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A good way to discover the truth is to
compare the mistruths and lies.
In the age of video and the internet, that task is made easy.
For instance, Senator Hillary Clinton still
hears the ringing shots of sniper fire that forced her to run for her
life twelve years ago during her visit to Bosnia. Unfortunately, news footage of that
event shows no such thing; she was actually greeting a children’s
delegation when the shooting supposedly occurred.
Now, Sen. Clinton says primly, “I made a
mistake. That proves I’m human,
which for some people is a revelation.” It actually proves that she has an off-and-on
relationship with the truth, which is a revelation to no one.
When the controversial statements from Rev.
Jeremiah Wright were publicly revealed, Senator Barack Obama wrote on
March 14 that these “were not statements I personally heard him
preach.” Yet, a few days later in his speech of March 18, the Senator’s
memory had sufficiently improved so that when he posed the rhetorical
question: “Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered
controversial while I sat in church?” Obama answered “Yes.”
Recently, the likely Republican presidential
nominee, Senator John McCain, let slip a prediction that the American
military would remain in Iraq “for a hundred years.”
The Democratic candidates and their
supporters gleefully pounced on this unusually candid remark to prove
that the unabashedly pro-war McCain would continue the fighting, the
destruction and death in Iraq, into the next century.
By contrast, the Democratic candidates spoke
against the war and favored some form of withdrawal. The contrast was supposed to be
simple and stark: war versus peace, Republican versus Democrat.
But… such is not the truth, much less the
whole truth. The Democratic
candidates want voters to forget what they have said and done, the better
to portray themselves as the party of peace.
Senator Clinton would rather not remind the
public not only of her early vote to give President Bush the authority
to initiate an unprovoked war, but also her continued support for that
war, and, as late as 2004, her calls for more troops to be sent into
Iraq, more than Bush-Rumsfeld had on the ground.
Senator Obama, who likes to claim that he has
opposed the war from the beginning, has, up until 2006, voted in favor
of continued funding for the war.
Further, like McCain, Obama foresees a
long-term American military deployment in Iraq. In his book, “The Audacity of Hope,”
Obama states the U.S. has “strategic goals” in Iraq which include
creating a stable government friendly to U.S. interests and “preventing
Iraq from becoming a base for terrorist activities.”
Obama’s goal of “prevention” guarantees that
American soldiers will be fighting and dying in Iraq for a long time to
come. The difference between
the Republican versus the Democratic candidates on Iraq is not a difference of war versus
peace. It’s merely a difference
of words, shadings, and emphasis.
It’s a difference between forthright rhetoric versus misleading
rhetoric.
All the candidates choose the phrases that
will play favorably with their constituents and bring them votes. All the candidates today tell people
what they want to hear, so that tomorrow the newly-elected president
can do as he or she wants.
Despite his “straight-talk” reputation, then,
Sen. McCain is no font of truth, any more than his Democratic
rivals. He, too, tells voters
what they want to hear (“The surge is working. We’re winning the war!”). It’s only that McCain’s supporters
do not object to or actually favor the continuation of the Iraq
war. As a result, he can speak
more frankly about the deployment of U.S. troops. But McCain has made some false
statements, himself.
In November 2007 McCain stated, “Everybody
says they’re against the special interests, but I’m the only one the
special interests don’t give any money to.” Well, not quite; that is, not directly.
Most of McCain’s campaign funds flow from the
finance, insurance, and real estate industries, including companies
like Merrill Lynch, Citigroup Inc., and Goldman Sachs. The checks, however, are not cut
directly from the company office but from their PACs (political action
committees) and from individuals within the companies. So, McCain gets to have it both
ways: he can deny receiving
money from special interests and still rake in cash from committees
created by special interests and their high-ranking employees.
What’s more, this kind of deception
apparently works. In a recent
USA Today/Gallup poll, voters gave McCain the highest rating – 67% --
four points ahead of Obama and more than twenty points ahead of Hillary
Clinton.
Now, McCain is trying to downplay potential
damage from his “one hundred years” remark. But McCain spoke a little
hastily when he claimed, “No American argues against our military
presence in Korea or Japan, or Germany or Kuwait or other places, or
Turkey, because America is not receiving casualties.”
Not so!
McCain might be forgiven for not knowing that revolutionary
Marxists of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the predecessors of
Socialist Action, objected to “our military presence in Korea” from the
very beginning.
In “A Letter to the President and Members of
the Congress (July 31, 1950),” James P. Cannon, a founder and principal
leader of the SWP, wrote: “I disagree with your actions in Korea, and
in my capacity as a private citizen I petition you to change your
policy fundamentally, as follows:
“Withdraw the American troops and let the
Korean people alone.
“I am setting forth the reasons for this
demand in detail in the following paragraphs. But before opening the argument, I beg your permission,
gentlemen, to tell you what I think of you. You are a pack of scoundrels. You are traitors to the human race. I hate your rudeness and your
brutality. You make me ashamed
of my country, which I have always loved, and ashamed of my race, which
I used to think was as good as any.
“The American intervention in Korea is a
brutal imperialist invasion, no different from the French war on
Indo-China or the Dutch assault on Indonesia. American boys are being sent 10,000 miles away to kill
and be killed, not in order to liberate the Korean people, but to
conquer and subjugate them. It
is outrageous. It is monstrous”
(“Notebook of an Agitator,” pp. 185-186).
Revolutionary socialists in America
consistently opposed “our military presence” throughout the world. For instance, the platform of the
Socialist Workers Party in the 1972 elections, in the midst of the
Vietnam War, did not call for “negotiations” or “setting a date” for
withdrawal. Instead, socialists
insisted on “the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and war materiel right
now!”
Socialist candidates called for “a national
referendum to give the people the right to vote on whether to continue
the war or end it at once.”
Further, despite Sen. McCain’s comments about
what no American favors, American revolutionary socialists said,
“Dismantle all U.S. bases around the world. End all U.S. interference in the internal affairs of
other countries.”
These are the political demands which Socialist
Action favors today.
The candidates of the two main capitalist
parties have to distort the positions of their opponents and
misrepresent their own policies.
The truth does not work for them; the truth does not favor them. They are forced to spend millions of
dollars in advertising to create a false but wished-for image of their
ideas and program.
Socialist Action, in happy contrast, has it
far easier. Though lacking in
millions of dollars, SA members and supporters can openly and honestly
speak the truth about politics in America, about the American military
presence throughout the world, and about the war in Iraq.
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