Op-Ed

"In the past six years, we've stopped numerous attacks, including a plot to fly a plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles, and another to blow up passenger jets bound for America over the Atlantic."
--George W. Bush, 2008 State of the Union

"We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast."
--George W. Bush, 2007 State of the Union

An October 8, 2005, LA Times story, headlined "Scope of Plots Bush Says Were Foiled Is Questioned," cited "several counter-terrorism officials" as saying that "the plot never progressed past the planning stages.... 'To take that and make it into a disrupted plot is just ludicrous,' said one senior FBI official….At most it was a plan that was stopped in its initial stages and was not an operational plot that had been disrupted by authorities."

On the day of the State of the Union, apparently hoping nobody would notice, President George W. Bush posted a statement on the White House website announcing his intention to violate major sections of the Defense Authorization bill that he just signed into law.

For their part, the Democrats in Congress have chosen not to push for a just and decent economic stimulus plan, because they want to work amicably with Bush. They've chosen not to vote on contempt citations for Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten in order to work more amicably on the economic stimulus package. They've scratched impeachment out of the Constitution, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich even backed down on his plans to introduce articles of impeachment on Monday. And of course, Congress is committed to throwing every possible dime down the blackhole of the Iraq occupation. What has been the president's response to all this bipartisan cooperation?

Hillary Clinton is now campaigning in Florida and arguing that the state's delegates should count, along those from the Michigan primary. This would sound fair enough, unless you know that both Michigan and Florida moved their primaries up, except that after the Democrats agreed that the only states to vote before February 5th ("Super Tuesday") would be Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina (picked because they were relatively small states, representing different demographics). The Democratic Party agreed that votes from the two renegade primaries would not count. The major candidates made an explicit agreement not to campaign in either state. Florida law required that all candidates keep their names on, but Obama and Edwards pulled their names from the Michigan ballot.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich is facing a tough primary in five weeks in his working class district in Cleveland, Ohio. He's up against better funded opponents and the concerted effort of the corporate and media powers of Cleveland that have opposed him since long before he took that seat away from a Republican.

Kucinich is a progressive candidate who inspires passionate support from many in Cleveland who might not turn out to vote for a DLC Democrat. If he loses his primary, the Democrats may lose the seat. And if he loses the primary, the Democrats will, without any doubt, have lost something more valuable: their spine.

Politics can be a rough game. Candidates need to hold their competitors accountable, to challenge distortions and lies. And God knows, we need a Democratic nominee who's willing to fight. But Hillary Clinton's campaign has crossed so many ethical lines it risks embittering so many potential supporters as to cost the Democrats the November election. If all the new voters that Obama's bringing in are so angered they decide to stay home, it's going to be extremely difficult for the Democrats to beat a candidate like McCain, particularly if the Republicans have Hillary to mobilize against.

In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted the current president and vice president of the United States for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S. and international law, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and basing their actions on "imperial fantasies."

The last time my mother was in a hospital, an essay by Thich Nhat Hanh moved in front of my eyes. "Our mother is the teacher who first teaches us love, the most important subject in life," he wrote. "Without my mother I could never have known how to love. Thanks to her I can love my neighbors. Thanks to her I can love all living beings. Through her I acquired my first notions of understanding and compassion."

My mother, Miriam A. Solomon, died on January 20, which happened to be the seventh anniversary of the inauguration of a man and a presidential regime that she loathed. Once, several years ago, when I referred to George W. Bush as "an idiot," she made a correction by pointing out he's much worse than that; she used the adjective "evil."

At my parents' apartment, taped on the front door for a long time, a little poster said: "The America I Believe In Doesn't Torture People." The poster was from Amnesty International USA -- an organization that my mom wrote many protest letters to dictators for -- and it summed up her devotion to human decency rather than counterfeit versions of American democracy.

Politics can be a rough game. Candidates need to hold their competitors accountable and challenge distortions and lies. And God knows, we need a Democratic nominee who's willing to fight. But Hillary Clinton's campaign has included far too many cheap shots, sleazy manipulations, and unsavory players.

New questionable actions emerge daily. You're probably familiar with many. But it's the broader pattern that disturbs me—how much the Clinton campaign seems to nurture questionable actions from her operatives, supporters, and surrogates. And how the campaign's actions go beyond drawing legitimate political lines to an all-too-Rovian instinct to do whatever's deemed necessary to take down those blocking Clinton's potential victory. Here's a representative list of actions that, taken together, offer a troubling portent for her candidacy and presidency.

What should the peace movement do in 2008 to speed the end of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, bring home the troops and mercenaries and contractors, and stop draining trillions of dollars out of Americans' pockets for an expense that most of us do not want?  And what should all organizations do whose domestic missions are devastated by the occupations' drain on the national treasury?

Of course, we should continue to work on public education, and on counter recruitment.  We should back congressional and presidential candidates who most closely approach our positions.  At the presidential level that means, in descending order: Kucinich, Edwards, and Obama.  (Make your own judgments regarding viability, spoiling, and symbolic delegate elections after the nominee is known).  We should redouble our efforts to open impeachment hearings for Cheney and Bush, in order to discourage new wars, in order to set a precedent, and because Bush and Cheney will not end any occupations in 2008 if they are in office, no matter what Congress does.  And we should lobby Congress to end the legal funding of the occupations in 2008.

“I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes.”

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s none other than “the Filipino Monkey,” now doing voiceovers for the Pentagon!

More bad melodrama in the Gulf, I’m afraid. And war with Iran is still a no-go, but the bellicose among us keep trying. It’s nothing new. The recent bizarre non-incident between U.S. warships and Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz — apparently Pentagon-edited for media consumption to create the illusion of provocation — has been justifiably compared to the bogus 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, which became the pretext for 10 years of war in Vietnam, but it evokes historical patterns that run deeper than four decades.