Rove & Gonzales out—but don’t cheer yet

It is tempting to think that the resignations of Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales from high-ranking positions in the Bush administration reflect a victory for the people’s movements against war and repression.

Both cohorts of George W. Bush since his days as a Texas politician have come to represent the most onerous features of this imperialist government. Everyone with any sense of humanity can’t help but feel gratified that they are gone.

Rove is known for his unremittingly right-wing, partisan guiding hand in steering both the domestic and foreign policy of the White House.

Gonzales thought he had secured his position by giving his stamp of approval, as attorney general of the United States, to anything Bush wanted to do to crush dissent and intimidate those who might fight back, whether they were Arabs caged in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo or civil libertarians here alarmed at the repressive methods ushered in over recent years.

If the removal of these figures had been accompanied by an administration change of course, away from the war, away from domestic repression, then there might be something to cheer about. But there’s no indication of that at all.

On the contrary. At the same time that Bush was shedding those who had become lightning rods for criticism of the administration, he was also vigorously looking for opportunities to justify not only the “surge” in Iraq—which has cost so many lives and further torn up the social fabric of that tattered country—but also an even more openly threatening stance toward neighboring Iran.

So now, according to the White House, it is Iran that is behind the resistance in Iraq—not the anguish and burning hatred that almost all Iraqis have toward the U.S. invaders who have destroyed their nation, their culture, their schools, water supply, electrical grid and health system, their cities and towns, their very dignity—while driving millions into exile and killing hundreds of thousands more.

Bush spoke before the American Legion—that collection of crusty cold warriors who never seem to die or even fade away—and compared the war and occupation in Iraq to the Vietnam War, implying that it could have been won if only the U.S. had shown enough resolve at the time. Maybe he’s too young, or was too busy then with his extra-curricular activities to notice, but the Pentagon was facing mutiny and the disintegration of its chain of command when it finally left Vietnam.

Some in the U.S. ruling class remember that lesson of the Vietnam War era. But obviously others, including Bush’s closest backers, prefer to forget.

Bush has been so hawkish toward Iran in his recent public statements that he has excited the new right-wing French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to join the fray and throw out his own bellicose words. Representing another capitalist, imperialist power that has a colonial history in the Middle East, Sarkozy in his first major foreign policy speech threatened the bombing of Iran unless it gives up its nuclear program.

Perhaps he sees a role for France as Washington’s favored ally now that Bush’s “puppy,” Tony Blair, has gone down to defeat in Britain for having dragged that country into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

So what do the Rove and Gonzales resignations mean, if the Bush administration shows no signs of changing course?

Some political analysts are recalling what happened when former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made his exit from the Pentagon, after much criticism of his style by the military brass. For a while there was a sigh of relief. The “architect” of the war was gone.

But Rumsfeld was not just a hawk; he was a hawk with an attitude. He had learned something from Vietnam, and he feared going into another war that might require masses of enlisted troops. So he promised that Iraq could be conquered through the application of high-tech weaponry that might cost a lot of money but didn’t require that many warm bodies. He called it “shock and awe.”

It didn’t work. The Saddam Hussein government was overthrown, but the development of the resistance movement in Iraq showed that many boots on the ground were necessary to control and subdue the country.

Once Rumsfeld was forced out, the administration and the Pentagon were free to plan for the current “surge” of troops, sending every soldier they could scrape together, many for their third tour of duty, in a vain attempt to shore up a halfway plausible puppet regime in Iraq. They are now trying to justify and defend this deepening of the debacle.

Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who has become a critic of U.S. foreign policy, writes that “it seems a good bet that Rove, who is no one’s dummy and would not want to have to ‘spin’ an unnecessary war on Iran, lost the battle with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on Iran, and only then decided to spend more time with his family.

“Whatever else Rove has been, he has served as a counterweight to Dick Cheney’s clear desire to expand the Middle East quagmire into Iran.” (alternet.org)

It is impossible to say now whether this very grim view is correct. Subsequent events may shed light on it. But that this view exists at all is another reason to take a cautionary stand on why Rove is out—and to organize like hell to strengthen the independent, mass movement of the people, which is the only sure way to end the bloody carnage in the Middle East.

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