Your humble correspondent wishes first, on behalf of the U.S. antiwar movement, to thank the British voting public and Respect for the one-day loan of MP George Galloway to our nation's capital, where he exposed not only the lies and hypocrisy but better yet, the incompetence and stupidity of the Senate committee's inquisition into the Iraq Oil-for-Food program.
There are differences and ambivalences among U.S.
forces over Mr. Galloway's alleged political relations with the former Iraqi dictatorship. But none of us could fail to enjoy his skewering of George Bush's Iraq adventure as a war built "on a pack of lies," or his reminder that it was never Galloway but Donald Rumsfeld who sold guns and poison gas to the genocidal Saddam Hussein.
Even Galloway's bitterest enemy, Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, had to admit (in his column "Unmitigated Galloway") that the SenateGalloway confrontation was an utter mismatch.
Admittedly, this was an essentially symbolic humiliation of the Bush administration that does nothing to stop the Iraqi carnage. It comes, however, along with several other mainly-symbolic setbacks that are slowly eroding his gang's unchallenged authority.
At the same time it must be understood that the daily atrocities perpetrated by this regime, against its own population and the world, are continuing unchecked and will do so until the rise of a resistance that is massive, more than symbolic, and certainly far beyond the level of opposition coming from the Democratic Party.
To summarize a few of the main developments:
• The most important stalling-out of Bush's administration's program is in the arena of "reforming," that is to say "partially privatizing," which really means "destroying," Social Security (the American term for what readers across the pond know as governmacal old-age SUIS A
The depth and hostility of the response to this ripoff means that legislation for privale stock-market-casino accounts to replace Social Security (or to "supplement" as the first step to gutting it) is essentially off the agenda.
On one level, this is a sharp defeat that weakens Bush's formerly unchallenged political steamrolling ability. On the longer view, the outcome is murkier.
The ideological agenda - if not the immediate political purpose - of the privatizers has been advanced by weakening the public's confidence in the longterm viability of Social Security. There is a perceived crisis, even if it's a
For Bush, the crisis lies in the fact that the
war in Iraq has been
lost, and that Abu
Ghraib, Guantanamo
and Fallujah have
destroyed the United
States' international
reputation fraudulent one.
More frightening is the headlong rush by corporate America to dump its pension and health care obligations to retirees. Spearheaded by United Air Lines, bankrupt and near-bankrupt airlines are simply renouncing their negotiated pension plans and forcing the government to take over the obligations (at considerable cost to the pensioners).
This week, General Motors has let it be known that at some still-undetermined moment it may unilaterally renounce its retirees guaranteed medical benefits - a clear demand that the United Auto Workers union negotiate massive cutbacks.
The rightChristian fundamentalist alliance was partially defeated in its drive to change debating rules and minority rights in the Senate (a body too hopelessly complex and anti-democratic to explain here in order to allow the total packing of federal courts by reactionary judicial cadres
Symbolically, the formation of a "center coalition" in the Senate represents a stirring of the near-extinct political species once known as "moderate Republicans." It means that some, though not all, of the absolute worst of Bush's judicial appointments will continue to be procedurally blocked. (They don't come much worse than the just-contirmed Priscilla Owen.)
Of much less importance, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations of John Bolton, the serial abuser of subordinates and documented falsifier of intelligence information to serve militarist ideological aims, has been stalled at least through Memorial Day weekend.
Ultimately this makes little difference - as Bolton unlike federal judges will not have a lifetime appointment destroy people's rights and lives - but the administration oll company."
Chilllans bore the brunt of that operation and more than 250,000 poople were displaced from their homes.
However In terms of dealing a crushing blow to the FARC and ELN the operation was a fiasco.
The guerrillas simply melted away Into the selva, and refused to give open battle. This yoar however the FARC have come back strongly with a massive counter-offensive.
In March five US soldiers -supposedly training local troops In anti-guerrilla and ant-narcotlcs techniques - were arrested after 16 kilos of cocalse were found In the alr craft taking them from a mlitary base in southern Colombla
back to the US. has made the tactically foolish decision to put its political prestige behind ramming him through.
• It's really around the war in Iraq that the Bush gang faces its greatest problem and scandal. But the bitter truth is that our antiwar movement has its own crisis and scandal - one that we have to solve ourselves, for here George Galloway cannot help us.
For Bush, the crisis lies in the fact that the war in Iraq has been lost, and that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Faliujah have destroyed the United States' international • reputation (and rightly so).
For the antiwar movement, the scandal is that the U.S. public doesn't know the war is IOSE
The movement's near-disappearance into the John Kerry campaign (which