This Can't Be Happening!

One of the sorrier legacies of eight years of Bush and Cheney in the White House has been the conflation of the terms “National Security” and “Foreign Policy” by both Republicans and Democrats.

Granted that the history of US foreign policy in the world has been heavily larded with wars, many of them at America’s instigation. It is nonetheless true that foreign policy is much bigger and more far reaching than just what has come to be known as “national security” issues.

I was a speaker last night at an anti-war event sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County, Progressive Democrats of America and Democrats For America in Lincroft, NJ, near the shore. It was a great group of activist Americans who want to see this country end the Iraq War, turn away from war as a primary instrument of policy, and start dealing with the pressing human needs of the country and the world.

We’ve come a long way towards imperial government in the US—towards a view of the relationship between the federal government, and especially the administration, and the citizenry that has more of a ruler-subjects than a democratic feel to it.

If the direr warnings about the US economy and the general state of the world are correct, maybe we should be glad that Obama’s presidential campaign is in failure mode (see Loserville).

This article should be sent to every political editor in the US, and to every Republican and conservative you know:

Phillip Butler, former POW, on `Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain'

The author, a Viet vet who earned two silver stars, two bronze stars, two Legion of Merit awards, and two purple hearts, and who was friends with McCain at the US Naval Academy, knows the real McCain, and says emphatically that the man should not be president. Read why.

(Note: An abbreviated version of this column appeared in the Aug. 22 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle.)

Well, it’s happened, and it’s no surprise.

Barack Obama, the prospective Democratic presidential candidate, has managed to turn a 5-8 point lead over prospective Republican opponent John McCain into a 5-point deficit—a double-digit slide—in just two and a half months following a campaign that had voters really excited over his candidacy.

American Secretary of War Robert Gates knows a real leader when he sees one. “Clearly, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, Vladimir Putin, and not President Dmitry Medvedev, "has the upper hand right now."

Well hell, Gates should know. After all, he deals on a daily basis with the same peculiar situation here in the US, where the president also is a figurehead and the real power lies in the hands of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Amid all the talk about Bush/Cheney administration conspiracies to forge documents or engage in “false flag” tactics in order to “get the war on” against Iraq, and about similar current efforts to get a new war going against Iran, lost has been the fact that many of the things that the administration falsely claimed as casus belli actually don’t even qualify, whether they were true or not.

We Americans got a graphic illustration of the demise of any independent American corporate news media these past few days as the coverage on TV and in print was saturated with reports about John Edwards’ infidelity and, equally important, Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

In the category of yawn-inducing stories that we knew all about before they happened, comes word that the jury of senior uniformed officers sitting in judgement of Osama Bin Laden’s chauffeur in the first Bush-league military tribunal to actually go to a hearing at Guantanamo Naval Station found the prisoner, Salim Hamdan…

Drum roll please…

Guilty of supporting terrorism.

I pause here for gasps of astonishment.

It’s awfully silent…