Bush presidency goes into freefall

What we think

 

Iraq war lies and rising body count, Hurricane Katrina failures,
conspiracy and cover-up…

Bush presidency goes into freefall

IF YOU enter Google on the internet and type in the word ‘failure’,
and then click on ‘I feel lucky’, the search engine comes up with the
biography of George Bush! However, the perception of Bush as a failure,
a lame duck president, is now widely recognised. The last few weeks have
been the worst of the 248 in which he has been in office.

First came the death of the 2,000th US soldier in Iraq – Staff
Sergeant George Alexander, whose photographs covered most US newspapers
– then the withdrawal of the hapless Harriet Miers, Bush’s ‘personal
legal adviser’ and nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy. This was
followed by the hammer blow of the indictment of leading
neo-conservative and White House aide Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby on five
criminal charges and the possibility of a lengthy jail term.

He is accused of revealing the identity of undercover CIA spy Valerie
Plame in order to discredit her husband Joe Wilson, a former diplomat.
Wilson’s crime was to discredit the Bush administration’s false claims
in the run-up to the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium
from Niger for nuclear weapons.

These events had been preceded by the catastrophic failure of Bush
over Hurricane Katrina, as well as corruption charges levelled against
top Republicans like Tom DeLay and Bill Frist. Together with the Miers
disaster, these expose the rottenness and cronyism at the heart of the
Bush presidency. The ‘legal profession’ was up in arms, it seems,
because her main qualifications for the Supreme Court seemed to be her
friendship with Bush and her "work as commissioner of the Texas lottery"
[New York Times].

The real reason, however, as Democrat Senator Edward Kennedy pointed
out, was "the extreme right wing of the Republican party have
effectively undermined this nomination. They have a litmus test, and
Harriet Miers didn’t pass that test".

This test was the religious right’s opposition to abortion and,
consequently, a preparedness to overthrow the famous Roe v Wade
judgement, which legalised it in the US. They linked up with other
‘liberal’ Republicans who fear Bush is going to drag them down in the
mid-term congressional elections next year.

Ghost of Watergate

To the Republican right she was not ‘sufficiently trustworthy’ to do
the bidding of the religious zealots at the ‘base’ who now control
significant sections of the Republican Party. They vilified even members
of their own administration and party for supporting her: "A White House
counsel with distinguished credentials was compared to Caligula’s horse
and Barney the Dog on National Review’s website." [New York Times]

When Bush asked the religious right to support him, one of their
leaders declared, "In God we trust – all others pay cash." Bush is in
thrall to them and has now nominated a conservative candidate to the
Supreme Court.

This was a spat compared to the problem which looms for Bush over the
‘Plamegate’ affair. Already, this has some of the ingredients of the
Watergate conspiracy which brought down Republican President Nixon in
1974.

The charges against Libby, that he lied on oath, could yet bring down
Bush’s grey eminence and alleged ‘electoral genius’ Karl Rove on a
similar charge. It could also draw in Vice-President Cheney. Bush
himself is at the centre of their web of intrigue and corruption.

What is involved is not primarily the exposure of a CIA agent – which
is serious in its implications for the workings of an arm of US
imperialism – but the Iraq War. As The Observer commented: "Iraq is the
central issue in the Bush administration. It is from there that many of
the other disasters that have rocked the White House have sprung. The
‘V-word’ – comparing Iraq to Vietnam – is no longer taboo in Washington.
Some politicians on both sides openly talk of a need for an exit
strategy."

Howard Dean, failed candidate for the Democrat nomination for the
2004 presidential elections, now chairman of the party, also stated:
"This is about the fact that the president didn’t tell us the truth when
he went to Iraq, and all these guys are involved in it."

Taken fright

The US ruling class, including sections of the Republican Party, have
taken fright at the catastrophe which the Bush gang has led them into.
There is open contempt amongst the military top brass for the ‘Cheney-Rumsfeld
cabal’. One of their number, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former aide to
Colin Powell at the State Department, expressed this when denouncing
Bush for "cowboyism". He also described Douglas Feith, defence
under-secretary in Bush’s first term, with the words: "Seldom in my life
have I met a dumber man."

His central charge is that Rumsfeld, Cheney and the rest of them
"engaged in secret decision-making that inflicted grave harm on the
United States." The Boston Globe said it was as though he was describing
the secret "workings of a Soviet Politburo".

And the American people share this low opinion of Bush. His personal
standing in opinion polls is lower even than Ronald Reagan’s during the
Iran-Contra scandal, who had 45% support compared to 39% for Bush. On
Iraq, 63% of the US people now say that some or all US troops in Iraq
should now be withdrawn, while a record high 59% said the invasion was a
mistake.

The deadly combination of an unwinnable war, a web of intrigue and
corruption and Hurricane Katrina – which lifted the lid on the poverty
and racism scarring the US – means this is a generalised crisis not just
for Bush and his presidency but for the system itself.

The dissatisfaction of the American people and particularly the
working class is now of volcanic proportions. But, as with Britain,
there is not as yet a mass force capable of galvanising this mood.

The Democrats, as a party of big business, are no alternative. Hilary
Clinton, in the running for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination,
is a hawk on Iraq, calling for a bigger military and refuses to condemn
the war. She has also moved to the right on legal abortion.

John Kerry, on the other hand, has belatedly spoken out against the
war, "defining his Iraq policy a mere 51 weeks after losing to Bush last
year". [The Observer] Yet the "polls show support sliding away from the
Republicans but not yet benefiting the Democrats. Indeed they show both
parties at their lowest point in their popularity in 50 years." [the
Guardian]

The ‘ins and outs’ of Democrats and Republicans – against the
background of an ever-worsening position for the US working class – is a
dead end. Only by preparing for a US mass workers’ party will a new road
be opened up which can end the nightmare of unwinnable and bloody wars,
a failing economic system and increasing class divide.