[Marxism] The low point of the CNN-YouTube debate

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

I don't have cable TV so I watched the Monday night debate in a delayed
(relatively) low-resolution web feed. But it did allow us (myself and my 13
year old son) to watch it while enjoying a four cheese pizza toped with
onions. 

In case anyone missed it, CNN and YouTube got together to take questions via
video site YouTube and present them to the candidates. CNN's ultra-cool 10
PM anchor, Vanderbilt family scion Anderson Cooper, served as master of
ceremonies.

But watching on the Internet also allowed Luke and I to go back-and-forth in
the debate (it was a different streaming source from the one on the cnn.com
web site retransmission which didn't allow for this). 

The first question --really more of a plea than a question-- seemed to
threaten our fun by making it a serious and substantive evening: 

"We have a Congress and a president with, like, a 30 percent approval
rating, so clearly we don't think they're doing a good job. What's going to
make you any more effectual, beyond all the platitudes and the stuff we're
used to hearing? I mean, be honest with us. How are you going to be any
different?"

Fortunately or un, Conn. Sen. Chris Dodd got tossed that softball, and when
he began "First of all, thank you for inviting us here in The Citadel. It's
great to be here at this wonderful college, university," I had a strong
feeling that these guys were going to break the bullshitometer.

And then Dodd continued: 

"Certainly, I think it's a very important question one ought to be asking
because, while hope and confidence and optimism are clearly very important,
I think experience matters a great deal -- the experience people bring to
their candidacy, the ideas, the bold ideas that they've championed over the
years, whether or not they were successful in advancing those ideas and able
to bring people together."

Well, that was all she rode for the bullshitometer. 

The biggest load of crap, of course, came around the Iraq war. They must
have had military convoys trucking it in from pig farms and sewers all over
the country. 

Hillary was by far the most mendacious, as she tried to depict her program
for continuing the imperialist war of occupation as the opposite. 

She assured us that she had PERSONALLY gone to school on the issue of
military withdrawals, and one brigade a month (3,000-5,000) troops was a
realistic estimate -- perhaps, if you pushed things, one and a half brigades
or, at the very very topmost, two brigades a month.

With a 160 thousand pairs of boots on the ground, it would take, minimum, 16
months.

Now here's the fun part. The Pentagon says it is rotating troops through
Iraq every fifteen months. Through the simply expedient of not sending fresh
troops in, the NORMAL Pentagon troop rotation --no extra effort, no
additional transports-- would have everyone out in less time than Hillary's
plan would, with a month to spare. 

Except that, before being withdrawn, halfway through their tour of duty all
troops in Iraq get to go home for a couple of weeks. That means that simply
by  not forcing them to go back, in the natural order of things, every last
American soldier, sailor, marine or airperson would be gone within six or
seven months. That's without even *trying* to carry out a withdrawal.

People will object: what about all the tanks! All the helicopters! They can
be safely parked in Kuwait like they were before the invasion until heavy
sealift can get around to picking them up.

So much for Hillary's studies of the matter. Or her probity.

But that, or the evasions of most of the others, wasn't the low point of the
event. 

That was provided by CNN's attempt to enforce imperialist discipline on the
candidates and have them hail the depraved bands of torturers, rapists,
child murderers and other war criminals the U.S. has sent in its futile
effort to subjugate the Iraqi people. Not that I consider every last "troop"
equally morally or legally responsible. The soldiers role is what it is. But
that is the nature of the enterprise.

Anderson Cooper introduced the subject of the colonial-patriarchal rape that
the U.S. is carrying out against Iraq with these words (as provided by the
CNN transcript of the gabfest):

"OK, want to talk about Iraq tonight. Before we do, I just want to put a
picture up on the screen. 

"That's United States Marine Corps 1st Lieutenant Shane Childers. He was a
2001 graduate of this college, The Citadel. March 21st, 2003, it was just
after sunrise when Lieutenant Childers and his platoon were on a mission to
capture an oil pumping station from Iraqi soldiers before the Iraqi soldiers
could destroy it. 

"During the operation, a stray bullet hit him just below his body armor.
Lieutenant Childers became the first U.S. service man to die inside Iraq in
Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"In all, 12 Citadel graduates died in either Afghanistan or Iraq since
September 11th, 2001, and over 1,100 have served in those two countries.
Tonight we acknowledge their sacrifices and the sacrifices of all our
service men and women now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan."

This was followed by a jingoistic ovation, as it was meant to be, but I
thought I noticed something before the screen switched from the wide shot of
the candidates to showing us that the crowd has been successfully stampeded
into a standing ovation. It looked like one of the candidates didn't join
in.

Luke and I replayed those few seconds over, and over and over.

Dennis the menace Kucinich, who was closest to the camera, was nodding as
Cooper evoked the rampage of the imperial storm troopers, and applauded on
cue, as did Hillary, Obama and the rest of them.

All save New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. He looked down and shuffled
the papers on his lectern. The Director stayed with this shot only five or
six seconds -- and the low resolution version I saw made it impossible to
judge the expression on Richardson's face. 

But when everyone else was applauding the murderous mercenaries of America's
Legions, at least Richardson had the elementary human decency --and
courage!-- to not join in.

As for the rest of the "tribute," it was strangely appropriate that the
Citadel graduate singled out for individual mention, the first U.S. casualty
of the Iraq invasion, Lt. Shane Childers, was killed trying to secure part
of the oil infrastructure. 

Initially his comrades thought Childers was hit by troops on his own side,
but this version was quickly corrected to say he was hit by AK-47 fire from
disorganized, panicked Republican Guard soldiers fleeing on foot or on
motorcycles.

I guess the CNN folks looked into it enough to fudge it and just say a
"stray" bullet did him in. 

Luke, being the age he is, focused on the anatomical: Childers was hit "just
below his body armor." 

In checking on Childers on the Internet, I came across the Wikipedia article
on "The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez," a movie about an orphan of
the Guatemalan civil war who came to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant.
He was also said to be the first American soldier killed in the invasion.
Because he looked --to American eyes-- younger than he was, he was able to
go to high school here and also managed to stave off deportation and get a
green card. He was posthumously given U.S. citizenship. He was the first
U.S. casualty to be reported in the media, and was killed by friendly fire.

I don't think it takes too much to understand why the white Mississippian
Childers was proclaimed to be the first U.S. casualty, rather than the child
victim of the CIA's wars in Central America who came as an "illegal" to the
United States and succeeded in gaming la migra's rules to get a green card. 

Having remembered the sacrifice of Jose Antonio Gutierrez would have been
awkward for the network that has made it possible for Lou Dobbs to become
the leading voice for nativist immigrant bashing. Or maybe not. I can hear
the racists now: "If he'd stayed in where he belonged instead of invading
America, he'd still be alive." Of course, he didn't get killed invading
America, he got killed invading Iraq on behalf of America.

The Wikipedia entry on Gutierrez --or rather, the documentary made about
him, in and of himself, he didn't rate an entry-- pretty much sums it up
with a line at the end of the entry under the heading "Trivia":

"José Antonio Gutierrez was the second American to die in the Iraq war. Lt.
Shane Childers was the first person to die in the Iraq war."

Not just the first American, mind you, but "person." Since LOTS of Iraqis
died BEFORE Childers, because the ground troops followed a heavy barrage of
artillery as well as air attacks, the quite unconscious, "natural,"
designation of Childers as the first "person" to die tells you pretty much
everything you need to know to diagnose Americanism, American patriotism, as
a sociopathic disorder.

But returning to the debate, there were more than three dozen questions in
the game-show style debate, and only one dealt with immigration, and
peripherally at that. It was whether the undocumented would be included in
the universal health insurance schemes being promoted by various candidates.


BTW, in the entire two hours, there wasn't a single questioner who was
clearly and unambiguously Latino. Some witless producer probably thought
they had it covered by picking a question from someone who identified
themselves as "Fulano del tal" from Puerto Rico, who had a generic question
about U.S. education policy and the No Child Left Behind act.

In reality, this is a white guy whose youtube handle is "WebPundit" and goes
around posting sarcastic videos (in sunglasses and a baseball cap) about how
white "self flagellation" is unnecessary.

The "Fulano del tal" handle was a dead giveaway, since no real native
speaker of Spanish would have appended the "l" to "de" in what is the
Spanish equivalent of "John Doe," since the "l" attached to "de" is a
contraction for the article "el." Imagine if the producer were considering
putting on a question from "John the Doe." Would it have made air? I don't
think so.

Which just goes to show that Anderson Cooper's hair wasn't the only thing
that was very white about CNN's debate.

So it goes ...

Joaquin


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