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Fraggin'

By Bill Shunas

We recently experienced the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and all of the television shows and speechifying that went along with it. Of course, Bush had to have his airtime. The timing was perfect: a fifth anniversary speech, two months before elections in which Republicans would be in trouble. In his continual exploitation of people's patriotism, he used the 9/11 speech to try to justify our presence in Iraq and let us know that we can count on Republicans to secure our nation. The historical record shows that in the hours immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld and others in the White House wanted to invade Iraq in retaliation against the alleged perpetrators. It didn't happen immediately, because they couldn't make the connection. A year and a half later, they got their way. They did it by claiming Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and was tied to al-Qaeda. Patriotism in Americans became deeper and more widespread because of 9/11. Because the president made the connections to al-Qaeda and WMD, there was support for the invasion of Iraq.

The only problem was that Bush lied, the CIA fumbled, and we ended up bogged down in Iraq—which had no connection to 9/11. There were no WMD, and Saddam was not al-Qaeda. This year, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Bush made a speech that went back to the well of patriotism to ask for support for that war. This time he said it was to prevent the rise of terrorist states in the Middle East. (He never mentioned oil.) Once again, this deceitful president tried to exploit the sincere patriotism of Americans in his anniversary speech.

In addition to their renewed call to patriotism on the eve of the 2006 elections, Bush and company tried to put a new spin on their ineptitude. They started to use a different name for the enemy in the alleged "war on terrorism." Now they would be called Islamo-fascists, who, like the Nazis, needed to be defeated if we were to be secure. They must have figured that their fading support for the war might be rekindled if they used the right words.

Everybody knows that fascism is a bad thing. Just look at World War II. Hitler executed millions, so nobody likes fascists. Actually, Hitler gave fascism a bad name. Before World War II, there were fascists in the United States as well as in European countries. They were not nice people, but they were not advocates of mass murder. Their program, in general, was a form of gonzo capitalism: the triumph of the strongest. The object was the suppression of wages and quality of life for the working masses to benefit the investing classes. For this to happen would involve eliminating many civil and political rights. It would mean suppressing the activities of trade unionists, community organizers, and political, religious, and other activists who stood up for ordinary folks. Some fascist dictators like Franco in Spain took it to the point of killing a few thousand of these activists. Franco killed them for what they did, as opposed to Hitler, who killed millions for who they were. Because of these activities, fascism went out of style after World War II.

It is ironic that Bush and company are accusing the terrorists of being fascists, because Bush and company subscribe to neoliberal economic theory, which is basically the program of the European fascist parties of seventy years ago. It favors the investor class—the wealthy. The wealthy get tax cuts, while money for Medicaid, schools, veterans' benefits, and the like get cut. Wealth gets transferred from the poor and middle class to the rich. Wages and life quality fall. It's exactly what the likes of Franco would have wanted.

The methods have changed over time. Things are more sophisticated now. Instead of lining people up against the wall, they use the law, or presidential signing statements, or corruption and lobbying of officials, or "family values." The process is a little slower, but the results are the same. State power is used to aid the accumulation of wealth. All talk of safety nets is in the past. The Christo-fascists have won. While Bush is trying to put a good spin on the war, events in Iraq are spinning away toward acknowledged civil war and the eventual breakup of that country. And don't forget Afghanistan, where the victory is no closer now than it was five years ago. Afghanistan is the place where arguably the second most powerful army in history was defeated by the locals back in the eighties. Is this a lesson?

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon kept the Vietnam War going because neither wanted to be the first American president to lose a war, and many people died because of it. George W. Bush is probably thinking along the same lines, only he's thinking that he has the potential to become the first president to lose two wars. So he's not going to shut it down, and many more will die while we wait for new leadership. Bush is losing or has lost popular support for the war; thus the return to 9/11 and spin doctors, but he isn't fooling anybody anymore. He won't do it, but his only chance for victory is to declare it and bring the troops home.