Op-Ed

AUSTIN, Texas -- The wire services are reporting that we just lost seven Marines in Fallujah. To use Linda Ellerbee's line, "And so it goes ..."

        The way it does not, NOT go is as claimed last week at the Republican convention. I feel like the janitor in that photo of Madison Square Garden after the party, facing a sea of garbage that needs to be collected and thrown out. Even after several days and with alert bloggers to help, it's hard to catch all the lies. The number of things John Kerry is supposed to have said that he never said was the largest category.

        -- Kerry never said we need to have a "sensitive war." (Bonus points if you can find Bush's references to our need for more sensitivity.)

        -- Kerry never said we need other countries' permission to go to war.

        -- Kerry has never failed to "support our troops in combat."

He's lost his voice since, but the best thing John Kerry did at the Democratic convention was to challenge the bullying. He talked of the flag belonging to all of us, and how "standing up to speak our minds is not a challenge to patriotism [but] the heart and soul of patriotism." By doing this, he drew the line against the pattern of intimidation that the Bush administration has used to wage war on democracy itself.

A former Air Force Colonel I know described the administration's attitude toward dissent as "shut up and color," as if we were unruly eight-year-olds. Whatever we may think of Bush's particular policies, the most dangerous thing he's done is to promote a culture that equates questioning with treason. This threatens the very dialogue that's at the core of our republic.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Stephen Colbert, correspondent for “The Daily Show,” the only news program to watch during the Republican convention, found the theme of this convention like a homing pigeon: “Unmitigated gall.”

        This convention alone would be enough to convince me that John Edwards is right about “two Americas,” except I don’t think he’s gone far enough. These folks are in from another planet. They’re living in an alternative reality. When is a fact a fact to these people? When did anyone ever find evidence Saddam Hussein had dog to do with Sept. 11?

        It’s all very well to claim our invasion of Iraq may yet bring about peace and democracy in the Middle East -- hey, miracles happen -- but when Rudy Giuliani assured us this “idealism” is in fact triumphing as he speaks, one must question the man’s grip on sanity. Even the president is now claiming the disastrous occupation is the result of “catastrophic success.” That seems to mean he thinks we won the war too fast.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Another record. We have already lost more American soldiers (488) in Iraq in 239 days of this year than we did in 287 days last year (482), when there was a war on and before our mission was accomplished.

        The grind of the numbers is so relentless. Price of gasoline -- pressing $50 a barrel. Poverty rate -- increased again, third year in a row. Number of Americans without insurance -- increased again, third year. Part of the "vibrant economy” Bush touts daily now. And the news from Iraq just keeps getting worse and worse.

        Then, to liven things up, someone from Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office is accused of passing classified information to the Israelis via the lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Be interesting to see whether Laurence A. Franklin, the alleged spy, gets as much publicity as did Clinton's former NSC adviser Sandy Berger did for allegedly taking notes on classified documents for his 9-11 Commission testimony. The Justice Department has announced no charges will be filed against Berger, and the matter is closed.

Which America do you want? The America where citizens wishing to hear their elected leaders speak in person must first pledge their loyalty before being admitted? The America where citizens instead wishing to display dissent are banished to "free speech zones" across town?

The America where if the president says something confidently and often enough it does not have to make sense to be believed? The America where whatever the president says presently automatically negates whatever he said previously?

The America where bringing civility to Washington means the vice-president can tell a senator to "go f*** himself" on the senate floor? The America where CIA agents are illegally outed as revenge for dissent?

The America where deficits are exploding and leaving a mess all over our future? The America where, according to the vice-president, "deficits don't matter"?

The America where the gap between the thrivingly rich and the miserably poor is widening into a chasm? The America where transnational corporations merit more rights and influence than citizens?

"Happy is the country which requires no heroes," Bertolt Brecht commented. Today, by that standard, the United States is a very unhappy country.

These days, the public's genuine eagerness for heroes is difficult to gauge. If media output is any measure, the hero industry is engaged in massive overproduction. Whether the "products" are entertainers, star athletes or politicians, the PR efforts are unrelenting. Some brands catch on.

In mass culture, the media consumer is constantly encouraged to swoon for personalities who seem to turn glitz into a verb. From MTV to the mall multiplex, the role models are on the market, glorious in two dimensions.

AUSTIN, Texas -- We were bound to get at least one good laugh out of Swift Boat Veterans for Humongous Lies, and what a pip it is. Upon being identified as the lawyer both for the Bush-Cheney campaign and the Swift Boat Liars, Benjamin Ginsberg bravely offered his resignation to the campaign, which has said repeatedly it has NO connection to the Liars.

        He made the following poignant argument in a letter to the president, which I know will touch you as deeply as it did me (emphasis added): "I cannot begin to express my sadness that my legal representations have become (SET ITAL) a distraction for the critical issues at hand in this election. (END ITAL) I feel I cannot let that continue, so I have decided to resign as national counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, (SET ITAL) doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focused." (END ITAL)

        Do you love it?

AUSTIN, Texas - It's an early Labor Day SURPRISE! Congratulations, if you make between $23,660 and $100,000, you have just very likely lost your right to overtime pay, courtesy of the Bush administration.

        If this comes as news to you, thank your friendly media, who are much too busy reporting lies abut John Kerry's heroism in Vietnam to bother with this story affecting your life. But next time you hear someone say, "Oh, I just don't care much about politics," you might want to recall this particular connection -- especially if it means you have to go out and get another job.

        This stunner is brought to you by President Bush and his big-business campaign donors. The Senate has voted twice to stop the change, so there's no point in raising hell with them. The House of Representatives, the "people's house," dodged the question. So Bush's Department of Labor just up and issued hundreds of pages of new rules on who gets overtime pay.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Remember what it was like just before the war? Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- Colin Powell told us to the pound how many tons of this, that and the other -- Saddam had a reconstituted nuclear program, he had numerous ties to Al Qaeda, and he was an imminent threat.

        As the president put it, we couldn't afford to wait until the smoking gun was a mushroom cloud.

        "To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just another attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand the question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action; fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man. ... .Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect."

This article was co-written with Jeff Cohen

The U.S.-centric nature of American politics often affects the U.S. left. It's hard to get out of USA mindsets long enough to grasp the global implications of decisions made here at home. Yet the effects of U.S. government policies are so enormous across the planet that some people have suggested -- with more than a little justification -- that every person on Earth should get to vote in U.S. presidential elections.

On the international left, no one has more credibility as an unwavering opponent of U.S. foreign policy than Tariq Ali. Raised in Pakistan, he was a leader of Britain's Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the 1960s, and is now a prominent London-based writer and an editor at New Left Review. His recent books include "Bush in Babylon" and "The Clash of Fundamentalisms." As progressives in the United States try to make sense out of the current presidential campaign, Ali's perspective on the global significance of Bush's electoral fate deserves serious consideration.