Choosing who to vote for in the presidential election is always a question of one or the other of two people you’re not so crazy about (or downright detest). That’s probably one reason why so many people don’t bother to vote at all. Myself, I always make it to the booth for major elections – seems only right since so many people died to gain the franchise back in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s-60s. I’m usually not at all happy with the options, as some of you know, and the prospect of a McCain vs. Clinton general election is a depressing one for me. Not that I invest all that much stomach lining into the question of who will occupy the White House. (Far be it from me to suggest that a vote every four years is all you should expect to have to do to make the world a better place.) But honestly, both of these people will make abysmal presidents. And while I would prefer not to lock-in another eight years of Republican party ascendancy, particularly the virulent strain of right-wing conservatism that has taken hold in recent decades, I can see that in a race such as that, we’re fucked one way or the other.

Take Clinton, for instance. Her victory would result in Clinton II – The Vengeance… a kind of Frankenstein’s monster of political regeneration, stitched together from the remains of the last three miserable presidencies. Yes, including the current one. Everything an administration does sets a precedent for its successors. High sounding rhetoric aside, Bush has expanded the power of the presidency to a degree that will redound to the president that follows him, whatever party that person may belong to. I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton will make use of the prerogatives of the unitary executive in a way that will make the previous Clinton incarnation seem tame by comparison. And for those who think peace and plenty are on the way, recall the bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war. With Kosovo on the brink of declaring independence (Feb. 18), we may be facing the prospect of renewed conflict in the Balkans; something the Clinton team, driven by the same foreign policy players, will be only too eager to engage with. Three wars, anyone?

Speaking of multiple wars, let’s talk about McCain, the presumptive G.O.P. nominee. There are two things I hear about McCain over and over again – one, that he is honest and firm in his beliefs, and two, that he (along with all reactionary Republicans) has great defense / national security credentials. My reaction to the first point if fairly simple – what the hell does it matter that he’s honest and consistent (questionable premise, but nevertheless) when he is dead wrong nearly all of the time, like when he thought the Iraq war was such a great idea (an opinion he still clings to)? We’ve got “strong” and wrong already, and it’s not working so well. On the second point, it beats the hell out of me why he or any of his fellow Iraq war enthusiasts would retain national security credibility when their historic disaster in the middle east has made us all more vulnerable to terrorist attack by any reasonable measure. What the hell does it take to discredit these fuckers, anyway? The man is an ass who flag-waved us into the Iraq catastrophe, costing many thousands of lives and setting us up for decades of negative consequences. He would make a miserable president. (Yeah, but how do I really feel?)

McCain would be Bush III – he’d be calling the tunes, but Dubya’s severed hand would still be playing the piano.

luv u,

jp

[Next week: Obama and Huckabee]

Last year it was Pinochet. This year, Suharto meets his maker, though what demon fashioned him I shudder to speculate on. More than mass murder and dictatorship united them; they also share the posthumous praise of pundits and political leaders the world over, some of whom have every reason to know better. One can only assume these apologists hold a cynical appreciate of the blood-soaked Indonesian general’s ability to provide wealthy westerners with favorable investment opportunities in what was once seen as the super-domino of U.S. southeast Asia policy. Whatever the truth may be, news articles about Suharto’s passing referred to him as a “modernizer” who brought his country into the global market, though with some level of brutality. His rule was “controversial” due in part to his having eliminated as many as 1 million “alleged communists” during his 35-year rule (not to mention the perhaps 200,000 killed in East Timor). This, according to new Australian Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, amid “a period of significant growth and expansion,” though Rudd admits, “many have disagreed with his approach.” Including, presumably, the 1.2 million dead and their families. Can you imagine Pol Pot being so eulogized? (At least the syndicated article in my hometown newspaper compared Indonesia’s mass killings with those of Cambodia – a comparison that once drew howls of derision.)

Pinochet enjoyed similar courtesies upon his departure – praise for the firm (if somewhat larcenous) hand on the tiller of the good ship Neoliberalism. One might almost forget that these creatures were cut from the same murderous cloth as Saddam Hussein (and quite frankly, Suharto made Hussein look like a choir boy). The trajectory of Saddam’s career was similar to those of Suharto and Pinochet: a timely assist early on with military coups (Suharto and Pinochet) and botched assassination attempts (Saddam), culminating in full U.S. support through the worst of their atrocities. (In Suharto’s case, this included CIA-supplied lists of names to be eliminated.) This is why, as reported on 60 Minutes last Sunday, Saddam apparently remembered Reagan quite fondly. 1981-89 was Saddam’s bloodiest period cumulatively, and he got nothing but help from us the whole way through.

A simple twist of fate would have had the corporate media and world leaders praising “Saddam the modernizer” at his graveside as well, were it not for his fateful transgression in 1990 (i.e. invading a country we’re friendly with). Instead, he alone of the three is condemned unconditionally as a mass murderer, though perhaps his worst crimes – deadly attacks against the Iranians, whose county he invaded – typically go unmentioned, despite the extensive use of chemical weapons. Clearly, neither mass murder, nor unprovoked invasion, nor the use of non-conventional weapons, is a problem for our leaders, since they have committed (in our names) crimes just as serious over the past few decades. Not surprisingly, British researchers have completed a study that estimates the number of dead in Iraq at around 1 million. That more or less comports with Les Roberts’ study of 18 months ago. The Bush administration and its supporters on both sides of the mainstream political divide are definitely in Suharto-Rwanda land, having long since moved past Pinochet and Saddam.

What’s next? John McCain, who sounds like he’s undergoing anger management training every time he reads a speech? More bodies to come, looks like.

luv u,

jp