Bushs
State Of The Union:
Threats, Lies And Delusion
By Bill Vann
World
Socialist Web
22 January 2004
In
his third State of the Union address since his installation as president,
George W. Bush Tuesday night spelled out an election-year agenda consisting
of stepped-up global militarism, the continued looting of the economy
to augment the fortunes of Americas super-rich and an appeal to
social and religious backwardness.
It was a speech
devoid of any new proposals and lacking even a hint of comprehension
of the intense political, economic and social crises that are racking
American society.
Instead, behind
the obvious lies and deliberate distortions, what predominated was the
self-delusion of a ruling elite that has never been more distant from
the problems facing the vast majority of the American people and believes
that reality is whatever it claims it to be.
The annual address
is supposedly a solemn occasion in which the government gives an accounting
to the people. In reality, the spectacle provides the public with a
glimpse into a US political system that increasingly resembles a private
millionaires club whose wealthy members slap each other on the
back and rise in uproarious cheering for statements that they all know
are false.
In place of the
pretense of social vision or the announcement of new political initiatives
that are the standard fare of these speeches, Bushs central message
was one of fear. In his nearly hour-long speech to a joint session of
Congress and the viewing public, Bush used the words terror,
terrorist, and terrorism no less than 21 times.
Twenty-eight
months have passed since September 11, 2001over two years without
an attack on American soiland it is tempting to believe that the
danger is behind us, he declared. That hope is understandable,
comfortingand false.
For all of those
28 months, the Bush administration has invoked the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon to justify virtually all of its policiesfrom
the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq to its massive tax cuts for the wealthy
and even the gutting of environmental regulations.
Yet, what happened
that day remains shrouded in mystery, largely because of the administrations
own stonewalling of every attempt to gain access to government information.
Just this week, it was reported that the administration and the Republican
leadership in Congress will refuse a request by the independent commission
formed to investigate the attacks for more time to complete its work.
The administration is also seeking to block any release of findings
by the commission until after the presidential election in November.
One year ago, Bush
used his 2003 State of the Union address to declare an unprovoked war
on Iraq. Lying to the American people and the world, he advanced as
a pretext for invading the besieged Middle Eastern country the claim
that Baghdad was in possession of a vast arsenal of chemical and biological
weapons, and was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons that could
be used to attack the US or given to terrorists.
In his speech Tuesday,
Bush made no attempt to explain the glaring discrepancy between these
claims and the failure of thousands of US military and civilian experts
sent to Iraq to hunt for this supposed arsenal to turn up a single such
weapon.
Instead, he continued
the lying and doubletalk, declaring: Already the Kay report identified
dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and
significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United
Nations. In fact, the central content of the report issued by
the 1,200-member Iraq Survey Group led by David Kay, a strong supporter
of the administration, was the failure to find weapons of mass destruction
of any kind. Kay himself is reportedly preparing to quit his job, the
clearest signal that nothing remains to be found.
Bush used his speech
to amplify his previously enunciated doctrine of preemptive wari.e.,
unprovoked wars of aggression against nations seen as potential threats
to US interests. He proclaimed that Washington had a divine mission:
the use of its unrivaled military might to impose a democratic
peace upon the world and lead the cause of freedom.
We have no
desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire, declared Bush, contradicting
what has become evident to peoples in the Middle East and throughout
the world as the US military has established military bases in some
130 countries.
Bush portrayed the
two wars that he has launched during his three years in office as conquests
for democracy, despite stark indications that the situation is spinning
out of control in both countries, with little prospect for an end to
US occupations that have stretched the countrys military to its
breaking point.
Surrounding Laura
Bush in the visiting gallery were several members of the Iraqi Governing
Council installed by the US occupation authority, including Ahmed Chalabi,
the former bank embezzler and leader of the Iraqi National Congress,
who was a principal source for the phony intelligence about alleged
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Members of the US
Congress, Democratic and Republican alike, rose to their feet to join
Bush in paying tribute to these corrupt stooges, who enjoy no visible
popular support in their own country. In Washington, however, they are
recognized as key allies in the drive to impose US control over Iraqs
vast oil reserves.
Bushs emphasis
on terror and on the supposed US mission to wage a crusade for regime
changes wherever it sees fit constitutes a stark warning that
new shocks may well be in store before Election Day in November. Elements
within the administration may well see another terrorist attack or another
war as the most effective means of deflecting political opposition and
solidifying the administrations grip on power, with or without
a vote.
The address also
invoked the threat of terror to demand that Congress renew the USA Patriot
Act, sections of which are to expire next year. The act codifies sweeping
attacks on basic democratic rights imposed by an administration that
claims the right to indefinitely imprison US citizens without trial
or even charges on the order of the president.
On the economy and
social questions, Bushs speech combined fantasy and reaction.
He spoke of recent events having revealed the fundamental strengths
of the American economy under conditions in which Washington is
running an annual current accounts deficit of over $500 billion and
requires infusions of foreign capital amounting to $2 billion every
business day just to finance its payments gap.
Jobs are on
the rise, declared Bush, who has presided over the destruction
of 2.5 million jobs in five years and stands to be the first president
to record a net reduction in employment in the course of a four-year
term since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The line that drew
the lustiest cheers from the floor of the Congress was Bushs demand
that the tax cuts you passed should be made permanent. Vice
President Richard Cheney, who is estimated to have pocketed as much
as $116,000 annually based on the tax cuts, rose to his feet along with
the scores of other millionaires in the House and Senate. For 88 percent
of the US population, these same cuts produced a savings of only $100
or less. Making the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts permanent would ensure
the elimination of whatever remains of spending on social programs benefiting
the majority of the population.
Bush proposed no
major new initiatives. A job-retraining program that he unveiled would
provide a scant $120 millionless than $15 for each of those officially
listed as unemployedin grants to community colleges.
The rest of his
proposals amounted to election-year sops offered up to the religious
right at the cost of further degrading the crumbling separation between
church and state in America.
He called for doubling
federal funding for programs promoting sexual abstinence among teenagers,
funding that the administration will undoubtedly try to funnel into
the coffers of his supporters among the Christian fundamentalist churches.
Similarly, he demanded that Congress pass legislation allowing the awarding
of federal social service grants to religious institutions.
Finally, in what
was viewed by White House political operatives as the most important
statement in terms of mobilizing the Republicans right-wing and
fundamentalist base, Bush came out for the sanctity of marriage,
opposing the legalization of same-sex unions, whose legality has been
upheld by several courts as a fundamental issue of equal treatment under
the law.
How extending this
right to gay couples threatens to topple what Bush described as one
of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilization,
the US president did not bother to explain. Instead, he solidarized
himself with proposals of the extreme right for a constitutional amendment
banning same-sex marriages. This would mark the first time in US history
that the constitution has been amended to deny basic democratic rights
to a segment of the population and to impose religious dogma as the
law of the land.
In its response
to Bushs speech, the media was even more fawning than usual. Typical
was the New York Times, which commented in its news report: Mr.
Bushs demeanor was one of sober gravitas as he sought to portray
a mature, experienced leader who had guided the nation through the 9/11
attacksan accomplishment that no Democrat would be able to claim.
Gravitas may be in the eye of beholder, but the Timess description
hardly seemed to match the smirking man at the podium, who seemed at
times to barely comprehend the text he was reading.
One exception to
the general obsequiousness of the broadcast and print media was a piece
by Tom Shales, television critic for the Washington Post, who wrote
more honestly: The speech was pretty much so-so, and Bushs
gung-ho deliverysomething approaching the forced jollity of a
game show hostlacked dignity and certainly lacked graciousness.
Bush has never been big on those things anyway.
As for the Democrats,
the official response, delivered by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the
partys leader in the House, and Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic
leader in the Senate, conceded virtually everything to the Republican
administration, accepting the war on terrorism as good coin
and quibbling merely on a few tactical matters of foreign and domestic
policy.
Pelosi, whose bulging
stock portfolio and real estate holdings are worth an estimated $92
million, and Daschle, who has mobilized sufficient numbers of Democratic
senators to pass virtually every major reactionary initiative of the
Bush administration, were fitting representatives of a party that represents
the same essential social interests as the Republicans.
We must remain
focused on the greatest threat to the security of the United Statesthe
clear and present danger of terrorism, declared Pelosi, echoing
the administrations own fear campaign. While gushing in her tributes
to the noble service of US occupation forces in Afghanistan
and Iraq, she made no mention whatsoever of the sweeping attacks on
democratic rights at home.
Her aim, like that
of Bush himself, was clearly to counter the growing popular feeling
that the greatest threat to the security of the masses of American working
people is not terrorism, but unemployment, poverty and the soaring costs
of health care, higher education and other basic necessities.
For his part, Daschle
talked vaguely of creating an opportunity society, without
advancing any proposals for new programs or even for reversing the reactionary
social and tax measures introduced by the Bush administration over the
past three years.
Neither of them,
nor for that matter any leading figure in the Democratic Party, is capable
of speaking the truth about the Bush administration: that this is a
government that dragged the American people into a war of aggression
based on lies. It is responsible for war crimes: the killing and maiming
of tens of thousands of Iraqis as well as the deaths of over 500 US
troops and the wounding of thousands more. And it is a government that
has presided over the criminal looting of the American economy and the
destruction of jobs and living standards to further enrich a narrow
layer of multimillionaires and billionaires.
Nor, of course,
did they dare counter Bushs appeals to the religious right and
social backwardness.
Those looking to
the Democratic Party to provide an alternative to the Bush administrations
reactionary agenda are only deluding themselves. Genuine political opposition
to these policies can be mounted only as part of a grassroots movement
of working people advancing a socialist alternative to militarism, social
inequality and repression. The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist
Equality Party are committed to politically facilitating the emergence
of such a movement.