CONNECTING THE DOTS: CONGRESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR WAR

We expected a resistance and defunding of the war from the Democrats after 2006. Instead, Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, representing one of the most liberal and secure Congressional Districts in the nation, took impeachment off the table, fully funded the war meeting Bush’s every demand, and passed FISA. Despite our wishes to get out of Iraq, our “peace” candidate Barack Obama wants to make additional war in Afghanistan as well as to maintain it in Iraq. We are again betrayed, impotent and frustrated. We have no power whatever over the powerful forces that insist on more war. On Sunday in an interview by Tom Brokaw, Al Gore made the urgent point that we must do very significant things to stop Global Warming within the next decade or we will be past the point of no return. Al seemed to assume that we could do something about Global Warming, and that we somehow have effective power. We clearly do not.

There are obviously forces influencing elected Democrats that are far more powerful, influential and effective than any ballot box force that we as voters can muster. What are those forces? I for one do not wish to be victim of the “fool me once…fool me twice…” syndrome.

The clearest analysis of our current impotence was written by retired UC Lawrence Livermore physicist, Manuel Garcia Jr. in a recent Counterpunch article entitled “Oiling the War Machine.”[1] His analysis is a great starting point to connect the dots that result in our voting impotence. Garcia’s own summary which he presents as a “thesis, without any claim of proof,” is:

“A military-industrial-congressional-complex (MICC) owns the US government and runs it as a mechanism of self-aggrandizement, as evident by the proportion of tax revenues that flow into military accounts

The self-serving purpose of the MICC’s militarized foreign policy (i.e.,war) is to expand its degree of control over all others, to achieve hegemony by the US, which is simply a vehicle for this clique.

The strategy for maintaining hegemony has 3 goals: 1, to secure hydrocarbon fuels for the US military;[2] 2, to control the access to hydrocarbon fuels by all others; 3, to control the economics of energy commerce.”

This is my own augmentation of the ideas of Garcia’s thesis summary:

· MICC includes Wall Street, the mainstream media including NYT, Washington Post, PBS and NPR, the Intelligence Agencies, and Academia, since all of these institutions support the complex, almost without question.

· MICC’s purpose is perpetual war, not only to maintain itself, but to maintain our fragile capitalistic economy that is in constant danger of depression and extensive unemployment.

· Congress is a critical part of the complex since congress must fund the MICC with the needed tax money obtained from us voters.

· By “the economics of energy commerce,” Garcia is talking about capitalism and the imperative need to maintain the dollar as the dominant currency of the world. He says that maintaining the dollar as dominant currency, is in effect like owning a casino and being able to take a cut of the action.

Garcia is writing about the real workings of present day capitalism as he observes it:

“How The Racket Is Set Up.

The owners of the dollar capitalist system use the power of the US government to extract wealth from the world.

The purpose of US military power is to keep other nations in the economic corral defined by the US dollar capitalist system. The military achieves this purpose by controlling as many of the source regions and trade routes of the fossil hydrocarbon fuels trade as possible. Control can be exerted by posing a credible threat: subsidizing Israel, Navy task forces in the Persian Gulf, overseas military bases and carefully placed missile defense radars; and control can be overt, as with the occupations of Iraq and Okinawa.

The economic cycles within the US corral are constructed to produce profits to the owners of the dollar capitalist system. Nations and populations that seek to leave the corral and cycle their natural wealth through non-dollar and non-capitalist economic cycles, to further their own domestic development, are seen as losses to the wealth extraction expectations of the MICC, and worse still as bad examples that could incite further rebellion, inspiring other client states to leap over the corral fence. These "bad apples" are subjected to threats (of increasing severity as they are decreasingly powerful), and in some cases overt aggression, in efforts to return them to their assigned roles in this system of wealth extraction.

The US dollar is a fiat currency backed by the threat of military force. Our Legions roam the Earth and everywhere our paper is accepted in exchange for tribute in the forms of natural resources and debt forbearance. The Arabs send us oil, the Central Americans send us coffee and bananas, the Chinese absorb our war indebtedness and shelter it as their savings account. Those who deny value to our currency do so at their peril, witness Iran, and recall the hostility to the former Communist bloc. Some imagine China has power over the US because it holds such a large quantity of US dollars, the stored monetized equivalent of the collective output of a vast and deeply exploited labor force. These dollars were exchanged for the gargantuan torrent of goods poured down the maw of American consumption. But it is China that is bound. If they were to withdraw their endowment of value to their US paper, by dumping US dollars on currency markets, they would only precipitate a collapse of the US dollar and thus simultaneously wipe out their own savings (and their prime export market). The Chinese people have had enough of a taste of money these last thirty years, even if at a modest level for most, that they are not prepared to go back to an agrarian Third World national lifestyle just to accommodate the political gesture of bankrupting the US currency. They would revolt, and this is far too great a threat to the Chinese Communist Party, the MICC of China, to risk provoking. So the US MICC is reassured that its bastard, American war debt, will be lovingly nurtured in its Chinese foster home.

… So, is the Iraq War a Peak Oil war, a resource-grab because of diminishing supply?, or is it a "favor to Israel" war engineered by an Israel Lobby, which must then be assumed to have controlling power in the US? The Iraq War is neither a simplistic "oil war" nor a simplistic "favor to Israel war." It is both an oil war and a favor to Israel because each of these is a contributing factor of this particular war to the larger purpose, the expansion of US MICC control over global energy resources and trade. The Iraq War is an attempt to increase political control over economic rivals by exercising superior military power.

Military control, over global energy resources and energy commerce, creates political power over economic rivals.

…. Within the MICC, the 2008 election is a contest between Barack Obama of the Democratic Party, and John McCain of the Republican Party, to determine who should take over the management of the unchanging prime directive. Each of the two potential executives will try to convince members of the MICC that they have the better business plan to achieve the goal they all agree upon: MICC world hegemony. Here, the Israel Lobby is seen as a constituency within the MICC. Because the management of the public mind for social control is now one of the major assignments of the national chief executive, and Barack Obama has demonstrated a flair for this, …, Obama is presently favored by popular opinion within the MICC. …”

(Emphasis Added by Doug Page. Obama is fully controlled by MICC, as is Congress, as is the Democratic Party.)

HOW DOES MICC MAINTAIN ABSOLUTE CONTROL OVER OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS NO MATTER WHAT A MAJORITY OF US VOTERS WANT?

1. MICC maintains its grip on Congress by bribes, euphemistically called “campaign contributions.”

The profits from oil, arms manufacture are immense. We know that money is “the mother’s milk of politics.” MICC gives members of Congress enough money to induce them to overlook the wishes of voters.

2. Our market economy is extremely fragile, vulnerable to a major depression, and is the source of our jobs for which we are totally dependent for our survival.

Despite tax breaks and concession, little or no regulation, and massive public spending, Capitalism is extremely weak and fragile, on the precipice of a major depression. The domination of our paper currency is maintained by existing and threatened military force. Forcing capitalists to halt CO2 emissions would bring us into a deep depression. Already existing levels of joblessness would become much worse. The fact is that we are in big trouble under existing status quo assumption and ideology, and there is neither political knowledge nor political will to change them. There are no plans on the shelf for sustainable, stable alternatives. Nobody wants to face the fact that capitalism is in death throes. Every individual, every culture and nation is the Western World is dependent for daily survival on the existing status quo and war. We cannot risk any change that might cause the loss of our jobs.

3. Senate Democrats, in secret contempt of voters, and in violation of the Constitution, intentionally maintain Senate Rule XXII thus making it impossible for Congress to implement majority will of the voters.

The Senate maintains a formal rule, Senate Rule XXII that requires the votes of 60 Senators, far more than the “majority of a quorum” to end debate and bring a nomination or proposed legislation before the full Senate for action.

There also exists in the Senate a procedure and a precedent for bringing a matter up for vote by the full Senate by vote of a simple majority of a quorum to end a so called “filibuster.” This procedure nullifies Senate Rule XXII. Most recently, it was the Republicans who threatened to use this Nuclear Option. The Democrats wanted to maintain the rule requiring 3/5 of the full Senate or 60 votes to cut off debate and to bring a matter up for hearing so badly that they yielded to Republican demands. Senate Rule XXII requiring the affirmative vote of 60 Senators to bring a matter up for hearing by the full Senate violates the Constitution which states in Article I, Section 5:

“…a majority of (the members of the Senate) shall constitute a quorum to do business.”

The House, governed by the same provision, has always cut off debate by vote of a simple majority. Senate Rule XXII thwarts majority rule in the United States, and requires a supermajority of 60 Senators to stop debate so as to be able to pass legislation. Our nation is polarized, almost equally divided on most issues. Because of this Rule, voluntarily maintained by all Senators, the will of a simple majority of voters cannot be implemented by Congress. We cannot get peace. We cannot stop funding the War. We cannot get fair taxes. We cannot get health care. This rule makes it far easier for MICC to control Congress and to ignore majority will of the voters. Ordinarily MICC thus has to bribe one Senator to stop legislation,[3] and if there is much public concern about particular legislation, MICC has only to bribe 41 Senators.

In 1993, Senate Rule XXII was used by Republican Senators, for the first time in Senate history, as a partisan tactic to obstruct majority will.[4] This writer, a retired lawyer, acting as a voting citizen and seeking effective voting power for his vote and the votes of other Democrats, filed suits against all 100 Senators seeking a formal Declaration of the federal court that Senate Rule XXII was unconstitutional.[5] All 100 Senators, including my own two California Senators, on two separate occasions, voted to have the Senate Legal Counsel appear in Court to defend the Rule. The Senators did not deny that the Rule was unconstitutional, and simply relied on an arbitrary rule established by Justice Scalia that the federal courts could deny “standing” to a voting citizen to bring such a suit. Under this standing rule, the Court can arbitrarily decide what it will hear and what it will not hear. So the United States Supreme Court as well as the Senate is determined to thwart majority rule of voters in the United States and to support MICC.

4. The MICC controlled major media that fully support MICC and deprive American voters of alternate views, real analysis, and the truth.

I consider this point to be self evident to those interested in the rest of this analysis. We need only remember the recent history of the New York Times in its enthusiastic, uncritical, un-analytical reporting of the War in Iraq.

E. AIPAC and the votes of most American Jews support MICC.

Israel is MICC’s largest military base in the Middle East. For reasons associated with the Holocaust and a form of post traumatic stress syndrome, American Jewish voters love Israel. They deny or ignore the fact that MICC uses Israel, Israelis, and American Jews as its capo. Jews world wide are vulnerable to hawk stimulated PR that the existence of Israel is threatened. The real rulers of Israel are right wing hawks, allied with right wing hawks and MICC in the US. Israel uses its Lobby, AIPAC to corral the votes of 5 million American Jewish Democratic voters to support MICC.

F. The influence of dope profits resulting from military operations covertly laundered into our economy and used for campaign contributions.

We remember from the days of Iran Contra and Oliver North that dope running and dope sales were an important component of our involvement in Nicaragua. Vice President Cheney and other persons involved then, are in power today. We know that profits from heroin and cocaine are immense. Who gets that money? Where does it go? We know that that money is laundered and invested somewhere. We can know little else for certain. There are some important clues:

According to Peter Dale Scott, where ever the US has gone for oil whether in Indo China, Columbia, or Afghanistan, the US has also been covertly involved in the dope trade.[6]

Reuters reported on June 26, 2008:[7]

“Narcotics supplies have increased sharply in parts of Afghanistan and Colombia where insurgents are in control, helping them fund their activities, the United Nations said on Thursday.
While cultivation of the opium poppy stabilized or dropped in many parts of Afghanistan, five southern regions controlled by Taliban militants produced enough poppy to double the world's opium output between 2005 and 2007, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its World Drug Report 2008.

On the other side of the world in Colombia, coca cultivation rose by 27 percent in 2007, though coca leaf and cocaine production were concentrated in just 10 of the country's 195 municipalities, the Vienna-based UNODC said.
Afghanistan remained the world's top heroin producer last year while Colombia was the foremost producer of cocaine.”

Afghanistan produces 95% of world’s opium as of 2007[8]

UN Report shows Western Europe cocaine use is high.[9]

Michael C. Ruppert wrote in 2004:

“From 1994 to1999, during US military intervention in the Balkans where, according to the Christian Science Monitor and Jane’s Intelligence Review, the Kosovo Liberation Army controls 70 percent of the heroin entering Western Europe, Cheney’s Brown and Root made billions of dollars supplying US troops from vast facilities in the region. Brown and Root support operations continue in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia to this day.”[10]

G. Democrats lack a sufficient majority since many Blue Dog Democrats are really hawkish Republicans

We have forgotten that the Democratic Party has always included hawkish right wingers, some of them racists. We used to call them “Southern Democrats,” but not all of them were in the South. The racists have left the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans. We are left with Blue Dog Democrats who steadfastly vote with the Republicans in support of MICC.

H. The total absence of a moral compass in American politics.

The MICC has manipulated and exaggerated the dangers in the world so as to increase our fear, reduce our capacity for calm and moral judgment, and has unleashed the hate of others, the patriotic nationalism, the lies, and the suppression of dissent that constitute “the dogs of war.” It is now inconceivable that the US could hold a War Crimes Trial as we did following WWII. It is the US that is now guilty of war crimes. The US and its ally Israel now torture captured individuals and engage in preventive war as a matter of course. The US no longer pretends to care about people outside its borders nor the poor and middle class people in the US. We no longer attempt to put ourselves in the shoes of others. We do not believe that all men are created equal. We no longer care about the moral axiom that it is wrong for some to have more than they need when others are needy. “Evil is the absence of empathy.”[11]

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HOW DID CAPITALISM AND OUR DEMOCRACY GET OUT OF CONTROL SO AS TO MUTATE INTO A PERPETUAL WAR MACHINE?

Capitalism is fundamentally in conflict with voter controlled democracy. Capitalism’s power depends on its money to bribe elected officials, whereas democracy’s power is dependent on majority will of voters. The explanation starts with private hiring for the lowest wage possible in order to make as much profit as possible. This leaves some people unemployed without money to buy. Even in periods of full employment, employees are not paid enough to be able to buy all that capitalism produces. So capitalists shut down production periodically and a depression results. Capitalists tend to join together in monopoly to keep prices up. This makes things worse. Meanwhile, the accumulating money of the employers and those who invest with them, results in more and more political power and capitalists are able to get more and more public tax funds to keep things going in building highways and dams or in producing armaments. Capitalists then venture overseas seeking profit making opportunities, cheap labor and resources. They run into conflict with other capitalists from other nations seeking the same things. They call on the government for more armaments and for use of those arms abroad. Capitalists get richer and richer and use their money and power over the government to get more and more armaments and more protection abroad. Meanwhile, voter employees are staying even just surviving with their votes. Capitalism mutates into corporate state capitalism and finally into a political economy dominated by MICC whose purpose is perpetual war.[12]

Dated: July 26, 2008

Douglas R. Page, Tucson, AZ dougpage2@earthlink.net

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[1] Manuel Garcia Jr, “Oiling the War Machine, Counterpunch July 11, 2008 http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia07112008.html

[2] Maintaining fuel for the military is apparently a top Bush policy. Bush until recently continued to purchase 750,000 gallons of oil per week for the Elk Hills military oil storage facility. Bush did this despite the escalating price of gasoline and Bush also ignored pleas to release some of the stored oil to hold down prices. Michael Hudson, “How Bush has Pushed up Oil Prices,” Counterpunch, June 16-30, 2008, page 1.

[3] A single Senator can now place a “hold” on a nomination or on proposed legislation. His political party then backs him, and blocks a hearing without long speeches. “No longer does a Senator hold the floor for long impassioned speeches. Now they log their filibusters with the leadership, and the Senate pretends to hold them. Bill Dauster, “Its Not Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Washington Monthly, November, 1996, p.34.

[4] 51 Congressional Quarterly 907,908 (April 10, 1993)

[5] Page v. Dole, Civ. Action No. 93-1546 (JHG)(D.D.C. August 18, 1994)

Page v. Shelby, Civ. Action No. 1:97CV00068 (D.D.C. January 13, 1997)

[6] Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 2004,, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, Oxford, England

[7] http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN25191109

[8] http://www.dawn.com/2007/08/21/top15.htm

[9] http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:F4uaHppHy0EJ:www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2006/unisnar264.html+afghanistan+cocaine+dollars&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a

[10] Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, New Society Publishers, 2004, page 71

[11] Ernest Partridge, “Evil as the Absence of Empathy,” Counterpunch, July 26, 2008, who apparently got this idea from Dr. Gustav M. Gilbert, a psychologist hired by the US to study the minds and motivations of Nazi War Criminals.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/evil-as-the-absence-of-empathy/

[12] For more complete analyses of the dynamics of our market economy, see the author’s blog at http://www.thenewliberator.blogspot.com/