Truthout: The "Stab in the Back" Trap

[babylonsister]

Truthout: The "Stab in the Back" Trap

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042707L.shtml

The "Stab in the Back" Trap
By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributors

Friday 27 April 2007

The Democrats and the peace movement are walking into a trap.

The Republicans are preparing with Rovian cunning to focus the mind of the public on the question: Who lost Iraq?

And they are already giving the answer: The Democrats and the peace movement.

snip//

What's necessary to evade this trap is to define the war itself - rather than just the fact that America is losing it - as wrong. It is wrong because we were lied into it by a rogue executive intent on launching an illegal war and occupation, in violation of national and international law, the US Constitution and the UN Charter. And it is wrong because it has imposed an illegal occupation that has systematically violated the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

The means to define Bush's war for the American people are at hand in the power of Congress to investigate executive branch actions. We are seeing that power being flexed in the use of subpoenas for documents and testimony by committees investigating the firings of US attorneys. But, so far, investigation of illegal war, occupation, torture and rendition has been pusillanimous at best.

What's become of the investigations of the origins and conduct of the war and occupation that Democrats promised when they took over Congress at the start of 2007? According to a Congressional aide quoted in the April 25 Washington Post, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have assigned staff members to monitor "what fights we're picking and how we're picking them." If so, they've assiduously avoided picking any fights that might implicate the Bush administration's "war on terror" in violations of US and international law. (The first break in this complicity of Congressional Democrats in the Bush administration's cover-up may be the 21-to-10 vote of Rep. Henry Waxman's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to authorize a subpoena requiring Condoleezza Rice to testify about the yellowcake uranium fraud.)

more...

[w4rma]

1. That's what the Republican leadership is *trying* to do. (nt)

[The Magistrate]

2. It is True, Ma'am

That opposition to the occupation of Iraq, and selecting the means of disengagement from it, must be conducted with an eye towards the future political climate. This is a chess match, in which thinking several moves ahead is essential for success.

[EST]

3. A historian and a legal analyst.

And both of them either stupider than owl shit or so stunningly arrogant that they refuse to watch cspan or read a responsible blog or two.
Had they bothered to act like grown ups and done a little checking, they would find that congress has been enormously active in staunching the corruption and holding the wing nuts accountable. How the hell many hearings do they think the judiciary committee can conduct in one day?

Many of the more brazen crimes and misdemeanors are, in time of war, of questionable value in disabling the culture of corruption and crime. Those huge actions that cheneybush should be impeached, tried and imprisoned or executed for, on a political scale, can be de-fanged. However the day-to-day corruption that violates specific laws or procedures can be hung around their necks and cannot be explained away under the guise of national security or gwot.

I don't know how much experience these rascals have, but their breathless discovery of the political scene that we have been beating our brains out correcting for lo these many years reminds me of a teenager's discovery of love, sex and hormones.

Damn idiots need to hang out on DU or firedoglake or dkos for a while and ask somebody about cspan3.
I find them insulting and out of touch. We don't need their kind of advice.

[bread_and_roses]

9. We don't? Then why do the candidates still triangulate, evade, and ignore

the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetuated by this administration? Why are they not demanding that the unreleased torture photos be released, where is the denunciation of a war of agression in violation of international law? When do they speak to the suffering and death of the Iraqi people in the same breath as they speak to the suffering and death of American troops lost and injured? Which of them is talking about the Iraqi orphans, the malnutrition and infant mortality in Iraq and saying this is the result of a war of agression? Which of them is plainly stating that this war was and is about oil?

I admit, I do not read every story out there, and I never watch television, so it is not impossible that I've missed these strong statements. What I do read seems to be largely about the stupidity of the conduct of the war and occupation - not its' basic, fundamental violation of International law and all norms of civilized conduct.

And while we here may have been beating our brains out "correcting" the political scene for "lo these many years" most people do not read DU. I have great faith in the American people, most of whom have been quicker than most of our Representatives to turn against this war, but despite that most, for instance, seem to still think that Ray-Gun was a "great" President and have no understanding of what we did in South America under his blood-soaked eight year "madate." They did not hear it often and strongly enough for it to sink in.

The Iraq narrative is still being written by the pundits and there is still no questioning of the fundamental premises of this war. Not by the Press, and not by our candidates, who are still worried about being "strong on defense." And until and unless they speak to it strongly and loudly the scenario of the article is quite likely to play out.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

4. The war is over. We are ending the occupation.

The American public has spoken. And the Iraqi public has spoken. No more American lives to sustain the unsustainable. If chaos should ensue, then most likely a multi-national peacekeeping force will assemble and we would be willing to be a part of that.

That is what I would say if I were a Democratic candidate.

[pretzel4gore]

5. the 'pukes are too smart for us, way too smart,!

poor ole USA, trapped again! and only gutless democrats to look out for us!
snip>
When is the last time Democrats were so unified in their defiance of Wise Beltway Wisdom, which endlessly warns them not to adhere to their beliefs too steadfastly or to defy Republican decrees, especially on foreign policy?
The national media -- the World Ruled by Drudge, led around by and working in conjunction with the rest of the right-wing noise machine -- have tried mightily for months to depict Nancy Pelosi as weak and her leadership in chaos, and they try to do roughly the same with Harry Reid. Yet that has all been brushed aside, as the Democratic caucus in both the Senate and the House have been shockingly unified, not just once but continuously, in their defiance of both the Leader's will and the worthless Hiatt/Broder/Fox News "warnings" about "going too far" in opposing the war and the Leader.
<snip>
Taken together, these two seemingly unconnected incidents reveal: (a) just how radical, extremist and dishonest are the people who have been running this country for the last six years, the whole Bush-led neoconservative Republican edifice loyally supported by most of the "conservative" movement, and (b) outside of the hard-core Bush followers and the stuck-in-2002 Beltway media establishment, there is a rapidly growing recognition of (a) in this country, which is beginning to engender a very potent sea change in political opinion and political power.
<snip>

http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2007/04/28/oped-a-genuine-political-sea-change/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.salon.com%2Fopinion%2Fgreenwald%2F2007%2F04%2F28%2Fsea_change%2Findex.html%3Fsource%3Drss&frame=true

[union_maid]

6. Pretty sure that's a "d'uh"

I think the Democrats know what the Republicans are going to try to do. I think they know that it's the only half-way attractive option left to the GOP. I'm not saying it's not a problem, but if it's a trap, it's a damned obvious one.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Well, there is the truth (what really is) and the war profiteering corporate news monopoly

narrative.

The American people have become pretty savvy about sorting the two out.

I think that some leftist (majorityist) writers expose themselves too much to the war profiteering corporate news monopoly narrative, with no shields up. You know, these war profiteers are pretty skilled at creating the illusion that people are listening to them, and heeding them. It is their chief brainwashing success--that we peace-minded Americans and leftists feel isolated and alone, and in the minority. They make us fearful that OTHER Americans are either nuts or stupid--and would, for instance, fall prey to the ridiculous notion that the Democrats and the peace movement "lost the war." That's the false, Rovian narrative--for sure--but how many other false Rovian narratives have the American people swallowed? The only significant one that I can think of is that George Bush and Dick Cheney were re-elected in 2004--and Rove had lots of help spinning that yarn.

Even when the American people had bits of disninformation rattling around in their brains--i.e., that Saddam had WMDs, or had something to do with 9/11--some were very discriminating in what this meant to them. During that period--when about 50% of the people bought that garbage--FIFTY-SIX PERCENT of the American people opposed the invasion of Iraq. Feb. '03. 56%! So, some significant portion of those who believed the lies didn't think that war was the solution. They apparently reasoned to themselves that the WMDs were not a big threat, or that Saddam's connection to 9/11 was minor. They did not buy the propaganda that war was necessary.

And that percentage has now grown to 75%! And turned into a great movement, in '06, to outvote the machines.

I think it's good to analyze "the narrative" and prepare for the next Bushite/US corporate media lies. But I think it's very, very important to identify this disinformation as the fictional, "creative writing" part of stolen elections and stolen and illegitimate power, and not as something that the great majority of Americans are in danger of actually believing. The American people have proven themselves to be amazingly resistant to war propaganda--and no people has ever been subjected to such intense disinformation, coming at them 24/7 from every channel and every newspaper, and with such enormous broadcast power and subtle brainwashing techniques (beneath the obvious stuff).

75% now opposed to the war. Bush's approval ratings in the toilet, starting right after his second "inauguration." I think this is the error in this article--its alarmist tone about what the American people will swallow, as to propaganda--and it is an understandable one. We all feel it from time to time. We are all impacted by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and their skill at making us feel marginalized, rather than the members of the great progressive majority that we are. I've noticed DUer's habit of calling these 5 rightwing billionaire CEOs who control all news and opinion on our public airwaves and in print the "mainstream media" (MSM). We thus give them that ground--the "mainstream"--when they are not even close to being "mainstream."

If it were a conscious mistake, then I would say that it is an insult to the American people. But I don't think it's conscious.

[IndianaGreen]

8. Holding Cheney impeachment hearings in the House will air all of this out

I don't know why Pelosi is playing the GOP card by not allowing impeachment hearings to go forward.