Staff | October 9, 2003
It is when I have the least time that I am most upset. Agitated, perhaps, is a better word; I feel as if my skin crawls with the burdens of an outside world that escapes too quickly, or rather flows too fast.
It wouldn’t be a lie to say that I’ve only existed for a year now, since Palestine that is. A life-changing event is one which realigns the very markers of your time. Mine is marked not by the tragedies of the State, but my own agonies. A year since Palestine, but six months since Rachel Corrie, and mere minutes since I last felt a tang of regret mingled with embarrassment at that each of my memories of Palestine.
The world is getting worse; time is moving more quickly. Our lives are now thrown not in the spectacular of the terrorist act but in the scandals of the neo-fascist elite. Fifteen sexual-harassment suits, accusations of admiring Hitler; nothing can hinder a well funded campaign. In this case over $10 million was funded directly from the pocket of the candidate himself. This will pale, sadly, aside the sum that Bush will pay: an estimated $200 million. It is no longer the state to which the wealthy give their “hard-earned dollars,” but to the candidate themselves. A better deal really, Bush’s tax is a mere fraction of America’s. Money directly funding candidacies secures power. Their influence is measured in hundreds of times the yearly earnings of the real Americans — the publicity (mainly television ads) needed to win California’s election will have cost the total yearly incomes of over three-hundred pacified, average citizens.
What’s so distressing is that they are right — this is a democracy. Pompery describes Athenian democracy in 462 BC as, “diffusing political power throughout the male citizen body, with no votes for women, no citizenship for immigrants, and slaves in abundance” (210). I argue a better definition of our contemporary situation wouldn’t deviate far. Sure, we could alter it slightly. A more accurate definition for the 21st century would be, “diffusing political power throughout the white male business class body, with no significant voter ability to change policy, decreasing citizenship rights granted to immigrants, particularly those who are non-Judeo Christian, and a majority of the population living as indentured servants with no spare income and tied to debts they couldn’t avoid accruing.”
Sadly, it is not ironic that Bush has never really articulated what he sees as the meaning of the word democracy. To offer a detailed vision of the domestic political situation would shatter any illusions that he represented, or saw, the time we live.
1) Bush at War, by Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, 2002.
2) http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
3) The Neoconservative Persuasion, by Irving Kristol, Weekly Standard, August 25, 2003.
4) http://newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
5) We'll Win This War, by Michael A. Ledeen, The American Enterprise Online.
6) The Future of War and the American Military, by Stephen P. Rosen, Harvard Magazine, May-June 2002, vol 104, no 5.
7) Michael A. Ledeen, quoted by Jonah Goldberg in Baghdad Delenda Est, Part Two, National Review, April 23, 2002.
8) Beware of Bolton, by Ian Williams, May 30, 2002.
9) America's Imperial Ambition, by John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, 2002.
10) Should We Evict the UN? by Patrick Buchanan, New York Post, December 27, 1997, page 15.
11) Washington Post, January 31, 2003.
12) The Guardian, March 21, 2003.
13) Why America Still Needs the United Nations, by Shashi Tharoor, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct 2003
14) The End of the American Era: US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century, by Charles A. Kupchan, Knopf, October 29, 2002.
15) The Real Crisis Over the Atlantic, by Dominique Moisi, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2001.
16) Propaganda Isn't the Way: Soft Power, by Joseph S. Nye Jr., The International Herald Tribune, January 10, 2003.
17) Wolfowitz Stands Fast Amid the Antiwarriors, by Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, September 22, 2003.
18) Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, June 2003.
19) The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, September 17, 2002.
20) But What's the Legal Case for Preemption? by Bruce Ackerman, Washington Post, August 18, 2002.
21) The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, September 17, 2002.
22) Law unto Themselves, by Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, March 14, 2003.
23) UN Resolution 1441, The Security Council, November 8, 2002.
24) Selective Intelligence, by Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, May 5, 2003.
25) The Economist, October 4, 2003.
26) A deafening silence, by Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, October 6, 2002.
27) Bush's Unreliable Intelligence, by David Corn, The Nation, November 12, 2003.
28) Rice: Iraq trained al Qaeda in chemical weapons, CNN, September 26, 2002.
29) President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat, by George W. Bush, Cincinnati, October 7, 2002.
30) Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 Attacks, Washington Post Poll, September 6, 2003.
31) We're Taking Him Out, CNN, May 6, 2002.
32) May 9, 2003 interview of Paul Wolfowitz by Sam Tannenbaus, published in Vanity Fair, July 2003.
33) Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute Deal to Avert War, by James Risen, The New York Times, November 6, 2003. Original article.
34) Stumbling into War, by James P. Rubin, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003.
35) Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History, by George Crile, Atlantic Monthly Press, April 2003.
36) Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban, by Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001.
37) Iraqi Democracy Is a Pipe Dream, by Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, October 19, 2002.
38) UN Resolution 1441, The Security Council, November 8, 2002.
39) Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, July 7, 1991.
40) A War for Oil?, by Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, January 5, 2003.
41) US Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships with Iraq, 1980 - 2 August 1990.
42) US Support for Iraq in the 1980s, Center for Cooperative Research.
43) The Ghosts of 1991, by Peter W. Galbraith, Washington Post, Saturday, April 12, 2003.
44) Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, June 2003.
45) Making of a Monster: How the US Helped Build Iraq's War Machine, by William P. Hoar, The New American, September 1992.
46) A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions, by David Cortright, The Nation, December 3, 2001.
47) Iraq surveys show 'humanitarian emergency, Unicef Information Newsline, August 12, 1999.
48) Columbia News Video, by Prof. Richard Garfield, March 03, 2000.
49) Cool War, by Joy Gordon, Harper's Magazine, November 2002.
50) Squeezed to death, by John Pilger The Guardian, Saturday March 4, 2000.
51) Cool War, by Joy Gordon, Harper's Magazine, November 2002.
52) Iraq 'smart sanctions' derailed by Russia, by Anton La Guardia, telegraph.co.uk, April 7, 2001.
53) Pew's Global Attitudes Project, June 2003.
54) Andrew Kohut's Senate Testimony, February 27, 2003.
55) Jihad: Expansion et declin de l'Islamisme, by Gilles Kepel, Gallimard, 2003.
56) Terror and Liberalism, by Paul Berman, Norton, 2003.
57) Jerry Falwell, September 13, 2001.
58) General William Boykin, 2002-2003.
59) State of the Union Address to Congress, by President Carter, January 21, 1980.
60) Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, May 4, 2003.
61) Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, by Niall Ferguson, Basic Books, 2003. Critics of US policy are racist, says Rice, by David Rennie, telegraph.co.uk, September 8, 2003.
62) Iraqi Democracy Is a Pipe Dream, by Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, October 19, 2002.
63) Critics of US policy are racist, says Rice, by David Rennie, telegraph.co.uk, September 8, 2003.
64) A World Transformed, by Brent Scowcroft and George H. W. Bush, Knopf, September 1998.