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Today's
Stories
October 12,
2004
Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Israel as Sideshow
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
October 12, 2004
The
Second Presidential Debate
The
Blurring of Act and Audience
By
NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN
"It is difficult to
get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon
his not understanding it."
-- Upton Sinclair
"It is possible
to wake a man even from soundest sleep. But no amount of
effort can wake one who is pretending to sleep."
-- Old Tamil saying
Together, these quotes just about sum
up the second presidential debate and, in a larger sense, the
tragedy of our politics.
When a voter asked him to identify
three mistakes he had made, Bush hemmed and hawed before producing
a wholly unsatisfactory reply. He had had ample time to prepare
for this question: several months ago at his press conference
in the White House, a reporter asked him the same question (to
be fair, the reporter asked for just one mistake, not three --
but the president was unable to come up with any). Forget Iraq.
He could easily have used the opportunity to say, "Well,
I take responsibility for everything that goes on in my watch.
Obviously, 9-11 was a great failure, and the fact that none of
us were aware of the magnitude of the threat does not make it
any less of a burden for me...I have spent the rest of my term
correcting that error." That would not only have
put Kerry's Iraq tap dance squarely centerstage, it would have
also helped clear an atmosphere reeking of inanity.
Watching Bush's challenger,
one is reminded of what happens to many of us when balancing
our checkbook. Unable to make the figures match, we eventually
resign ourselves to the existing discrepancy, resolving to balance
the numbers from here on out. No one believes his claptrap about
'giving the president the authority' and then being blindsided
by him using it. But such is the power of Bush's
vapid struttings that they are willing put away Kerry's
fantastic explanation (in a lockbox?) and rejoice that the
old veteran has at last begun to speak out on Iraq.
There is, of course, the frightening
prospect that the president does think he is right. To echo what
Al Sharpton said in one of the primary debates, "Let us
hope he was lying, because the alternative is even scarier."
Why, for example, six
months after he made the "I voted for the bill before I
voted against it" statement, is Kerry still unable to explain
something so completely understandable and logical? A friend
of mine gave a crisp explanation in 30 seconds. "I
wanted to support the 87 billion dollar appropriation, but I
wanted it to come out of the tax breaks we were giving to the
rich, not from outside the budget. In the first resolution, such
a proposal was included -- I supported it. In the second case,
they took out this provision, and so I voted against it".
But no! Kerry's explanation:
"I was wrong in the way I spoke about the war. The president
was wrong in the way he took us to war. Which is worse?" God
alone knows what focus group hatched this gem. It occurred
to me that a simple test could be applied by asking Kerry,
"Would you vote for a similar resolution today authorizing
the use of force against Iran? North Korea?" I suspect Bush
too would be stymied by the same question.
Great leadership calls for
talking truth to the people. When that happens, elections can
become uplifting and didactic. Paul Craig Roberts wrote
an eloquent piece in Counterpunch [1] why Kerry needs to
speak the truth in the third debate (sadly, he expressed
no such expectation of Bush). In an article some months ago,
I recounted Gandhi's sense of responsibility [2] demonstrated
in taking full blame for something for which he bore
no direct part.
In our time, the lies, misstatements,
obfuscations, half-truths, evasions, diversions and the rest
are now piled so high as to rival the fallen twin towers
themselves. The truth lies buried beneath this wreckage.
In the end, all we know is that there are two figures standing
-- a president who perhaps believes the nonsense he speaks, and
speaks it fluently at any rate; and an opponent who is well-informed
but has trouble simply stating the simple truth.
It is easy enough to blame
Bush and blast Kerry, but is it not just as important
to ask why the candidates feel they have to craft their image
with such elaborate care, why there cannot be about them even
the whiff of a mistake? And if the candidates really think so, does
not the neurosis at the top reflect a more widespread
malady? It would seem that the people would rather their
leaders entertained them, rather than educated them on the realities.
Far better to treat the election as gladiator sport
and sneer at 'politics'. Do we want to be told that a bomb,
paid for with our tax dollars, crippled an Iraqi child who
had nothing to do with Saddam Husain, Al Sadr, Al Qaeda, Zarqawi,
or the Baathists? (In a different life, would John Edwards
have not, even at this moment, been suing the perpetrators?)
Or that the country has a debt that threatens its very
sovereignty?
Why bother? Far more convenient
to cheer brave talk of smarter wars, coalitions of the willing
or billing (though perhaps not killing or drilling), flip-flops,
and the like. That way, we are safely past the potential
trauma of a national soul searching. Perhaps it was ever
so. As Kipling wrote a long time ago, "If you can talk with
crowds, and keep your virtue..."
All the same, voting rights
in a superpower carry a terrible responsibility, and this
is no ordinary election. In our own way, we are handing the
next administration -- and Congress -- the power to determine
whether innocent people in remote region of the world live
or die [3]. To say we gave them this power to use wisely
is to emulate John Kerry's credulity in the matter of the
Iraq War resolution.
Paul Craig Roberts is right.
Kerry needs to find his voice. But far more importantly, America
needs to find hers.
Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast.
His writings can be found on http://www.indogram.com/gramsabha/articles.
His blog is at http://njn-blogogram.blogspot.com.
He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com.
References
[1] "To
Escape from Blunder, First Admit Reality", Paul
Craig Roberts, Counterpunch, Oct 11, 2004
[2] "Gandhi's
vision of Responsibility: The Great Trial of 1922",
Niranjan Ramakrishnan, CounterPunch March 20, 2004
[3] "Civilians
and Combatants", Niranjan Ramakrishnan, Swarajya,
November 11, 2001
Weekend
Edition Features for September 18 / 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
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