There Are Many Sins Inside The Gates Of Washington

Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when 'neath the trees of Eden

The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs 'neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden
-- Bob Dylan, 1965

A couple of pieces at Consortium News, which has some of the best commentary and news on Bob Gates' nomination as SecDef, seem to bear out the main theme I've been pounding away at these past couple of weeks - the Democrats are unlikely to change anything.

First a snatch from "Democrats Cave on Gates Nomination" by Robert Parry:

Despite winning the Nov. 7 elections largely due to public anger over the Iraq War, congressional Democrats crumbled in their first post-election confrontation with President George W. Bush on the future direction of that conflict.

Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee floundered though inept questioning of former CIA Director Robert M. Gates, Bush’s new choice for Defense Secretary, failing to nail down the nominee’s precise thinking on any aspect of the war strategy or even to secure a guarantee that the Pentagon would turn over documents for future oversight hearings.

Among many gaps in the questioning, the Democrats didn’t press Gates on whether he shared the neoconservative vision of violently remaking the Middle East, whether he endorsed the Military Commissions Act’s elimination of habeas corpus rights to fair trials, whether he supports warrantless eavesdropping by the Pentagon’s National Security Agency, whether he agrees with Bush’s claim of “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as a Commander in Chief who can override laws and the U.S. Constitution.

When Gates did stake out substantive positions, he almost invariably lined up with Bush’s “stay-until-victory” plan in Iraq. Though insisting that “all the options are on the table,” Gates rejected any timetable for military withdrawal as some Democrats have recommended. He also echoed Bush’s argument that an American pullout would lead to a regional cataclysm.

Instead, Gates advocated an open-ended U.S. military presence in Iraq. “We are still going to have to have some level of American support there for the Iraqi military and that could take quite some time,” Gates said . . .

Then there's "Constitution Takes Hit at Gates Hearing" by Ray McGovern, an ex-spook who knows what he's talking about:

Editor's Note: The pro forma confirmation hearing for Robert Gates, paving the way to his overwhelming approval as Defense Secretary, represented yet another abdication of the congressional responsibility to conduct serious oversight. Republicans were still determined to give President George W. Bush what he wanted and Democrats were still frightened to challenge his judgments.

In this guest essay, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern witnessed what he believes is the demise of the constitutional system of checks and balances, which the Founders created more than two centuries ago to limit the power of arrogant Executives. (This article was originally published at Truthout.org.)

At Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the nomination of Robert Gates to be secretary of defense, I felt as though I were paying last respects to the Constitution of the United States. But there was none of the praise customarily given to the deceased . . .

. . . I could not help thinking; this is the committee that allowed itself to be co-opted by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith into abnegating its constitutional duty to prevent the United States from launching a war of aggression on false pretenses against a defenseless Iraq.

The Nuremberg Tribunal ruled war of aggression "the supreme international crime inasmuch as it contains the accumulated evils of the whole" - kidnapping and torture, for example. This is the committee which, when such abuses came to light, let the Pentagon investigate itself.

And I thought of how our Virginian forefathers, really distinguished Virginians like James Madison and George Mason, who crafted the checks and balances into our Constitution, and how they must be rolling over in their graves at the flaccid timidity of their 21st century successors.

Perhaps the plain-speaking senator-elect from Virginia, James Webb, will be able to remind other senators of their duty and curtail their mutual fawning when he takes office in January.

It was a sorry spectacle Tuesday, as pretentious, patrician manners trumped courage and vitiated the advise-and-consent prerogative carefully honed by the framers of our Constitution for the Senate . . .

That Gates would be given a free pass without serious probing was already clear in ranking member Carl Levin's (D-Michigan) deference to lame-duck chairman John Warner's (R-Virginia) plan for a one-day, carefully scripted hearing, at which senators could disregard new, documentary evidence of Gates's deception of Congress and the Iran-Contra independent counsel.

Expediting the hearing served to squander the leverage provided by the confirmation process to committee members, had any of them wished to put that leverage in play. Rather, Gates was often able to say, in effect, "Gosh, I just got here; didn't know about that; haven't read that, but I'll put that on the top of my reading pile."

Fully expecting that Levin's Democratic colleagues would join him in acquiescing in this charade, antiwar activists told me before the hearing began that they had come prepared with a chant: You won the elections. Now ask real questions!

I later learned that the activists left after only an hour, unable to stomach the courtly fawning, as troops and Iraqi civilians get blown up in Baghdad . . .

So here we are, eh? In their first opportunity to show us what they're worth, tying up Bush's nomination of another imperialist war-monger and criminal to be SecDef, the Democrats kissed, rather than kicked, ass. So they've created in their first move a context in which at best they can only howl self-righteously at the death and destruction that will continue in Iraq.

David Swanson this morning published an article at Atlantic Free Press entitled "The Best Reasons Not to Impeach, And Why They're Wrong". In my opinion it is the most reasoned, detailed, and powerful case for impeachment that I've read. The problem, of course, is that the Democratic leadership has already decided that impeachment's a non-starter. So, they won't block "Rummy Lite" and they won't go hard after The Doubleduh-Cheney Gang. And they did this while Bush was announcing that he rejects the only two ISG recommendations that are worth a damn: getting the hell out and talking with Iran and Syria. WTF??!!

In my response comment at Swanson's piece, I suggested that, especially under the circumstances, that impeachment of Congress might be a more effective move. They are constitutionally culpable in abdicating their responsibility to declare war and then oversee it's waging. Congress will not impeach itself, of course. So what to do.

Over the past few years we Americans have watched thousands of people in other countries take to the streets under conditions we have here, laying their bodies on the line in protest against stolen elections and repressive regimes. I think the last time we did that here was at least thirty years ago.

I'm re-reading Chalmers Johnson's "Blowback" these days. Published about a year before 911, it is so prescient it's scary. He shows unequivocally that ending our war against Iraq will not be enough; that we have sown and will continue to spread the seeds of nearly perpetual resentment that can only result in revenge and retribution.

I believe that an organized, unified, powerful peaceful engine of revolt is our only hope. But it has been a diminishing hope. That many have celebrated the mid-term congressional shift as a victory for the Left is terribly depressing.

In the comments section of my post, "Name That 'Toon: Why There's No Still No Vital Third Party", I had a brief conversation with someone named Kevin of the Populist Party of America, I asked him, "Is there any way that, say, The Populists, the Peace and Freedom folks, Libertarians, The Greens, the Socialists, and the smaller splinter groups and parties could unselfishly and in the national and international interest, forge a unified alliance and party based on common principles?" I got no response.

This morning I visited around twenty well-read non-white-guy blogs; feminist, black feminist, American Latino, LBGT, and African-American (this latter including Black Commentator). Only at Majikthise and Tennessee Guerilla Women did I find any recent posts about the issues I've dealt with here.

I smell political apathy, narcissism, and ignorance. They smell like death.

Categories: Congress, Democratic+leadership, Robert+Gates, complicity, Iraq+war, revolt, unity

......................................


Even radical rabble buy "holiday" gifts for people. If you're going to give your dear ones books, music, videos, or these days just about anything (except bongs), why don't you get them at the P! Amazon Store? I get a very small kickback, so you help support this blog. Thank you