Are Dean & Clark really 'peace' candidates?
By Sara Flounders
The polls confirm that support for George W.
Bush is at the lowest level of his presidency. The growing
resistance in Iraq is creating a crisis for the Bush
administration. The excuses for the war are being exposed as
lies. There is growing unease at the huge tax breaks and
lucrative military contracts Bush has given to his cronies,
along with the permanent loss of more than 3 million jobs.
Anyone, it seems, would be better than Bush.
But who are the candidates who have millions of dollars
pumped into their campaigns and have received endless media
attention as the ones who can beat Bush? How different are
they?
U.S. elections are a contest between two big-business
parties over control of the capitalist government. Both of
these parties serve the same class.
There are competing policies and conflicting financial
interests among these sharks. But they are all predators. Their
policies are in the best interests of the handful of super-rich
owners of industry and banking.
Overwhelmingly, Democratic Party politicians were silent
last year before the invasion of Iraq and hurriedly voted to
give Bush full authority to wage war. Now these same
politicians are reading the polls. A whole field is rewriting
scripts. They are anxious to gather the army of grassroots
volunteers that every political campaign needs.
The presidential election campaign, although still a year
away, seems to have reached an all-time height of demagoguery
and opportunism. The two leading Democratic contenders--Howard
Dean and Wesley Clark--have cynically posed as anti-war
candidates.
Looking at the record of the current two Democratic front
runners demonstrates that their role is to capture the growing
dissatisfaction while offering very little substantive
difference.
Dean: Wall Street's child
Howard Dean, the leading "peace" candidate, told journalist
Fred Hiatt, "I don't even consider myself a dove." (Wash ington
Post, Aug. 25)
Last January and February, when millions of people were in
the streets in protest, Dean said, "America may have to go to
war" against Iraq. His only concern was that there was not
enough international support. (Washington Post, Feb. 17)
Dean's criticism at that time was that Iraq was the "wrong
war at the wrong time." He argued that North Korea was a
greater threat.
Now Dean does not call for bringing the troops home. He said
he was actually for sending more troops to Iraq, according to
the March 29 New York Times.
"Now that we're there, we're stuck," Dean has said publicly.
He said that whoever is elected to the Oval Office in 2004 will
have to live with this. "We have no choice," he claimed.
And he repeated the same vague and baseless lies: "It's a
matter of national security. If we leave and we don't get a
democracy in Iraq, the result is very significant danger to the
United States." (Wash ington Post, Feb. 17)
Howard Dean was a fervent supporter of the massive 1991
bombing of Iraq, which was also a criminal imperialist war for
control of oil. Dean supported the 2001 U.S. bombing that
devastated Afghan i stan, one of the poorest countries in the
world.
During his political life he has not opposed any Pentagon
war, occupation, coup or invasion.
A quick glance at Dean's record as governor of Vermont
confirms that he would also continue the war on the domestic
front.
Dean not only supported the Clinton administration's drastic
overhaul--basically, repeal--of the federal welfare program,
but he pushed through state legislation for workfare programs.
He cut benefits and imposed strict time limits on single
mothers on welfare.
As governor, Dean tried hard to cut benefits for elderly and
disabled people. He increased funding for state colleges by
only 7 percent while raising prison funding by 150 percent.
Howard Dean has no doubts about class interests. He was born
into the elite. His father and grandfather were based in the
Wall Street investment firm Dean Witter. His family never had
to worry about their pensions being cut.
Howard Dean never worried about deteriorating schools or
tuition increases. He went to elite private schools like St.
George's boarding school, where students have a 69-foot yacht
to play on.
Dean speaks with the arrogance of his class when he says
that welfare recipients "don't have any self-esteem. If they
did, they'd be working." (Nation, May 26)
Wesley Clark:
the Pentagon candidate
Without the total compliance of a corporate media that was
willing to be embed ded in the Pentagon war machine during the
invasion of Iraq, Wesley Clark's pose as a peace candidate
would be seen as a ridiculous masquerade.
Wesley Clark is a former top Pentagon general. As NATO
commander in 1999, Clark led the U.S. war against Yugoslavia.
Under his command, U.S. forces carried out 80 days of bloody
bombing raids against utterly defenseless civilian populations
in major cities.
Clark personally planned and authorized the use of even
prohibited anti-personnel weapons, including thousands of tiny,
razor-sharp cluster bombs and radioactive depleted uranium
rounds. In violation of the Nuremburg and Geneva Conventions
and international law, these bombs were dropped in crowded
urban centers, in market places and even on hospitals and
schools.
Anyone who thinks Clark would be more humane than Bush
should revisit a Washington Post report of Sept. 21, 1999. It
describes how at one point during the bombing campaign Clark
rose out of his seat, slapped the table and declared, "I've got
to get maximum violence out of this campaign--now."
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gen. Clark was in charge
of the internment camps packed with Haitian refugees fleeing
U.S.-supported dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and
later the brutal U.S.-installed regime that overthrew the
elected Aristide government. Clark was chief of operations at
the Navy internment camp at Guantánamo.
This presidential hopeful has not spoken a word against the
ongoing torture and brutal detainment there of hundreds of
"suspects" seized during the U.S. war against Afghanistan.
Last October, when Clark endorsed Katrina Swett for
Congress, he told the Union Leader newspaper that if she were
elected, he would advise her to vote for the resolution to give
Bush full authority to use military force against Iraq but only
after vigorous debate. (Oct. 10, 2002)
Three months later, Clark went on record supporting the Bush
administration's unilateral action of bypassing the United
Nations Security Council to invade Iraq. "The president is
going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies
have reservations," he said. (CNN, Jan. 21)
He added weeks later, "The credibility of the U.S. is on the
line, and Saddam Hussein has these weapons and so, you know, we
are going to go ahead and do this and the rest of the world's
got to get with us." (CNN, Feb. 5)
Clark was not even a registered Democrat until he decided to
run for the nomination. He voted for Richard Nixon and for
Ronald Reagan, praised President George W. Bush and raised
money for Arkansas Republicans.
Anyone who is angered about Vice President Dick Cheney's
role in steering millions of federal dollars into corporations
he represented should look at Clark's role after he retired
from his 34-year army career in 2000. Clark quickly became a
director of four firms, joined the advisory board of two others
and became the managing director of an investment firm. His
role was to boost these companies' military contracts.
Build an independent
movement!
With capitalist elections, regardless of which candidate and
which party comes out on top, none of the institutions of the
state--the Pentagon, CIA, State Depart ment--is substantially
changed.
These institutions that make up part of the state machinery
of oppression have been shaped over many generations to serve
the interests of one tiny class of super-rich capitalists in a
system that feeds on war and conquest.
The top military brass don't face elections. Neither do the
CEOs, Wall Street brokers or owners of industry and banking who
chase profits from capitalist globalization.
Poor and working people need a movement independent of the
two parties of big business that represent the interests of
billionaires who strive to control the world's resources and
labor.
Millions of people came into the streets last year in an
effort to stop the U.S. war. Now, aroused by the brutality of
occupation, the anti-war movement is mobilizing again.
If this young movement resists being sucked into electoral
campaigns that are not capable of making change or of
challenging the very system that is responsible for war and
racism, it will pose a real challenge and will be a tremendous
force for change.
Reprinted from the Oct. 30, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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