Cheney and the Democrats
The bad and the ugly
By Gery
Armsby
On July 25, Republican presidential candidate George W.
Bush chose Richard B. Cheney as his running mate. Significant
media coverage has centered on the vice-presidential
candidate's record.
Cheney began his high-profile political career as deputy
assistant to President Richard Nixon. Later Cheney was
President Gerald Ford's chief of staff.
From 1979 to 1988 Cheney represented Wyoming in the House
of Repre sentatives. He became a leader of the Congressional
Republicans.
In 1989, President George Bush appointed him secretary of
defense.
More recently, Cheney was chief executive officer of
Halliburton & Co., a Fortune 500 oil-drilling services
firm. Cheney's experience running Big Oil's war against Iraq
helped land him that job, according to a July 27 New York
Times report.
After Cheney accepted Bush's offer, the Democratic
National Committee hurriedly set up a "war room" to leverage
support for Al Gore's presidential campaign by attacking
Cheney's right-wing positions. The DNC launched a Web site
highlighting Cheney's conservative congressional voting
record.
Democratic leaders denounced the Republicans for running a
"two Big Oil" ticket. They neglected to mention Gore's
lifelong ties to Occidental Petroleum.
There is no question that Cheney's voting record is
downright racist, anti-poor, anti-woman and anti-gay. He's a
big-business boss whose "achievements" in Congress reflect
big-business interests.
Why are the Democratic leaders putting so much effort into
exposing Cheney's conservatism?
Because they hope voters catch a whiff of Cheney's
foul-smelling politics while ignoring their own equally
rotten record.
The DNC condemned Cheney's opposition to
Democratic-sponsored legislation during the Reagan era. These
included 1983 bills supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and
nutrition programs for poor mothers and children; a 1985 bill
to reauthorize the "Superfund" for hazardous waste site
cleanup; a 1986 funding bill for Head Start; and the 1987
Clean Water Act.
Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But what is the Democratic
Party's record on these issues?
The Democrats' so-called Superfund lined the pockets of
Pentagon contractors. Fifteen years and $10 billion later,
hazardous wastes continue to poison the environment at sites
like the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington.
Under the Democratic Clinton-Gore administration welfare
benefits were signed away, reinforcing inequality for poor
women and taking food off the tables of millions of
children.
There are plenty of other examples.
Bipartisan war against Iraq
Anti-war activists have spoken out about Cheney's role in
preparing "Operation Desert Storm" a decade ago.
As the senior Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney
engineered high-pressure "negotiations" with Saudi Arabian
officials in August 1990 after Iraq occupied Kuwait. The
Saudi monarchy, which holds onto power with the aid of U.S.
weaponry, agreed to cooperate after Cheney claimed Iraq
planned to attack the country's border.
Cheney led similar missions to Egypt, Morocco and other
Middle Eastern and North African countries to garner military
cooperation. Without this arm-twisting, the Pentagon would
have faced much stiffer opposition to its war on Iraq.
The 1991 Gulf War devastated Iraq's people and
infrastructure, causing enormous casualties.
However, Bush-the-elder, Cheney and the Republicans didn't
act alone in these war crimes. Democrats in both the Senate
and the House gave the war their blessing in a Jan. 12, 1991,
vote.
To this day, the Clinton-Gore administration carries out
aerial bombardments of Iraq every week.
Then there are the sanctions.
On Aug. 2, 1990--before a single bomb was dropped or
artillery shell fired at Iraq--"liberal Democratic" U.S.
Sens. George Mitchell, Edward Kennedy and Joseph Biden stood
alongside right wingers Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms to
submit a resolution urging "a full economic blockade against
Iraq."
Democrats and Republicans alike continue to uphold this
genocidal policy.
Sanctions have taken a terrible toll on the Iraqi people.
At least 1.5 million people, mostly children under 5, have
died as a result of the U.S.-imposed United Nations
sanctions. Five thousand more perish each month.
Hypocrisy on South Africa
Another concern raised in the media is Cheney's 1986 vote
against a resolution urging the release of Nelson Mandela,
who had been languishing for 25 years in an apartheid South
African prison.
In a TV interview, Cheney admitted that his vote reflected
his view of the African National Congress as a "terrorist
organization."
While some of Cheney's critics rightly pointed out the
racist character of his vote, the DNC--so eager to attack
Cheney on other issues--conspicuously withheld comment.
The Democrats won't willingly open the subject of racism.
Doing so would leave them vulnerable to questions about
issues they don't want to talk about: the prison-industrial
complex, Africa's HIV/AIDS crisis, racist repression and
police brutality.
The Democratic-sponsored resolution Cheney voted against
in 1986 was non-binding. It did nothing to aid the struggle
against apartheid in South Africa. If anything, it was
calculated to encourage imperialist interests to find new
tactics to maneuver with a movement that was already on
course for political revolution in that country.
It should be remembered that the CIA--under a Democrat,
President John F. Kennedy--helped South African security
forces capture Mandela in the first place.
If the Democratic Party were independent of the
big-business interests that Republicans are so obviously tied
to, then the Democrats might have long before intervened to
help South Africans oust the white-supremacist regime.
But the Democrats are not independent. They answer to the
same class of super-rich bosses that the Republicans do.
The Democratic Party always makes big promises to the
workers and the oppressed during election years. But it can
never deliver what's really needed: authentic leadership for
a growing movement to end imperialist wars, jail killer cops,
shut down prisons for profit, cancel the debt of poor
countries and restore the social programs that were won
through decades of struggle.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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