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archived: 5 - 9 Jul, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: JULY 5, 2005 WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN / INDEPENDENCE DAY
We’ll be
fighting in the streets, These are riotous days. One week ago, America woke up to the fact that George Bush has become a deeply unpopular president. Alarmed by one of the highest desertion rates in US history and the disturbing trend of increasing numbers of military suicides, Bush was faced with a nightmare scenario: crumbling support for his policies amongst the ranks, especially the enlisted ranks of US service men and women and a frightening return to the fragging pandemic that plagued Vietnam. In North Carolina, even the ultra-conservative Republican congressman, Walter Jones, Jr. has seen the handwriting on the wall. Jones, Jr. has joined together with Democrats to sponsor legislation that would order US forces to begin their withdrawal from Iraq in October, 2006, a date conveniently timed for the month before his next congressional election when he must face the mustered ranks of voters from Camp Lejeune, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay, the Greater Sandy Run Training Area and the New River Complex, the heaviest concentration of Marines and Sailors in the world. The Congressman has good reason to be worried. The combined total of Marines, Sailors and their families is over 133,000, and they are not ecstatic about the recent statement from Donald Rumsfeld that US forces would be stationed in Iraq for the next twelve years. In Bush’s desperation to hide the fact of his drooping popularity, he appealed to troops hastily assembled at Fort Bragg to plead for their continued support.
And the men who spurred
us on Bush’s maudlin ploy did not work. There was no bounce in the polls, and other events now sweeping across the planet will ensure that Bush’s credibility will continue its inevitable implosion.
The change, it had to
come On Saturday, more than two billion people watched the Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park, where a fantastic cavalcade of top-ranking artistes rocked out against African poverty and the selfish intransigence of the political elites. Even Bush’s hitherto faithful supporter, Bill Gates, made a brief appearance on the stage to appeal for a sea change in global governance. From the opening anthem, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, to the final curtain call, Helter Skelter, the world’s largest concert was punctuated by a constant stream of informed criticism of global political leadership. Sir Bob Geldof orchestrated what will be remembered as the single most important pop concert of this century. During the concert, Sir Bob made many pointed comments about the injustice of African poverty. To dispel the cynics, he introduced an Ethiopian woman who had been on the verge of death twenty years ago when his earlier concert, Live Aid, forced the world to provide food and medical attention that had saved her life. Annie Lennox made some of the most striking and perceptive observations of the day. After her performance of Sweet Dreams, she met with Jonathan Ross for an interview inside the BBC capsule. Lennox described her political awakening. Last year, she went to Uganda with the UN. There, she visited a remote region where she saw hundreds of school children sinking into a deepening pit of poverty. The children were barefooted and clad only in filthy rags. In the school, over 180 children huddled in each of the ramshackle classrooms. The teachers had no equipment, no text books, no chalk, no blackboards, no paper, no pencils, no way to teach the children how to escape the crushing cycle of poverty, disease and degradation. Lennox was incensed. She shouted into the microphone connected to the biggest television audience in world history, “Since I appeared at Live Aid (20 years ago), the politicians have done nothing!” On stage, Bono of U2 set the tone. “We do not want charity. We want justice!” In the Geldof-engineered Live 8 vibratory field of Hyde Park, many of the songs acquired more powerful and relevant social and political themes than ever before: Elton John, Children of the Revolution; REM, Everybody Hurts; Madonna, Like a prayer; The Who, Won’t get fooled again; Pink Floyd, Money and Paul McCartney, Hey Jude. At the end of the day, Live 8 politicized billions of people.
Meet the
new boss This morning, I opened the daily newspapers on the fourth of July to read that George Bush repudiated the pleas of Live 8. Interviewed by one of the UK’s premiere television commentators, Trevor MacDonald, George Bush rejected the idea that he would do Tony Blair any favours at this week’s G8 summit. Stating categorically that he would put America’s national self-interests ahead of any planetary concerns like African poverty or global warming, Bush positioned himself to become the sole member of a party of one – the G1. That much was predictable. Today, Geldof is marshalling his forces to bring hundreds of thousands of protestors to put pressure directly on the G8 conference at the Gleneagles golf course in Scotland. Already, the streets of Edinburgh are flooded with protestors carrying placards decrying Bush as a war criminal. This Wednesday, the final Live 8 concert will take place at Murrayfields in Edinburgh. That is democracy in action as the founding fathers conceived it. Independence Day With Bush sinking in the US polls, and Live 8 transforming planetary consciousness, I went to the annual Democrats Abroad July 4th picnic at the home of two American friends in Oxford. With the help of Steve Gheen, I recalled that original Fourth of July in 1776, when the outcome was far from certain, but the cause was just. There were many defeats and setbacks in store for the American revolutionary forces, but they marched forward under the command of General George Washington, unquestionably the greatest military leader in the history of America. New York City swiftly fell to the British, and many wealthy, conservative and frightened Americans began to take the oath of fealty to the King. Washington retreated across New Jersey where his men deserted in droves. His faithless officers beseeched his superiors to replace him for incompetence. On Christmas Day, 1776, Washington mustered 2500 men for a daring and desperate counterthrust to regain credibility and momentum. On a cold and wintry night, Washington led his meagre forces across the treacherous Delaware River in the midst of a hellish ice storm. The river was death-defyingly dangerous with large flows of ice hammering the small flotilla of wooden boats. Accompanied by James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, Washington led a stealth attack cloaked in the shadows of that stormy Christmas night. He caught the British forces asleep and totally unaware. Washington’s forces killed one hundred enemy troops and took over one thousand prisoners. The colonies had begun to strike back. George Bush would have us believe that he is extending the American Revolution by waging war on the peoples of weak nations and forcing them to relinquish control and ownership of their natural resources to our multinational corporations in exchange for political reform that he says is modelled on our pristine form of democracy. Bush is dead wrong. He does not understand the American Revolution.
There's nothing in the
streets Even Harvard’s Professor Michael Ignatieff in his recent column for the New York Times has acquiesced to the seductive power of Bush’s mis-readings of American history. Ignatieff has quoted Thomas Jefferson’s last letter in his argument to support Bush’s neoconservative policy of global wars for democracy. On his deathbed, Jefferson wrote that eventually democracy would spread to all parts of our planet. Calling Jefferson’s final vision, “the last imperial ideology left standing,” Ignatieff brazenly implies that Jefferson was proposing Bush’s global war for democracy, but our third president was doing nothing of the sort. Jefferson had lived in Paris. He had seen the rise of Napoleon. He had watched closely as the onslaught of Napoleon’s crusade for democracy slashed and burned its way across Europe and across the steppes to the precincts of Moscow. Jefferson had witnessed the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte and seen his final coup de grace at Waterloo. On his deathbed, Jefferson was advocating the spread of democracy and democratic principles by reason not by warfare. One of his greatest survivors, John Quincy Adams, argued forcefully against any proposition for a global war against tyranny. Adams wrote, that America should not go abroad seeking out monsters to destroy, lest she become, “dictatress of the world.” On the fourth of July, 2005, let it be remembered that Michael Ignatieff attempted to fool America into believing the false ideology of a deeply misguided and ill-equipped president. What Ignatieff is attempting is nothing less than a form of mass hypnosis. The result is a crude form of sophistry presented for academic consumption from his throne at Harvard. Do not believe him. The protestors swarming into Edinburgh are the children of Jefferson, Franklin and Washington. They are carrying their demands for democracy and justice to the G8. Today, they are the true foot soldiers of Jeffersonian democracy. No, Professor Ignatieff, we reject your hollow rewriting of American history. We won’t get fooled again.
I'll tip my hat to the
new constitution Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!* RESOURCES:
Who Are Americans to Think
That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?
*Lyrics by Peter Townshend, The Who. __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC, European Business News, NPR and many European television broadcasts examining American politics and culture. In addition to his column for The Political Junkies, he is a regular contributor to the Moving Planet weblog. See: www.planetarymovement.org and http://planetmove.blogspot.com/
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
