[Marxism] Reconstructing the Bush administration and the Republican ascendancy?

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Anyway, my speculation about the Fitzgerald inquiry and the current
crisis of the Bush administration tends to be along those lines.

The key figures in the current attacks on the administration are not
only not Democrats, they are mostly people who went with the Republicans
in both previous presidential elections.  Scowcroft, Powell, Powell's
chief of staff, Chuck Hagel, top generals, etc. -- and perhaps most
importantly former president George Bush and his wife Barbara.

Scowcroft insists he "likes" Bush and Cheney -- do they think Cheney can
be won over to avoid political destruction and possible ruin of the
party?  Powell's man is much sharper but he had to live much more deeply
within the administration's freezing out of his boss from real
authority.

This goes along with the attack on the AIPAC around espionage and the
squeeze on the Republican "religious" right through the prosecution of
DeLay.  But none of this points to the inevitability of Democratic
victories.  It could all have the opposite result, if the Democrats
continue to appear as an unreliable non-alternative to both rulers and
ruled. Flip-floppers.  Half-hearted warriors and half-hearted peaceniks
with their eyes on "triangulation," and no conception of what the state
needs to do.

The aim -- what will happen may be another matter -- is clearly not
impeachment or the removal of Bush a la Nixon.  This is after all a
scion of a genuine component of the ruling families, not a professional
servitor who became a liability. They aim to "save" the Bush and elect a
more effective, they hope, Republican to succeed him -- McCain, Pataki,
or whoever.

The Democrats have barely been an offstage noise in this.  They simply
do not act like a party truly capable of governing, including from the
standpoint of the ruling class, in this situation.

The center is the war in Iraq.  The opposition does not aim toward
withdrawal but for a definitive rejection of the original goals in favor
of reaching a modus vivendi with the political forces as they exist.
And recognizing that the invasion did not result in an overall
strengthening of the US position, and that its results have to be
countered.

Frankly, it is hard for me to see how the administration can stabilize
Iraq for US imperialism without dealing with and dropping the war
threats against Iran.  Not only is Iran a much harder nut to crack
militarily and politically than Iraq was under Saddam, but the broad
more or less liberal middle class opposition to the dominant possition
of the Shia hierarchy that does exist is clearly harmed every time the
US rulers make another anti-Iranian move.  It cuts the opposition off
from dissatisfied workers and peasants who nonetheless will stick with
the regime if defense of their country against the United States becomes
the issue.

Right now, invading Syria would be a reckless adventure for the
administration.  But attacking Iran militarily -- including by way of
Israel acting "alone and unaided" -- would be an act of madness that,
from the standpoint of imperialist needs, must be PREVENTED.  That does
not exclude keeping pressure on both. Making sure this is prevented may
be the purpose of the latest anti-administration offensive.

But in addition, the economic situation worldwide needs to be managed --
which means tighter money, possible recessions, and not pushing matters
with China to a breaking point.

The army seems to need reorganization, possibly with a draft, which the
Bush administration has lost the credibility to manage because of the
Iraq war.  The result of Iraq has been a very damaged military, though
AS YET less so than in Vietnam.

All this requires a period of greater caution, and of greater appeals
for stability to the "middle of the road." On the Supreme Court this
means Stare decisis for now and shifting the center bit by bit to the
right -- Roberts, not Scalia, and not Miers who seems to have been
appointed only to protect the administration from the coming storms.  To
be Bush's personal lawyer on the court.

The term "neocon" now represents not primarily the old Commentary crowd
and retired Shachtmanites, but the advocates of the foreign policy based
on the idea that the fall of the Soviet Union had thrown the
semicolonial countries wide open to reconquest, reconstruction, and
stabilization by and under rising US imperialism.  The Iraqi people, at
great cost to themselves and without being able to gain much for their
interests or even to expel the occupier yet, have shattered this
perspective.  This has been a great and historic sacrifice for the
people of the world, even if Iraq itself cannot escape continuing ruin
for the time being (which might be true even after the end of the
occupation).

This is how people like Libby, Bolton, and other right-wing ideologues,
as well as diplomats like Negroponte or Rice, who have no particular
ties to the Commentary crowd, end up being regarded as "neocons."

This is a blow, by the way, to the concept that "imperialism won the
cold war."  The test of events has shown that the loss of direct
military-political control of Asia, Africa, and Latin America is
fundamentally irreversible.

The "cold war" can only be considered a triumph for US imperialism if
the conflict is defined exclusively as the direct contention between
Washington and Moscow, and the Chinese revolution, Korean war,
Vietnamese revolution, Suez, defeat of Portuguese imperialism in Africa,
the Iranian revolution are strictly kept out of the accounting. But the
common definition of the cold war is a broad framework for world
politics in the postwar era, in which case none of this can be excluded.

So matters are not yet clearly headed toward a collapse of the Iraq war
--although there are forces in Iraq that could point to such a collapse
(the simmering Shia -- not just Sadrist -- opposition to the failure of
the government to improve conditions and to the occupation could explode
at any time, as Nick Halliday pointed out).  Nor do I foresee the
imminent fall of the administration, or a Democratic successor to Bush.

The very limited indictments by Fitzgerald are an indication that
step-by-step reconstruction and reorganization is the course they  are
on, not dumping Bush or the Republicans. If Bush will go along, they
want him to hang on to the end of his term.
Fred Feldman








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