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November 7 2007
MIM was on summer break when an imperialist attack on Syria occurred September 6. We went back into serious mode September 8. We had been on break for more than a couple weeks. We had put up a video clip of a beauty pageant contestant and reviews of video games for summer break before September 6. Nor was there any serious material that we had put up and removed. Now we have seen the third report that something screwy happened with nuclear weapons and Bush/Cheney. MIM's leisure-time life is typical--with amazing things happening when one is not looking.
At the end of August, about the same time that Bolton was in the media talking about a suspected Syrian site, an incident with nuclear weapons occurred. Many Amerikans lost their jobs eventually.
A liberal website reported that Cheney was involved in the command and control problem with the weapons. Now Al-Jazeera reports that the strike on Syria involved U.$. tactical nuclear weapons. Thus it was not mainly an I$raeli attack.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 6 attack, negotiators offered Korea a summit with Bush.
Recently, House Representative Kucinich from Ohio questioned the mental health of President Bush. Bush had threatened "World War III" and asked people to help prevent it. People will notice that it is now two months later and nothing has really happened in terms of a public stir against war.
A British official said the truth would set off a "mass panic." Brown questioned patsies in the Congress unable to get a hold of the president on questions of war and peace. Hillary Clinton agreed to cut back on executive privilege in response.
The Al-Jazeera report is most disturbing because believable. The Congress has allowed itself to be pushed back into the Nixon era and the fight for the "War Powers Act."
Why Bush went off and bombed an empty building is a mystery. Kucinich's psychological explanation lacks timing.
At the time, U.$. casualties in Iraq were declining. There was no imminent threat to anything. Now there is a cauldron of fire involving Turkey and Pakistan, in addition to the Iran/Iraq questions.
The argument on secrecy concerning the attack on Syria is that Bush has "executive privilege" to carry out war. This argument went down to legal defeat after the Vietnam War, but Bush has proceeded to renew the argument.
Of course accountability to the Congress assures among other things that a madman does not use nuclear weapons. Right now we see that Congress does not have the power to obtain answers from the president on questions of war and peace or national security more generally. There is no proletariat driving for answers from the imperialists.
MIM's analysis of the state secrets question is ambivalent. Obviously the concept of "state secrets" is incompatible with liberal democracy as originally conceived by Americans. However, MIM does not believe there is social material to carry out an American concept of democracy. It is rather our analysis that state secrets may be a positive thing in a country easily whipped into militarist frenzies and fear-mongering.
In such a situation, blame can only go at the door of the other military powers. If the stories are true, a plane with tactical nukes must have passed by the instruments of many powers.
The truth is also that even if Congress figured out how to reassert its authority, the military and intelligence agencies would always have some monarchists to draw on. The idea of "declaring war" is lost as so much legalese. A president or vice-president can get what he wants. Afterwards, people like Ashcroft will argue that people who should be professionals in the area could not know better. While we do not agree with that, we do agree that the problem is widespread and not easily solved.
There is no guarantee that this species is worthy of surviving. It could very well be true that the species is intelligent enough to live in primitive communism as tribes; however, it is possible that the species is not capable of figuring out the capitalist system sufficiently to stop nuclear annihilation. An analysis that allows for this possibility is not wrong. We only seek an analysis that allows the best chance for survival.