(Editors note: Read part one three and four) Now, I’ll begin exploring the shape for our curious political life, as outlined in Part 1, by accounts of the run-up to the Iraq war and the behavior of the Democrats during the period 2000 – 2005. Democrats were seemingly, during this time, engaged in self-effacement, echoing the reticence of the media to seriously question Republican pronouncements and agenda. The Bush government saw nothing but opportunity in 9/11. Soon after the event, it effectively wrapped the flag around its policies, convincing the public that all who would question them were making traitorous utterances and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The throttling of debate extended to domestic matters, such as taxation, and the environment as well as the conduct of military operations and internal security. It will be useful to refresh our memories of this period.

In a bizarre imitation of Nazi rhetoric, the word “homeland”, never spoken before by an American politician, became a trope of discourse during this time, and became institutionalized with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. It felt strange to hear a term Hitler had used often, “Das Heimatsland”, in speeches urging Germans to engage in unjust expansionist warfare, by Bush. The American president was using the same term to promote a similar cause. Bush’s task in leading the country into an unjust war demanded persuading the people that all the norms of behavior expected of other countries did not apply to the US.

Once the public had been so convinced, he was in a position to spurn diplomacy and to ignore or even ridicule the European governments opposing the war. Hitler accomplished a similar feat by convincing the German people that they were the master race, and Bush, with little effort, was able to convince Americans that they were exceptional in the world for the clarity of their vision of the good. Everything American was good, from Disneyland (he urged flying their to enjoy a vacation shortly after the 9/11 attacks) to its brand of Democracy. Cheney suggested, in response to urgings to take action against global warming that the American Way of Life, meaning cars and suburbs, was so splendid as to be not negotiable, regardless of its cost to the rest of the world. Few Americans disagreed with this view. In justifying its policies, the Bush government had tapped into a strong current of utopianism that runs through American life. The vision of “the city on the hill” that drew religious zealots to settle in North America in the seventeenth century was the cultural root of continuing American idealistic thinking aimed at progress toward human perfection. Bush’s invocation of our being in possession of a superior moral vision to launch an unjust war is little different from Hitler’s invocation of the master race to justify German world conquest. The enactment of any utopian scheme always requires violence and fascism.

One result of the 2000 election was that neo-conservatives working out of the pentagon took charge of foreign policy, bypassing and ignoring the State Department. Colin Powell, who would have carried on a more traditional policy, found himself out-maneuvered by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, who operated out of Rumsfeld’s Defense Department. In effect, foreign policy was seized by a group of ideologues who quickly replaced the policy of realism originally laid out by George Kennan in the late 1940s. What replaced the more moderate idea that each situation called for a careful assessment of dangers and opportunities, and to act only as carefully marshaled facts permitted, was the notion of an absolute American triumphalism. Neocons thought that as the victors in the Cold War, it was time for the US to collect the spoils, without limit.

The great distinctions between the neocon approach to foreign policy and the approach of all US administrations during the previous 50 years were in two areas. First, the neocons totally abandoned the multilateralism achieved through careful diplomacy during the previous five decades in favor of the unilateral projection of US military power. Second, they held a strong conviction that the US, as the world’s only superpower, could and should build a great empire that imposed on the world their version of American values by using that power, and saw little standing in the way. Indeed, on the basis of their ideology, the neocons confidently expected the Iraqis to cheer as the US instituted regime change in their country, so they rejected planning beyond simply deposing Saddam Hussein. This radical departure from the past made many foreign policy careerists nervous. Bush dispatched John Bolton to the State department to contain their unease and keep Colin Powell in line.
Bolton succeeded well and Powell was even convinced to go to the UN to argue, using flimsy evidence, for a resolution condemning Iraq for possession of WMDs. At present Bolton has been reassigned as ambassador to the UN, and is making every effort to undermine and discredit that organization.

Where stood the Democratic minority in the Senate during the run-up to the Iraqi war? They did not engage in vigorous debate, and voted to support the Iraq war resolution of October 11, 2002, which passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23. I hold that both Hilary Clinton and John Edwards both now running for president who, as members of Congress, voted to authorize the Iraqi war did so cynically, as did many others. The evidence is in their inaction in the face of growing knowledge that the WMD intelligence was fraudulent on the eve of the war.

To understand the motivation of Senators to ask few questions and to be easily cajoled into granting authorization for the war, I’ll focus on the administration’s assertion that Iraq was working on nuclear weapons. Subsequent to the Iraq war resolution, the UN WMD inspection team in Iraq, headed by Hans Blix stepped up their work. While this work was underway, Colin Powell went before the UN to argue the US case that Iraq had active WMD programs, including chemical, biological and nuclear. Blix thought the evidence Powell presented as “shaky,” and said he related his opinion to U.S. officials, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Surely Blix’s concerns were known to members of Congress. He was completely ignored not only by the Bush administration, but also by Congress.

The most significant evidence that Bush administration assertions of WMDs lacked substance came quickly from the International Atomic Energy Commission. The IAEC, working under Blix, in their last round of inspections in Iraq, a particularly thorough inspection, found absolutely no evidence of any ongoing nuclear weapons development. The IAEC chief El-Baradei reported to the UN the complete absence of any nuclear program in Iraq. One million pounds of yellow cake uranium, obtained before 1990 and left in Iraq under seal after the first Iraqi war, had not been disturbed. The aluminum tubes, asserted by the US as destined for the manufacture of centrifuges that would be used to enrich uranium to weapons grade were declared to be unsuitable for that purpose, and El-Baradei declared the documents related to the alleged sale of yellow cake uranium to Iraq were forgeries. Seymour Herschin his March 24, 2003 article in The New Yorker reports that the IAEC had determined that documents authorizing the sale of yellow cake uranium to Iraq between 1999 and 2001 used as evidence by the CIA of Iraqi nuclear ambitions were forgeries as determined by the IAEC in just one day after the IAEA wrangled them from the CIA, after a lengthy struggle The CIA and British intelligence who had them in their possession for years had failed to notice that they were clumsy forgeries.

Interestingly, the US began hostilities against Iraq on March 18, 2003 just eleven days after El-Baradei’s report to the UN. Was the war begun in such haste to preempt the growing doubts and to forestall any serious debate about the validity of WMD intelligence? Certainly the well connected members of Congress, with all their access to information, would have been aware that the Bush WMD story was coming apart. Perhaps they believed that the war, being a fait accompli could not be opposed. Wouldn’t it be political suicide to oppose the President, given the effective way he had propagandized the public to support the war? That there was so little uproar over the false justifications by which their consent had been obtained suggests another interpretation. Members of the Senate probably knew that the justifications for the war were ill-founded before voting, but decided to sacrifice their integrity and give their approval to the Iraq war resolution to save their own privileged lives as politicians. So, the resolution passed by a wide margin. Hillary Clinton’s speech to explain her support of the Iraq war resolution cites the fact that she represents a state where the 9/11 attack occurred. This is an acknowledgment of political pressure that she should have disregarded. The assertion of a connection between Iraq and the attack was the least believable part of the intelligence. Don’t believe Hillary’s oft repeated excuse that she was misled into supporting the war.

The foregoing may account for Democrats dancing to the beat of the Bush war drum, but it provides no explanation for their silence in response to Bush’s baldly visible corrupt practices as outlined in Part 1. For that, we must dig deeper. In those matters on which Democrats and Republicans agree, there is no public debate. After the 2000 election, as the party in power in both the executive and legislative branches of government, the Republicans systematically neutered Democrats by excluding them from the normal processes by which the country is governed. I am not referring to Democrats’ often reported banishment from any effective role on committees or in crafting legislation, but to their being hit financially. Democrats suffered this humiliation in silence because to complain would expose those processes to public view and possibly upset the apple cart. The country is governed by an oligarchy that utilizes a river of money flowing from its sources at corporate headquarters around the land to collectively pool in the money estuary on K street in Washington. Lobbyists spread the money among members of Congress in exchange for what is euphemistically known as “access”, but what is in reality payment for the control of legislation. Prior to 2000, this largess was distributed fairly uniformly to both Democrats and Republicans. But, after that election, the Republicans started playing hardball with the lobbyists, cutting them off if they patronized any Democratic Congress persons. The Democrats were left naked to cry in the wilderness, but they did not complain loudly.

Part of the aftermath of the 2006 election has been a more normal distribution of these funds. To really grasp the dimensions of this system of governance, you only have to ask yourself a simple question: what can it mean for an individual to spend $11,101,610 to gain a two year term in an office that only pays $165,200 per year? The answer is clear: the only obligation that many of our legislators feel toward their constituents is to gain their manufactured consent to govern. The electoral process is so costly that it represents an insurmountable barrier to entry to anyone not well connected to vast sums from whatever source, be it personal wealth or corporate patronage. To become a national politician and to bask along the shores of this river of money is to be blessed by God. Why would any of the winners in this system ever want to change it? It is so much a feature of our politics that its customs and usages are completely institutionalized. A fig leaf of legitimacy is provided by the lucrative book contracts, speaking fees and retirement sinecures given by the powerful to reward members of Congress for their good work. Acceptance of such deals, fees and “employment” is considered normal ethical behavior, as are legal campaign contributions.

I feel that in the coming months we will hear a lot about campaign financing reform, as we have perennially. Nothing will come of it. The rhetoric about ethics and campaign finance is for one purpose: to create a comforting impression that something is being done. Perhaps another ineffective bill will be crafted and passed into law. Enough loopholes will be written into it so that it will be easily circumvented.

I’ve written at length about the run-up to the Iraq war to give some details of a particular instance of a more general problem we must address. The exceptionalism of the US that allows it to go to war without justification is just one dimension of our utopianism that calls forth death and destruction. In many other areas of international relations, Bush has time and again invoked US exceptionalism. Examples include pulling out of the war crimes treaty in May 2002, and not ratifying the Kyoto treaty to limit carbon emissions. Almost certainly, if we had participated in the treaty to prosecute war criminals, Henry Kissinger would have been hauled before a judge in The Hague.

The Kyoto treaty, signed by Al Gore, as Vice-President, if ratified, would have led to the US taking its first step to combat global warming. Though Bush pledged to support the treaty during his 2000 election campaign, shortly after taking office he did not press for its ratification with the excuse that it would harm the American economy (read this as damaging corporate profits), as though the other countries who had ratified it did not face similar difficulties.

But, once again dear reader, I am not telling you anything you don’t already know. You may have been bored by my account, as it is common knowledge. I want to urge on you once again that what is buried deeply in our national psyche is the reason for the complacency of Americans in the face of this knowledge, which is the topic of Part 3. It is this ready acceptance of the status quo that must change if there is to be any hope for our future and the world.