Another Day Through Bush's Looking Glass

Karl Marx famous dictum(I am paraphrasing) that history repeats
itself, but not in the exact way, the first time as tragedy, the
second time as farce, met Alice in Wonderland today in through GW
Bush's Looking Glass.
The U.S. military leadership in Iraq, the New
York Times reports, is "frustrated" with our "Saudi" Arabian "allies,"
who are sending in Saudi fighters to support the Sunni minority fighting
against the Shia dominated Iraqi government that the U.S.largely
created and is nominally supporting.
A generation ago, Osama bin
Laden in conjunction with the CIA led thousands of "Saudi volunteers"
in fighting a "holy war" against the Soviet supported(but not created)
Communist Party
government and the Soviet military in Afghanistan, which led in 1988
to the formation of the Al Qaeda network. The counter-revolutionary war
in Afghanistan was a "great success" for the Reagan and Bush I
administrations, but it turned out to be a dress rehearsal for the Al
Qaeda group and its allies in their terrorist attacks against civilian
targets through the world, not only in the developed countries.It was
a "victory" against the Afghani, Soviet, and American peoples and,
more broadly all progressive forces in the world, however many
radicals at the time sided with the guerillas because they were
fighting against Soviet military intervention
In
Iraq, the Al Qaeda group today is fighting a sectarian war against Shia
Muslims along with its war against the central government and the U.S.
occupation, much as it did in Afghanistan(GW Bush a few days ago
formally proclaimed it to be the main enemy in Iraq). GW Bush's most
favored nation in the region, "Saudi" Arabia(I keep putting quotes
around Saudi because Arabia has existed for thousands of years and Ibn
Saud gave the country his family name when he seized the throne in
1925, a point that an exiled Arabian Marxist made to me over thirty
years ago in explaining why he never used the name Saudi)is now in
effect fighting on the same side as Al Qaeda in Iraq in intensifying
the religious sectarian killing which creates greater suffering for
the Iraqi people and no one, from the Communists and other democratic
secular forces of Iraq to even the U.S. military wants.

Meanwhile, GW Bush whose family friends in Arabia are recruiting
Jihadists against the U.S. military in Iraq was denouncing the
Democrats who are holding up the nearly 150 billion appropriation for
Iraq and Afghanistan in the much larger Pentagon budget because he has
threatened to veto bills that represent a 23 billion increase in
discretionary social spending programs. In Bush's Wonderland, this is
yet another example of "tax and spend" policies(his words not mine)
that along with the possible reversal of Bush tax cuts will cripple
the economy(in Bush's Wonderland, deficits only exist for social
programs and tax cuts increase revenues and lead to deficit reduction,
what his dad referred to as "voodoo economics" when Ronald Reagan put
that program forward in 1980).

So Bush will fight courageously against any increase in social funding
and demand that the military budget be rammed through so as to protect
the troops from, among others, the "Saudi" fighters sent by his
longtime friends, the Riyadh
government, which like the transnational oil companies(including the
Texas based ones) have profited enormously from his war policies in
the region.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the director of the FBI has contradicted
the Attorney General on an important question involving conversations
with the former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, concerning the
Justice Departments wholesale violation of the Bill of rights in
warrantless wiretapping and illegal searches and seizures and that
the Democrats have been reported to be seeking a perjury indictment
against Attorney General Gonzalez(for which they should be commended
and of which, if the FBI director's testimony is accurate, he is
clearly guilty). That pretty much completes our look through Bush's
looking glass.
Will Bush claim executive privilege on any Gonzalez perjury
indictment. Will the King of
"Saudi" Arabia claim Divine Right in sending it fighters to Iraq(he
does on most things). Will Fred
Thompson(the least telegenic of the GOP presidential hopefuls)
denounce policies of spend and tax and cut and run and say
that he will establish a "100 percent" American policy of tax and
cut(social service budgets and spend(for the military) and take the
money and run, for Gulf, Exxon, and their investors, the bin Ladens
of all nationalities and creeds.
Only the Mad Hatter knows, and he is too sane to have
anything to do with the Bush administration
Norman Markowitz