THE BOMBING OF Iraq in mid-February drew immediate condemnation from the Arab world and from peace and justice and human rights organizations around the world. The Bush-Cheney-Powell administration, for its part, referred to the bombing and the civilian deaths it caused as “routine.” Both, of course, are correct: The bombing was a murderous atrocity, and also a representative symbol of Bush-to-Clinton-to-Bush continuity.
The transfer of government authority and warmaking power took place on schedule, reaffirming the underlying strength and stability of the Constitutional order in the United States. Let no one underestimate the extraordinary power of this political system, crafted over two centuries to serve the needs first of slaveowners and landed gentry, then of industrial and finance capital. But neither let us misunderstand the filthy, slimy dealings that lubricated the change in administration from one bourgeois clique to the other. The following list, which barely scratches the surface, will give some limited insight into the true meaning of that sacred term “bipartisan:”
And so the final returns are in on the Clinton presidency, from the Iraq sanctions to the elimination of welfare to the final, gratuitous Peltier atrocity. Truth to tell, if George W. Bush devoted the remainder of his life to personal corruption and abuse of power, he couldn’t touch the achievements of Bill Clinton in these fields of endeavor.
But (as the Democrats ceaselessly remind us) Clinton’s personal dishonesty and corruption are secondary matters in comparison to the issues that will actually affect people’s lives. The fact is that in most of these, the junior Bush presidency will be largely a continuation of the senior Bush and Clinton administrations combined.
Curious George has taken office at a less than propitious moment, just as the long period of U.S. capitalist expansion has dramatically slowed (whether or not a full-fledged recession has begun). The dot-com bubble burst months ago; now the real economy is suffering serious blows with large-scale cutbacks in auto. The “market miracle” is looking somewhat tarnished as California energy deregulation produces power blackouts and monopoly-pricing obscenities.
To whatever extent political leadership matters in steering a capitalist economy through a troubled period, Bush inspires no confidence in anyone. It’s to his advantage, in fact, that the business and financial elites regard his economic policies as largely irrelevant in comparison to the decisions that really matter, made by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve.
Bush, of course, will continue to push a massive tax cut for the deserving rich, the permanent program of the right wing whether in times of boom or bust. As mainstream economist Paul Krugman observes, Bush’s tax-cut planners “ignore the payroll tax [15.3% of income up to $70,000, which funds social security]—that is, they propose no cut in the tax that is most of what most families pay, while demanding a large cut in the income tax ... And they want to eliminate the inheritance tax, which is overwhelmingly a tax on the downright wealthy.” (New York Times, 2/11/01, WK17)
Even before the debate begins, Democratic opposition to these giveaways is visibly weakening, especially after Greenspan’s partial endorsement (even though the Fed Chair had repeatedly stated that such cuts do not act as a timely economic stimulus).
There’s a larger issue that is overlooked. No one in Congress—not one single Democratic liberal—proposes a massive tax reduction for working people, who gained little if anything from the 1990s prosperity while the rich benefitted so enormously, and who desperately need and deserve a major tax cut.
The biggest danger to stability is beyond Greenspan’s control: that a slowing U.S. economy cannot provide the market to cushion the impact of some new shock to the world economy in Asia or Latin America. If a new Asian crisis, for example, were to trigger a global recession, the promised glories of “globalization” could be replaced by vicious regional trade wars and competitive currency devaluations.
Globally, there are a number of crises for which U.S. imperialism appears to have no solution, only a hope of containment: These include most notably the protracted revolutionary crisis and social agony of Indonesia, and the war in the Congo that is destroying Central Africa.
The United States seems increasingly unable to maintain the international discipline of the embargo on Iraq, except possibly by organizing another military mobilization against that country. Meanwhile, the level of Israeli violence against the Palestinian uprising threatens to rise to a level that could trigger an anti- American explosion from North Africa to Indonesia.
None of these issues much mattered as recently as the 2000 election, when the warning signs of an economic slowdown were only first appearing. With the slowdown now a fact of life, the combination of global political instability and an illegitimate U.S. presidency takes on a more ominous cast.
Besides Iraq, the second immediate threat of U.S. military intervention is the toxic combination of “drug eradication” insanity with counterinsurgency in Colombia.
Under Clinton’s Plan Colombia, Washington provided $950 million to the Colombian military and police with millions more for the armed forces of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. This money will also refurbish a key air force base in Ecuador to be used by U.S. spy planes.
Plan Colombia also includes the training of two new Colombian anti-drug battalions. Comments from incoming Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld indicated that the new administration doesn’t differentiate between anti-drug and counterinsurgency.
The Bush administration does have its own international initiative, in the form of the missile-defense system to be constructed against the ostensible rogue-state threats from Iraq and North Korea. If this doesn’t make you feel safer already, consider what this mini-Star Wars program will accomplish:
After Clinton: Bush, Ashcroft and Star Wars on the same bill. Such dealings. Such a deal.
ATC 91, March–April 2001