, the current Undersecretary of Defense for the US, and David Wurmser, current Special Assistant in the State Department, authored the report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, for the Likud Party of Israel, Israel’s leading right wing party.  The document advised then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to walk away from the Oslo accord.  In 1997, in A Strategy for Israel, Douglas Feith followed up on the report and argued Israel should re-occupy the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.  “The price in blood would be high,” he wrote, but such a move would be a necessary “detoxification” of the situation.  This was, in Feith’s view, “the only way out of Oslo’s web.”  In the report, Feith linked Israel’s rejection of the peace process to the neoconservatives’ obsession with the rule of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath regime.  “Removing Saddam from power,” Feith wrote, is “an important Israeli strategic objective.” 

In an open letter to President Clinton, dated 19 February 1998, Perle, Feith, and Wurmser were joined by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Kristol, John Bolton (current Undersecretary for International Security), Frank Carlucci (Reagan Defense Secretary), Richard Armitage (current Deputy Secretary of State), and others to make the argument that “Saddam must be overpowered.”  The letter asserted that the “danger” imposed by Saddam, “cannot be eliminated as long as objective is simply ‘containment,’ and the means of achieving it are limited to sanctions and exhortations.”  They urged the White House to “provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.”  Years later, as we have seen, with many of these authors in official positions and advisory roles for the Bush White House, this became official policy.

Together, Wolfowitz and Perle advised the White House to jettison the theory that reducing Jewish-Muslim antagonism would garner support for an attack on Iraq.  They advocated going after regimes aiding and abetting terrorism in a unilateral fashion. They linked Saddam with terrorist groups operating in Palestine, claiming, “as long as Saddam is in power, terrorists will have a place to hide.”^[10]  A major US paper reported that Perle told the administration to “give Sharon full support” in his suppression of Palestine. “We need to bring the maximum pressure to bear on Arafat, not Israel,” Perle said.^[11]  Support for the Sharon approach was therefore a causein the Bush policy shift towards Iraq not a result of it. 

Sharon and his advisors aggressively lobbied Washington to expand the definition of terrorism to include groups and states bent on Israel’s destruction.^[12]  In meetings Bush and Sharon “shared their mutual concerns about the threats posed by terrorism and the development of advanced weapons by Iraq and Iran.”  This tactic was clever, the Israeli press noted at the time.  It gave Bush the room he needed to pursue his Middle East policy while maintaining an ostensive “hands-off” policy on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.  The strategy allowed for the manipulation of liberals who would aid in the perception that Bush was disengaged by complaining about disengagement.  Couched in this fashion, Sharon’s message “could lead to victory for the Wolfowitz camp,” wrote Zacharia in the Jerusalem Post.^[13]  

With a green light from Washington, Israel not only intensified operations in Palestinian territory, but also stepped up hostilities towards Lebanon and Syria.  This is what the neoconservatives had hoped for.  As early as December 2001, Perle called on Israel to bomb the Bekaa Valley and the Hamas headquarters in Damascus.  By the US stepping back from Israel, Sharon could not only take Arafat out, but could also enlarge the conflict in areas surrounding Israel. Indeed, Sharon had come into office with a well-conceived strategy for thwarting the Middle East peace process. This was not initially apparent to US observers who saw Sharon’s pre-election belligerence as the acts of a crude anti-Palestinian bigot.  Sharon had in fact created the conditions to justify heightened levels of repression in the occupied territories by visiting Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque at the Temple Mount. This controversial action sparked the Second Intifada, touching off a wave of intense violence lasting for years. The Israel government would pull out of the peace process and launch a massive military campaign against Palestinians under this pretext.  What was viewed at the time as an act of ignorance and intolerance was in fact a brilliant strategic move by a hard-line right-winger bent on erasing the Oslo blunder.

In 2002, Frances Fitzgerald noted “for years before the Bush administration took office Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were calling for [Saddam’s] overthrow on the grounds that he posed a danger to the region, and in particular to Israel.”^[14]  FitzGerald cites apanel discussion at the Washington Institute in June 1999 where Wolfowitz clarified his views about the connection between Iraq and the peace process. He believed George Senior’s invasion of Iraq averted a nuclear war between Iraq and Israel and that “Yasser Arafat was forced to make peace once radical alternatives like Iraq had disappeared.”  Wolfowitz continued, “The US needs to accelerate Saddam’s demise if it truly wants to help the peace process.”  Perle has likewise been clear on this connection.  “We shouldn’t wait,” he said.^[15]  “We should go after Iraq.”  Why?  “The removal of Saddam would be a tremendous step forward for the peace process.  We need to take decisive action, and when we do and are successful, it will greatly strengthen our ability to do other things in the region.”

At an AIPAC conference held in the spring of 2002, “America and Israel Standing Together Against Terrorism,” attended by half of the US Senate and ninety members of the US House of Representatives, former Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said, “There has never been a greater friend of Israel in the White House than President George W. Bush.”  The conference saluted thirteen senior administration officials.  Talking points AIPAC officials handed out to delegates echoed Sharon’s message that he is “waging his part of the war on terrorism.”^[16]  The talking points stated, among other things, that the US and Israel “are victims of well-organized and well-funded extremist organizations” and “Israel must defend against this terror just as surely as the USmust fight and destroy al Qaeda and other terrorist groups with global reach.”

President Bush and his team of advisors successfully reversed the Clinton peace strategy.  The new Middle East policy shifted the emphasis towards the problems of Saddam Hussein and the Palestinian Authority.  This required Bush and the State Department to back off the peace process and support Sharon’s refusal to negotiate with Palestinians in an environment of heightened conflict.  At every opportunity, Sharon made a point to reiterate his position: he would never deal with Palestinians under fire.  During their meetings, Bush and Sharon agreed that, until violence subsided, negotiations could not begin.  Sharon did his part to make sure violence would not wane.

Why would Bush support all this?  Opposition to the Oslo approach to Middle East peace reflects a particular brand of Christianity.  Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Ralph Reed, and others, as well as organizations such as the National Unity Coalition for Israel, have been vocal in opposing Palestinian statehood.  In 1997, these groups launched a major public relations campaign, publishing an advertisement in The New York Times declaring, “Christians Call for a United Jerusalem.”  According to the ad, Israel has a divine right to Jerusalem.

Numerous congressional figures also advance this position.  Led by House Majority Leader Tom Delay of Texas, evangelical Christians in the government have contended that Washington must permit Israel to fulfill biblical prophecy.  Senator James Inhofe said, from the floor of the Senate, “The Bible says that Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar before the Lord.”  “Hebron is in the West Bank,” the Senator from Oklahoma emphasized.  “It is at this place where God appeared to Abram and said, ‘I am giving you this land.’”  Inhofe then drew this startling conclusion: “This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.”  

At the core of this brand of evangelical Christianity is the belief God endorses the American way of life.  In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush declared, “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to humanity.”  In Bush’s view, no country is excused from accepting the heavenly present of “democratic capitalism.”  “Events aren’t moved by blind change and chance,” Bush stated at the 2003 National Prayer Breakfast; rather, “the hand of a just and faithful God” determines all circumstances.  Bush assured Americans they can “be confident in the ways of Providence, even when they are far from our understanding.”  History, according to Bush, is the unfolding of God’s will.  “Behind all of life and all of history, there’s a dedication and purpose.”  It is in the context of a worldview that rests upon Providence that members of the Bush administration have interpreted recent events as celestial signs God has ordained Bush to lead America through the final hour of His divine plan.

Members of the Bush administration see the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as signs God selected Bush to lead a crusade against evil.  Insiders have revealed that war planners bring their strategies and tactics to the president where he and members of his administration pray over their vision and translate the text into articles of faith.  Borger writes, “While most people saw the extraordinary circumstances of the 2000 election as a fluke, Bush and his closest supporters saw it as yet another sign he was chosen to lead.  Later, September 11 ‘revealed’ what he was there for.”^[17]  Deborah Caldwell reports that, after his speech to Congress on 20 September 2001, Bush received a telephone call from speechwriter Mike Gerson, who said, “Mr. President, when I saw you on television, I thought—God wanted you there.”^[18]  Tim Goeglein, deputy director of the White House public liaison, remarked to a religious reporter, “I think President Bush is God’s man at this hour.”  Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition, said God chose George Bush to be President because “He knew George Bush had the ability to lead in this compelling way.”  Religious leader Gary Bauer once remarked, “A man of God is in the White House.”  Timereported, “Privately, Bush even talked of being chosen by the grace of God.”  When he was Texas governor, Bush called Fort Worth televangelist James Robison and said, “I’ve heard the call.  I believe God wants me to run for president.”^[19]

David Frum, the speechwriter who coined the phrase “axis of evil,” exposed the depth of fundamentalism in the Bush administration in his book The Right Man.  According to Frum, Bush and his advisors strive to create in each of their targets an enemy comparable to Reagan’s Evil Empire, a construct steeped in religious metaphor.  During the writing of the 2002 State of the Union address, Gerson came to Frum and challenged him to “sum up in a sentence or two our best case for going after Iraq.”  Frum came up with the phrase “axis of hatred,” which he felt “described the ominous but ill-defined links between Iraq and terrorism.”  Gerson substituted the word “evil” for “hatred” because it made the slogan sound more “theological.”  According to Frum, in an interview with Julian Borger, “It was the sort of language President Bush used.”^[20]

Bush’s policies are based on extremist interpretations of Christian doctrine.  A particular understanding of Christian eschatology—Apocalyptic Christianity—is his political guiding light.  His religious beliefs have fused with a conviction that God chose him to fulfill a part of a divine plan.  The type of evangelical faith that animates Bush’s ideology is Christian Zionism.  Christian Zionists believe, for Jesus to return to Earth, Israel must be restored to its biblical boundaries.  Much of the mainstream support for Israel’s colonial goals today comes from the Christian Zionist movement.  In the battle between Christianity and Islam, the Jews occupy a central position between them.  Christians today believe Jesus had to die to fulfill God’s plan for the Earth and that the Jews must have a homeland before Christ can return.  The rise of this brand of fundamentalist Christianity explains why so many Americans would agree with Bush’s vision.  The Bush vision resonates with so many of Bush’s followers because the faithful likely agree with the president and his advisors that he has been chosen by God to protect Israel and to repel Islam.

Linking war with Iraq to an eschatological view of history solves many problems for the Bush administration and its congregation. Neither the president nor supporters of the regime need to concern themselves with the justness of war and occupation, nor do they need to worry much about the consequences of war and occupation.  As Jackson Lears points out in an 11 March 2003 New York Timeseditorial, Providence “sanitizes the messy actualities of war and its aftermath.  Like the strategists’ faith in smart bombs, faith in Providence frees one from having to consider the role of chance in armed conflict, the least predictable of human affairs.  Between divine will and American know-how, we have everything under control.”  

* * *

A computer disc was found in Lafayette Park containing this advice from Bush principal advisor Karl Rove to his colleagues: “Focus on War.”  When the Republican Party met in Austin, Texas in the winter of 2002, Rove told the devoted there to exploit the war in Afghanistan for political gain. Revelations of Rove’s marching orders confirm what critical observers have understood for a long time: Rove is the architect of the political side of the war strategy.  Although the White House has endeavored to give the appearance of distancing Rove from foreign policy advising, desiring to portray him as playing no role in military decisions, he is still referred to as “General Rove.” Karl Rove is well aware of the perception among Americans that Republicans are stronger on national defense issues, and hammers the theme of Republican military prowess to the party faithful.  

Rove has become deeply involved in Bush’s Middle East policy.  When the White House considered pressuring Congress to back away from voting on a resolution in support of Israel, Rove convinced the White House not to.  Rove is out front pushing the president’s rhetoric of Sharon as a “man of peace.” Fearful conservative Christians and Jews in the Republican Party were becoming disillusioned with Bush’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, believed to be largely due to Powell’s disturbing concern with forging peace between the two peoples, Rove sent Wolfowitz to speak at a high-profile rally in support of Israel in April 2002.^[21]  

Rove is the principal architect of the Bush image. He runs the three main propaganda offices in the White House: the Office of Political Affairs, which runs polls and focus groups to develop strategies for shaping messages, the Office of Public Liaison, which promotes Bush priorities through outreach to constituencies and public interest groups, and the Office of Strategic Initiatives, which coordinates the planning and implementation of the overarching strategy for achieving Bush’s plans.  It was Rove who picked Ellis Island, with the Statue of Liberty glowing in the background, as the site where Bush delivered his September 11 address to the nation. It was Rove who orchestrated the president’s “Top Gun” landing on the aircraft carrier with the banner heralding the end of the war in Iraq—“Mission Accomplished.”  It was Rove who claimed Bush’s disappearance in the aftermath of 9-11 was because Air Force One was under attack.  Rove timed the debate over Iraq in the fall of 2002 to benefit the Republicans by distracting the electorate from Bush’s dismal domestic record.

In one of the White House’s more audacious propaganda efforts, a film was released on Showtime, DC 9/11, depicting Bush not as that man who sat unconcerned before school children after being told the South Tower had been hit by a jet airliner, or as a confused president who was whisked away to an underground bunker in Nebraska for a crash course in how to act presidential in a military crisis, but rather as a take-charge genius cowboy.  “If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me,” actor Timothy Bottoms, who plays Bush in the movie, thunders;  “I’ll be at home.  Waiting for the bastard.”  A secret service agent says, “But Mister President—,” but is cut off by Bush: “Try ‘Commander-in-Chief’ whose present command is: Take the President home!”  DC 9/11was written and produced by Lionel Chetwynd, a close associate of Bush, who worked with Rove to develop the “documentary.”  Chetwynd once remarked, “I threw myself on the mercies of my friend Karl Rove.”  Chetwynd, the founder of the Wednesday Morning Club, an organization of Hollywood conservatives organizing support for Bush, is a member of the White House Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

Regime change has become the central tenet in Bush’s foreign policy as an aggressive doctrine of intervention takes shape.  The president has dedicated himself to materializing the doctrine of the “ugly American” he condemned at the Wake Forest University debate in October 2000.  The Bush doctrine contains three basic principles, as outlined by PNAC: 

• The US shall develop the capacity to strike in a preemptive manner any country it deems as a threat.  Bush argued in the 2002 State of the Union address that just as America’s “enemies view the entire world as a battlefield,” so must the US.  

• The US shall actively pursue regime change.  Americans must dedicate themselves to the task of nation building.  Countries targeted for intervention are “rogue states” and their “terrorist allies” that are “arming to threaten the peace of the world.”  

• The US shall promote liberal democratic principles around the world.  In a 30 January 2003 memorandum to opinion leaders, PNAC wrote, “Because the US has a ‘greater objective’—a greater purpose—in the world, Bush sees in the war not just danger but an opportunity to spread American political principles, especially into the Muslim world.”  

America’s shift towards a renewed imperialism is the work of age of Scoop Jackson’s protégés.  Since the fall of the Soviet Union, members of the DPB-PNAC clique have believed they are entitled to a political moment comparable to 1949, when elite arrangements—the NSC, Bretton Woods, and NATO—shaped the post-WWII world.  The invasion and occupation of Iraq has been for years the central element in their polyarchic designs.  If the US can force Iraq to become a “democratic beacon” in the region, the neocons theorize, then other Middle Eastern countries will follow, touching off a “democratic tsunami.”  Democracies in Syria, Iran, and other countries in the Middle East will diffuse anti-American anger and create a context leading to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ushering in a new age of peace and liberal economic development in the region.  

The doctrine of the preemptive strike is the ideological cover over the practice of conducting foreign policy via military means. Linking a people to “global terrorism” and manufacturing evidence of “weapons of mass destruction” are tactics that potentially demonize any country that exists as an obstacle to national interest.  Now that the US is the world’s only super power, Washington feels more confident in deploying military means to conduct foreign affairs. 

Why are Americans behind this president and his policies? Certainly the degree of religiosity expressed by Americans in public opinion surveys explains much of it.  The most recent Gallup poll puts the number of born-again Christians at 41 percent.  Among born-again Christians, Bush’s popularity stands at 74 percent. Another reason is found in the ignorance of Americans concerning basic facts about the official enemy.  Nearly half of all Americans believe Saddam Hussein was part of the terrorist network that attacked the US on 11 September 2001. In a poll conducted by Steve Kull, an analyst for the Program on International Policy Attitudes (University of Maryland), one third of Americans believe US forces actually found WMD and 22 percent believe Saddam usedbiological and chemical weapons in the latest conflict.  In fact, no WMD have been found or were used.  Half of all Americans believed Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers.  Another survey found only 17 percent of respondents knew no hijackers were Iraqi. In fact, none of the hijackers were Iraqi. 

But at the root of Americans’ collective willingness to so readily fall for the administration’s propaganda is an overwhelming sense of fear and fatalism stemming from the 9-11 attacks and the government’s successful efforts to inject into the American psyche the threat of random terror.  The color-coded terrorist alert system lights up when the administration needs a bit more support for White House policy and legislation.  The president regularly warns Americans in high-profile events, “The enemy is wounded but still resourceful and actively recruiting and still dangerous.  We cannot afford a moment of complacency.” The “servants of evil who plotted the attacks” are everywhere, lurking behind trees and under buildings.  Fear is like a drug; its effect is the production of docile bodies.  Terrorized by their government, Americans have stood by passively while the Bush regime expands the police state at home, through such mechanisms as the Patriot Acts,^[22] and invaded and occupied two countries. The president and his troops have exploited every opportunity to justify their policy goals on the basis of 9-11. Americans have done little to resist them.

---

^[1]  US Central Command typically issues press releases with injuries only when there are deaths, so injuries are certainly higher.

^[2]  The most notable case was the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor outside of Baghdad.  The international community roundly condemned Israel for this action.

^[3]  The Washington Quarterly(Winter 2000).

^[4]  Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, “In Iraq War Scenario, Oil is Key Issue:  US Drillers Eye Huge Petroleum Pool,” The Washington Post, 15 September 2002, A-1.

^[5]  Janine Zacharia, “Arik’s American Front,” The Jerusalem Post, 5 January 2001, 4B.

^[6]   J. Zacharia, “Next Stop, Baghdad?”  Jerusalem Post12 October 2001, 1B.  

^[7]  When Bush entered the White House, he authorized Rumsfeld to create the DPB.  Although Defense organized DPB as an independent advisory body, Rumsfeld appoints its members and they have access to classified information.  Members of the board include former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Nixon Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former CIA Director Jim Woolsey.  The DPB’s role is to advise Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, through former Reagan Defense Department official Douglas Feith, on security and defense issues. 

^[8]  TimeMagazine, 27 January 2003.

^[9]  Caroline Glick, “A Return to Jacksonian Zionism, The Jerusalem Post 22 November 2002, 1A.

^[10]J. Zacharia, “Next Stop, Baghdad?”

^[11]Peter Slevin and Glenn Frankel, “If US Wants to Engage, Analysts see Many Options, The Washington Post, 31 March 2003, A17. 

^[12]Alan Sipress, “Bush Assures Sharon on US Role in Talks,” The Washington Post, 21 March 2001, A22.  

^[13]Jerusalem Postwriter Janine Zacharia in a fall 2001 editorial, “Next Stop, Baghdad?”  

^[14]Frances Fitzgerald, “Threat of War: How Hawks Captured the White House,” The Guardian, 24September 2002, 4.

^[15]Philip Dine, “US Role as Mediator is Questioned,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, 21 April 2002, A10.

^[16]Mike Allen, “White House and Hill State Support for Israel: Lobby’s Meeting Draws Strong Backing,” The Washington Post, 23 April 2001, A11.

^[17]Julian Borger, “How I Created the Axis of Evil,” TheGuardian, 28 January 2003, 6.

^[18]Deborah Caldwell, “Does the President Believe he has a Divine Mandate?”  The Times Union, 16 February 2003.

^[19]Aaron Latham, “How George W. Found God,”George Magazine, September 2000.

^[20]Borger, “How I Created the Axis of Evil.” 

^[21]As Bush’s first term wears on, Rove has increasingly come to believe thatPowell is operating beyond the control of the White House and that the secretary of state is going about his business with a sense of entitlement.  “It’s constantly, you know, ‘I’m in charge, and this is all politics, and I’m going to win the internecine political game,’” Rove mocked Powell privately.

^[22]  An acronym for “United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”

Yesterday’s New York Times editorial “The Democrat’s Best Choices for President,” demonstrates as well as anything could the role the Times plays in managing establishment hegemony. 

“The Democratic primary contest is often portrayed as a tussle between moderates and progressives,” writes the editorial board, while noting that “[n]early any of them would be the most progressive president in decades on issues like health care, the economy and government’s allocations of resources.”

To be sure, Sanders is still the only candidate in the running with some populist credibility (since Tulsi Gabbard has been effectively marginalized). But the Times gets Sanders comically wrong. “Senator Sanders has spent nearly four decades advocating revolutionary change for a nation whose politics often move with glacial slowness.” (It would seem that the glacier of nation’s politics is moving too fast for the Times!)

Actually, the implication is rather sinister. Sanders is not a revolutionary. But it’s more disappointing than this. He used to grasp the reality that the capitalist class was using immigration as a weapon to undermine the standard of living for Americans workers (see “Bernie Sanders Gets it on Open Borders Rhetoric—At Least He Did in 2015”). (Have you seen this business about the “Trumpianism” of Sanders? Is this what sacred him away from telling the truth about one of the most devastating aspects of globalization?)

The editorial board writes, “We are not veering away from the values we espouse, but we are rattled by the weakness of the institutions that we trusted to undergird those values.” The complaint here is not about institutions (which remain strong as long as the Senate can beat back the ambitions of House Democrats). It’s about establishment hegemony, the network of banks and corporations that grew comfortable steering the state in a manner than enriched them while marginalizing the masses, whom they see as racists and reactionary.

By “institutions,” the Times mean the status quo. (This is why too many Democrats miss George W. Bush.) By “stability” the editorial board mean a sleeping-walking public. The rebellion of the English working class has really rattled them. First Trump. Then Johnson. It must feel like the world is coming apart. Go back to sleep, proletarians. Democrats are for you. Labour is for you. Put your trust in “the institutions.” Hence back-to-back sentences like these two: “If there were ever a time to be open to new ideas, it is now. If there were ever a time to seek stability, now is it.” “We know you want change, but…”

The NYTimes describes Sander’s prescriptions as “overly rigid, untested and divisive.” The board writes: “Three years into the Trump administration, we see little advantage to exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.”

“Good news, then, that Amy Klobuchar has emerged as a standard-bearer for the Democratic center.” (Oh joy.) “Her vision goes beyond the incremental.” (No, it doesn’t.) “Given the polarization in Washington and beyond, the best chance to enact many progressive plans could be under a Klobuchar administration.” (Remember what “progressive” means: reforms that humanize the systematic exploitation of human labor.) In a revealing touch, the Times tells us that we’re supposed to appreciate that Klobuchar “sponsored and voted on dozens of national defense measures, including military action in Libya and Syria.” That’s the type of moral leadership the Times craves.

“May the best woman win.” That ought to excite those who just want to vote for somebody “who looks like me.”

As required by law (every two years), the president has announced updates to federal guidance on school prayer (which hasn’t been done since 2003). The updated guidance states that school officials “may not lead their classes in prayer, devotional readings from the Bible, or other religious activities, nor may school officials use their authority to attempt to persuade or compel students to participate in prayer or other religious activities.” Not really an update. Solid foundational stuff.

Here’s the update that I would like to see to federal guidance on school prayer: Religious observances cannot be such as to

(a) impede the free movement of students in school and on school grounds. For example, devotional prostrations cannot hinder the ability of students to freely move through spaces normally free to move though. We cannot have people blocking hallways in religious observance. This not only interferes with free movement of persons, but also coerces them into participating in some fashion in religious observances, since they are being compelled to change their action for another person’s perceived obligation and doctrine. It also uses public resources for religious purposes. No student should ever be compelled in any fashion to participate in the religious practices of another person. It’s not just the government should not enable such interference in religious liberty; the government should take affirmative action to prevent such interference. Public resources should not be used for religious purposes.

(b) compromise safety or the learning environment. For example, no ceremonial weapons. If a person is exempted from a ban on religious grounds, then the ban must be lifted for everybody. If hoodies are to be banned because they interfere with learning, then hijabs should be banned. If ceremonial knives or hijabs can be excepted for religious reasons, then this means that reasons given for the bans on weapons and head coverings are arbitrary and invalid. If Sikhs can carry knives at school, then all kids can carry knives at school. If Muslims can wear head coverings at school, then all kids can wear head coverings at school. (See “The Injustices of Public School Dress Codes”; “The Kirpan and the Seax.”)

(c) deny any student the ability to engage in any practice granted to any another student on religious grounds. This is essentially point (b), but I want to generalize it because it is vital to liberty that people grasp this point. If a moment of prayer is allowed for any student, then the same amount of time must be given to all students who wish to observe a moment for any reason. My son is a secular humanist. He would like twenty minutes a day to reflect on his humanism in any manner he wishes. It’s not up to government to police the content of his observances, only the form, time, and place. The fact that he is under no religious obligation for the twenty minutes provided means he is free to do other things while religious people meet their obligations. If he wishes to spend his twenty minutes playing video games or listening to Black Sabbath, then that’s his business. Why should he be denied twenty minutes of his time because some students have been told to lie on the floor in religious devotion or huddle into groups with hands raised to the sky?

The problem with the present popular articulation of religious liberty is that it treats a personal freedom as a group privilege. Instead of making sure that individuals are not forced into the religious observations of other—freedom of religion necessarily means freedom from religion—the understanding many people hold is that holding a religious belief recognized by the government gives one the right to do things that people who do not share those religious views don’t get to do. That’s not liberty. That’s not equality before the law. That privilege.

Religious liberty does not mean a person can do whatever he wants by appealing to religion. Think about the crazy shit religious people do and ask whether anything goes at public school. We cannot have the government violating the principle of equal treatment on ideological grounds or facilitating the intrusion of religious traditions and rituals into student’s time and space at public schools. We cannot have government resources devoted to religious observances or rituals for any reason. We have got to turn this around for freedom’s sake.

This isn’t complicated. Religious liberty means that the government cannot stop individuals from doing anything on religious grounds in their private capacity. You cannot tell a Christian that he cannot pray on his time. It does not mean that religious doctrine or rituals negate government control of behavior. As Thomas Jefferson writes in an October 7, 1801 letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Church, informing the congregation that the government would not treat any particular sect as special, and clarifying that “the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions,”“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’”