Month: November 2002

Now that Gavin’s gone home and there’s no longer anyone telling me what to do, I’ve started reading literature again but won’t have a chance to write about that at least until tomorrow.

Right now I’m going to take another quick look at this administration that voters found so admirable in the recent elections and wonder aloud how different people can see this administration’s actions so differently.

Here’s a quick link to Oil and Gas International, a site that Shelley Powers also linked to today, one I found while browsing several days ago, but can’t remember where I first encountered it. Last week I said that I thought the Iraqi war was based on more than oil. Reading this article, though, I might have to eat those words. At the very least, though, imagine what such a conference must imply to people in other countries who already distrust America’s motives. What idiot thought that this would go unnoticed by the media (or at least the bloggers), and that it wouldn’t cast America in the worst kind of light?

Even recent government “success stories,” like the assassination of Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, whom US officials suspected of plotting the strike on the USS Cole in October 2000, by the C.I.A. seem to end up showing America in an unfavorable light.

An article in The Christian Science Monitor” says a “… top Yemeni official says US lacks discretion as antiterror partner.” The same people whose underground work made the attack possible end up furious over our government’s handling of the incident. The heart of the story is found in the following paragraph:

They are angry over the way the US ambassador handled both the intelligence-gathering phase of the operation and after the fact, when senior US officials, including Assistant Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, violated a secrecy agreement by taking credit for the Hellfire strike.
How effective is our war on terror going to be if we continue to alienate the very people that make such success possible.

If our handling of the incident wasn’t bad enough, the same incident caused many to accuse America of using a double standard when assassinating El Queda members while still denouncing Israeli attacks on top terrorists. An article at the BBC illuminates America’s dilemma:

‘Double standards’
Israel insists that its policy of targeted killings is pre-emptive self-defence, while Palestinians describe the killings as assassinations which violate basic human rights.

But using carefully chosen language, Mr Boucher denied allegation that by staging the Yemen operation the US may be using double standards towards Israeli policy.

Personally, I’m not particularly opposed to assassinating specific leaders, particularly when they’ve claimed credit for a violent act, whether by the Americans or the Israelis, but trying to claim a glorious victory while using the same tactic that you’re condemning in others, then saying what you’re doing is different is the worst kind of cynicism and can only lead to further distrust of America both among its enemies and its allies.

When Congressman Jim McDermott pulls 71% of the vote in his district, you have to begin to question the wisdom of Democrats who seemed to abandon their own values in order to react to the polls. Now, I know McDermott represents a fairly liberal Seattle area, and his strategy certainly wouldn’t have worked in San Diego, but I wonder if many people didn’t vote for him simply because they admired the way he stood up for what he believed in, whether they agreed with his position or not.

After all, if your idea of leadership is to blindly follow the polls and vote the way you think your constituents want you to vote, you’re really not much of a leader are you? Instead, you’re a follower, and it’s questionable why anyone should really vote for you. After all, one of the reasons we have a republic and not a democracy was the founding father’s belief that elected leaders would act more wisely than mob rule. While I’m not sure that is always true, I do like to believe it is at least true for the people I vote for.

I suspect that this is precisely the reason Al Gore lost the presidency to an unknown Texan with the famous Bush name. In the debates it was hard to figure out why I had donated $50 to Gore’s campaign. He never talked about the environment, one of his strongest issues in my judgment, probably because he felt he had already cornered that vote and could do nothing but alienate voters who didn’t have the same concerns. Gore constantly looked like he reacting to whatever criticism he had gotten in t he previous debate, rather than acting like himself.

Many democrats in this election, like Gore in the presidential election, tried so hard to crowd the center that they lost anything that distinguished them from their Republican opponents. Although you may not vote against someone for this, you’re certainly not going to be motivated to work for them or to go out of your way to even vote for them. Why not vote for an alternative party, like the Green party, knowing that the candidate you’re voting for isn’t going to win, but at least they’ve earned your respect?

I suspect that the vicious attacks that McDermott’s opponents launched on him, like the veteran’s association or like this one in Capitalism Magazine inspired McDermott’s supporters to get out the vote to ensure that he wasn’t punished for acting on his principles. Surely many voters must have felt like Ellen Ratner felt, when they voted for McDermott.

Luckily, Brian Baird, the congressman that I got to vote for expressed disastisfaction with Bush’s Iraqi agenda and voted consistently for the environment, but it’s too bad other voters didn’t have the kind of clear choice that McDermott offered voters in his district.

Following yesterday’s stunned silence, I’m sitting here wondering what comes next. Not one to dwell on the past, I still think we will have to look back at why the American people voted, or didn’t vote, the way they did.

Are the American people, as my hiking partner argues in an email, so turned off by “politics as usual” that they’ve simply given up voting in the belief that there is nothing they can do about what is happening?

If so, is it necessary to begin building a third party that will offer reasonable alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans. Though I hear a lot about the Green Party, the only place it seems to be building a solid base is in California. Is California, once again, a bellwether state? Only four green party members were elected in Washington State, a state where even Republicans are forced to be “environmentalists.”

Or, as Jeff Koopersmith argues, is it the fault of the media that has so distorted the news that citizens are unable to see the truth? If so, what alternatives can we offer to traditional media that seem increasingly profit oriented, even if that means distorting, or ignoring, the truth to draw an audience?

Or is simply that the majority of Americans truly believe that Iraq presents an immediate threat to our national security and that, realistically, nothing we can do will change that. If we are to believe a recent Christian Science Monitor article (that I can’t relocate at the moment), getting more people to vote would make little difference, that the per cent that does vote is representative of the whole. If that is so, simply attempting to getting more people involved would be but another dead end.

We’re going to have to take time to re-examine the situation then begin now to prepare for the elections coming up in 2004. It’s obvious it’s going to take a lot of work to change people’s minds.