William Pfaff: The Coup d'Etat against Bush

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I can't think of a more important topic than this. This is not the rant of some blogger in pajamas. William Pfaff is one of the most respected political commentators writing today in the English language.

Careful readers will notice a thick forest of nuances in everything he says here. DS

William Pfaff: The Coup d'Etat against Bush
Abstract: The conspicuous irrelevance of George W. Bush’s tour of the Middle East to any of the real forces and interests of the region, as well as the spooky irrelevance of nearly everything he said there about the alleged menace of Iran, Israel-Palestine peace, his fancied notions of Iraq’s democratic development, and even about oil prices and the American economy, embarrassed his Arab hosts as well as the American officials and press accompanying him. The tour – his farewell to the Middle East? -- lent weight to the judgement many abroad have already reached, that he no longer governs the United States, and indeed does not even understand its present foreign relationships. It is widely felt that what amounts to a coup d’etat has taken place in the United States, removing George Bush, without his even recognizing this (or at least admitting that it has occurred) from control over the principal issues of war and peace. This coup has taken the form of what amounts to a mutiny of the professional foreign policy services of the U.S. government, acquiesced in by the new Secretary of Defense, the service chiefs, and Director of Central Intelligence Bush has himself appointed.(...) The pathetic and pusillanimous refusal of recent American Congresses – and we are not simply speaking about the Congress now in office, but of practically every Congress since the beginning of the cold war – to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities with respect to the declaration and financing of wars, has now generated its own rebuke from within the executive branch of government. Leaders in the executive branch are unwilling to act on presidential orders that do not carry with them the constitutionally mandated authority of the representative branch of government.(...) I am perhaps taking a romantic and unjustified view of what has happened. I hope not. I believe that only grave malfeasance in government and unconstitutional conduct justify an executive ‘coup d’etat’ – however ‘postmodern’ the form that it assumes, and however elevated its motives. However I would suggest that the present election campaign demonstrates that powerful forces in the Washington political and foreign policy communities, reinforced by financial and industrial interests, are committed to suppressing all challenge to policies that already have altered the political character of the United States. The American form of government itself needs to be defended. READ IT ALL

Who are we finally?

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering. New York Times

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Really that is the question now: who are we? How did we get here and how do we get out? We all know the famous Herman Goering quote, You frighten the people and you take control of them. Since the beginning of the cold war we are living in the "National Security State". All those in power today are stakeholders in the national security state. This is a political construct that has finally produced something as bizarre as George W. Bush. Power is not acquired easily. Those that have it, have sought it all their lives, with all their being. Don't think for a minute that any of the candidates for president in 2008, if elected, would ever do anything fundamental to cut back the powers that Bush/Cheney are hoarding up now for their succesors. None of today's candidates would resist renouncing those powers from any special perversity on their part, but simply for the same reason that it would be difficult for you or me to unlearn riding a bicycle.

What must be done?

The only practical remedy I have seen offered by any mainstream politician so far, the only remedy that would have any chance of succeeding, is Howard Dean's "50 state strategy". Only a major grass roots movement that empowers "ordinary people" can save the Republic from this sinister, systemic dynamic that the cold war has engendered. Why? Because ordinary Americans have the republican values hard wired in their cultural DNA. These values are as central to the US culture as cold logic is to the French or methodical analysis is to the Germans. There is no sentimentality in this, there is simply no other language Americans can speak. Even fascism has to be dressed up as democracy to be sold to Americans.

Leaders cannot reclaim democracy for the American people. Only the people themselves can do that. The leaders must be turned into followers.

Fortunately, at the same time that the new technologies make all this sinister surveillance easier, Web.2 has placed a tool in the people's hands which makes resistance possible.

Web.2, and mass obesity, are the only two things that George Orwell did not envision in "1984". We are living in a period made for activists, not just for voters and leaders. The system has to be brought alive. Reform has to come from the bottom up, there is no other way it is going to happen. Seen from this perspective, we may be living at the beginning of the most attractive political culture in history, one with the possibility of everyone actually being invited to do their bit to create a better world. DS