Environmental Reality Check

By Sunny Lewis, Environment News Service. Posted October 11, 2004.

The response of President George W. Bush to a debate question about his environmental record was met with disbelief by his challenger, the Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts at the second of three presidential debates Friday night in St. Louis.

In keeping with the town-hall meeting format for the debate, the environmental question was put by audience member James Hubb, who asked, "Mr. President, how would you rate yourself as an environmentalist? What specifically has your administration done to improve the condition of our nation's air and water supply?"

The president said his administration has proposals on the table to reduce pollution from off-road diesel engines, increase the wetlands, fix inner city brownfields, and "a Clear Skies Initiative to reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury by 70 percent."

"Over time is technology is going to change the way we live for the good for the environment," said the president. "That's why I proposed a hydrogen automobile – hydrogen-generated automobile. We're spending $1 billion to come up with the technologies to do that."

"That's why I'm a big proponent of clean coal technology, to make sure we can use coal but in a clean way," he said. "I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land."

"The quality of the air's cleaner since I've been the president. Fewer water complaints since I've been the President. More land being restored since I've been the president," Bush said.

"Boy, to listen to that," exclaimed Kerry. "The president, I don't think, is living in a world of reality with respect to the environment.

"When it comes to the issue of the environment, this is one of the worst administrations in modern history," Kerry charged. "The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it's one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky, slap it onto something, like 'No Child Left Behind' but you leave millions of children behind. Here they're leaving the skies and the environment behind."

"If they just left the Clean Air Act all alone the way it is today, no change, the air would be cleaner that it is if you pass the Clear Skies act. We're going backwards," Kerry said. "They're going backwards on the definition for wetlands. They're going backwards on the water quality."

Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President, called the Bush administration the worst ever for the environment. "They pulled out of the global warming [agreement], declared it dead, didn't even accept the science," Kerry challenged. "I'm going to be a president who believes in science."

The leaders of Environment2004, a Democratic environmental advocacy organization, which could be expected to back Kerry's position, does so because, they say, the president's assertions contained "numerous inaccuracies" and amounted to a "gross misrepresentation of the president's real record."

The group released a detailed comparison of Bush's representation of his record during the debate compared with what has actually taken place. Environment2004 counted more than 350 actions of past administrations to protect the environment that have been rolled back by the Bush administration, and they accuse the president of "abandoning the Republican party's conservationist roots dating back to Teddy Roosevelt."

President Bush said, "Off-road diesel engines – we have reached an agreement to reduce pollution from off-road diesel engines by 90 percent."

Environment2004 points out that the decision the president was referring to was originally proposed under the Clinton administration.

Then the president said, "I've got a plan to increase the wetlands by three million [acres]."

Environment2004 reminds voters that in October 2001, President Bush's administration reversed the policy his father, President George H.W. Bush called "no net loss" of wetlands. This means that for every acre of wetlands destroyed by development, at least one more acre would be created.

Yet in 2003, the Bush administration announced its intent to eliminate Clean Water Act protections for isolated waters that are not connected to a navigable waterway, "threatening the ecological health of 20 million acres of wetlands, and rivers and steams nationwide that would lose protection of their headwaters," Environment2004 says.

Following a meeting with hunters and anglers groups, Bush announced that he would reinstate the no net loss of wetlands policy, yet he has not withdrawn the new rule to eliminate wetlands protections. His administration has weakened the environmental standards for general permits to fill wetlands and streams, Environment2004 says.

On the Clear Skies Initiative, Environment2004 says the proposal "would allow five times as much mercury into the environment from dirty coal-burning power plants as the current Clean Air Act would allow for at least 10 years longer, through the year 2018 – 26 tons a year versus five tons – and three times as much mercury after that – 15 tons a year versus five tons."

Even Republicans agree with Environment2004's assessment of George w. Bush's environmental record as President. In an op-ed piece in the New Hampshire newspaper, the Concord Monitor, published on Sept. 23, 2004, two prominent Republicans criticized the President's "sorry environmental record."

Russell Train was the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Rick Russman is on the board of the National Environmental Trust and chairs the Granite State Conservation Voters Alliance. He was a New Hampshire state senator for 10 years and served as chairman of the Senate Environmental Committee. Both are long-time members of REP America, the grassroots Republican organization for environmental protection.

"Except in a few instances," they write, "the environmental policies of the Bush administration are a disgrace."

"The administration's policies to promote energy, mining and timber interests with little regard for the interests of common citizens represent a throwback to an era of exploitation," write Train and Russman. "The administration's assault on the environment has increased pollution and health threats in New Hampshire, according to a report by Environment2004."

"The administration weakened the Clean Air Act to allow aging power plants to continue spewing sulfur, mercury and other contaminants into the skies," write Train and Russman. "These end up in New Hampshire's air and waters. This pollution from Midwestern power plants and other sources forms smog that threatens the 65,000 New Hampshire residents who suffer from asthma. It falls as acid rain that damages New Hampshire's forests and waters."

"Mercury pollution has forced New Hampshire to establish a fish consumption advisory that covers all its lakes and rivers. Infants, children, pregnant women and women of child-bearing age are particularly vulnerable to mercury. Mercury affects a child's ability to learn, most notably impairing memory, attention and fine motor function," Train and Russman write.

On Friday night during the debate, President Bush responded to the environmental question by saying, "We proposed and passed a Healthy Forest Bill, which was essential to working with, particularly in Western states, to make sure that our forests were protected."

"What happens in those forests because of lousy federal policy, is they grow to be, they, they are, they're not harvested," he stammered. "They're not taken care of. And as a result, they're like tinderboxes. And over the last summers, I've flown over there. And so this is a reasonable policy to protect old stands of trees and at the same time make sure our forests aren't vulnerable to the forest fires that have destroyed acres after acres in the West."

But in reality, Environment2004 says, "The Bush administration has launched a three-pronged attack on our National Forests for the benefit of timber companies that engage in unsustainable logging practices which cannot support long term jobs."

Comments [] 9:34:09 AM    

Faith Without Works

By Amy Sullivan, Washington Monthly. Posted October 4, 2004.

When George W. Bush first hit the national political scene in the crowded field for the 2000 Republican nomination, what made him different, what made even liberal Americans take a second look, was his declaration that he was a "compassionate conservative." Unlike the flinty old conservatives of the past, Bush explained, a compassionate conservative would not be afraid to harness the power of government to minister to the unfortunate. But unlike traditional liberal Democrats, who relied on fumbling government bureaucracies, a compassionate conservative would empower and fund the charitable sector, particularly religious groups, to help those in need.

This breakthrough political slogan was embodied by a "faith-based initiative" that Bush talked about incessantly on the campaign trail and rolled out within the first month of taking over the White House. And Bush's image as a different kind of Republican was only reinforced by the tableau of black pastors, conservative evangelical leaders, and liberal crusaders for social justice who gathered around him as he introduced his faith-based domestic policy. The first part of the initiative sought to make it easier for religious organizations to get government grants to provide social services. Trumpeting the success of faith-based groups in Texas that ran drug rehabilitation and prison counseling programs, Bush argued that religious organizations could outperform their secular equivalents and so should be allowed to compete for the same government funds. The policy's second aspect was a proposed tax break to make it worthwhile for individuals to contribute more of their money to charities. By allowing non-itemizers (70 percent of taxpayers) to deduct their charitable contributions, the proposal could infuse as much as $80 billion into the charitable sector. Together, the two ideas embraced classic conservative principles: honoring the unique ability of religious organizations to help those in need, and empowering individuals in the civil sector instead of government.

Four years later, Bush's compassionate conservatism has turned out to be neither compassionate nor conservative. The policy of funding the work of faith-based organizations has, in the face of slashed social service budgets, devolved into a small pork-barrel program that offers token grants to the religious constituencies in Karl Rove's electoral plan for 2004 while making almost no effort to monitor their effectiveness. Meanwhile, the plan to extend tax credits for charitable giving has gone nowhere, despite the three enormous tax cut packages Bush has signed. Like any number of this administration's policies, the faith-based initiative has been so ill-considered, so utterly sacrificed to political expediency, and carried out with so little regard for the problems it was supposed to solve, that it bears only the faintest resemblance to the political philosophy it was supposed to embody. The history of the faith-based initiative tells us little about what could have been a truly innovative social policy, but speaks volumes about the cynical politics of the Bush administration.

Blind Faith

From the very beginning, Bush has argued that faith-based groups should be judged on their results, and he insists that they do work better. The difference, he contends, is that they do more than simply minister to physical needs. On the campaign trail in the summer of 2000, Bush told audiences that religious organizations succeed where others fail "because they change hearts, they convince a person to turn their life over to Christ." Whenever "my administration sees a responsibility to help people," he promised, "we will look first to faith-based organizations that have shown their ability to save and change lives." Bush had little empirical evidence to back up the claim that religious organizations were more effective. But he relentlessly talked of two seemingly promising programs that the Texas state government had supported while he was governor. One was Teen Challenge, a drug rehabilitation program that claimed an astonishing 86 percent success rate. The other was InnerChange, a counseling program for prisoners that boasted impressively low levels of recidivism among its graduates. Certain critics raised questions about the reliability of the studies that produced these figures. But Bush kept repeating the claims, and most of the press corps passed them along uncritically.

Once in office, Bush wasted no time setting up a new bureaucratic structure to cater specifically to the needs of faith-based groups. He created a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and appointed political scientist John DiIulio (a Democrat) to run it before his first week was out; soon after, the White House sent proposed legislation to Congress that would expand federal grant eligibility to religious groups. But the proposal came loaded with a number of controversial provisions, including giving religious contractors the right not to hire employees of a different faith, a clear violation of federal anti-discrimination statutes. When the legislation, which DiIulio himself described as "an absolute political non-starter," went nowhere, Bush didn't bat an eye. He simply pulled out his pen and implemented his idea via a series of executive orders instead.

Critics worried that faith-based groups would be unduly privileged in the newly expanded grant-making world. For them, Bush had one word: results, results, results. In an interview with the religious Web site Beliefnet, he was asked whether he would support government money going to a Muslim group that taught prisoners the Koran. "The question I'd be asking," Bush replied, "is what are the recidivism rates? Is it working? I wouldn't object at all if the program worked." Four more times in the interview, Bush mentioned "results," noting that instead of promoting religion, "I'm promoting lower recidivism rates, and we will measure to make sure that's the case."

This rhetoric matched the administration's focus in other policy areas – like education – on accountability. Conservatives traditionally criticize government programs for throwing good money after bad, rewarding those who have not proven themselves effective with hard numbers like higher test scores, lower poverty rates, or reduced recidivism. Mel Martinez, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, echoed the results-oriented sentiment in December 2002, telling an audience that "faith-based organizations should be judged on one central question: Do they work?" Conservatives thought they already knew the answer. "The fact is, we don't just suspect that faith-based programs work best," said Tucker Carlson on "Crossfire," "we know it."

Actually, we knew no such thing. But now we've had four years to measure results and reach a conclusion. Unfortunately, in the midst of all of the instructions included in the various executive orders, it turns out that the Bush administration forgot to require evaluation of organizations that receive government grants. According to a study released by the Pew-funded Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy in August 2004, "while more elaborate scientific studies are underway, the White House has relied on largely anecdotal evidence to support the view that faith-based approaches produce better long-term results." The accountability president has chosen not to direct any money toward figuring out whether faith-based approaches really work.

So, it's a good thing that some academics and private organizations have picked up the slack. In the last few years, a few studies have looked at both faith-based and secular social service providers, and they have particularly tried to replicate the incredible results boasted by the model Texas programs. The verdict? There is no evidence that faith-based organizations work better than their secular counterparts; and, in some cases, they are actually less effective. In one study funded by the Ford Foundation, investigators found that faith-based job training programs placed only 31 percent of their clients in full-time employment while the number for secular organizations was 53 percent. And Teen Challenge's much ballyhooed 86 percent rehabilitation rate falls apart under examination – the number doesn't include those who dropped out of Teen Challenge and relies on a disturbingly small sample of those graduates who self-reported whether they had remained sober, significantly tilting the results.

It will take several more years to rigorously scrutinize the relative abilities of faith-based and secular organizations to provide effective social services, so it is impossible to know whether these initial findings are true across the board. And maybe in a perfect world it would be worth testing Bush's hunch and giving faith-based groups access to funds in the effort to alleviate poverty and other social problems. The problem is that, under the Bush administration, the overall pot of money for social services has shrunk considerably. This means that well-established organizations that have provided services for decades are now competing with – and, in some cases, being displaced by – unproven, often less-successful groups, inflicting a double whammy upon the people who really need the help.

The Chosen Ones

The fact that there is no proof that faith-based programs are more effective has not stopped the president from claiming that they are. But, as he has in other areas – take the ever-changing rationale for invading Iraq – Bush simply shifts his emphasis when one argument begins to lose luster. These days, he is most likely to promote the faith-based initiative by contending that religious groups have been discriminated against and merely deserve the same chances that everyone else has. To lay the groundwork for this point, the administration published a report in the summer of 2001 assessing the "barriers" to government cooperation with religious groups. Titled "Unlevel Playing Field," this audit of federal agencies argued that faith-based organizations have been unfairly locked out of participation in government programs simply because of their religious nature.

And, in fact, federal policy has not always been blind to religious character. This is often for good reason – the Constitution prohibits government promotion of religion – but it sometimes seems arbitrary. In 2001, for example, after an earthquake struck Seattle, a number of groups applied for FEMA funds to rebuild structures, particularly historic buildings in the downtown district. When members of a synagogue applied for money, however, they were initially turned down because FEMA regulations didn't allow government funds to go toward the construction of houses of worship. After the group lodged a complaint, the rules were changed to make religious communities eligible for aid to rebuild their damaged structures. So the concern isn't entirely misplaced.

Yet despite some unfair kinks in federal contracting procedures, the truth is that the playing field isn't all that slanted against faith-based groups. Organizations like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services have been mainstay providers of social services and have received government funding for decades. Instead of acknowledging this fact, the administration indulges in rhetoric that is almost a parody of left-wing identity politics – including making false accusations of discrimination. For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's audit of its dealings with religious groups reports that no faith-based organizations received funding under the department's $20 million Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program. HUD apparently forgot that Habitat for Humanity – which has received over half of that program's total funding in recent years – is a faith-based organization. The same report concludes that religious organizations were "banned" from being owners of housing projects under a Section 202 housing program for the elderly. Again, religious groups have comprised more than two-thirds of the program's sponsoring organizations during the program's 35-year history.

Far from offsetting any serious anti-religious discrimination, the new faith-based grant program seems to have devolved into a religious version of race-based set-aside programs. As The American Prospect first reported last spring, some states that are responsible for dispersing federal social service grants have altered their grant applications to include a box that potential grantees should check to indicate whether they are faith-based. In Massachusetts, several long-time recipients of funds for programs to help veterans learned the hard way that failure to check that box leads to the sudden denial of cash. When they identified themselves as "faith-based" the next time around, their applications were, not surprisingly, approved.

Some Bush officials are alarmingly honest about this quota-like system. When I asked Courtney McCormick, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture's faith-based office, what steps the administration is taking to track the effectiveness of faith-based grantees, she candidly replied, "That's not our concern." What they do care about, she said, is "getting more churches and community groups through the door to get access to funding."

Foiled by the Death Tax

The total absence of accountability for faith-based grantees and the institution of affirmative action for religious groups may seem like an abandonment of conservative principles. And it is. But that's small potatoes compared to what the Bush administration has done to the most conservative piece of the faith-based initiative – a plan to encourage charitable donations through private giving that could have revolutionized the world of social service organizations far more than the expansion of federal grant eligibility has done.

Currently, only individuals who itemize their taxes (usually those at the higher end of the income scale) are entitled to deduct their donations to charitable organizations. Bush's proposal was simple: Allow the nearly 85 million non-itemizers to take a charitable tax deduction, while also increasing the amount of money corporations can give tax-free to charities and permitting tax-free charitable donations from individual retirement accounts.

The president and his colleagues endorsed the idea as a way to equalize the tax code and promote a "culture of giving." Proclaimed then-candidate Bush in 1999: "We will encourage an outpouring of giving in America. . . encouraging giving by everyone in our society, not just the wealthy." Shortly after Bush took office, his top economic advisor, Larry Lindsey, laid out the plan at a White House press conference and explained, "We think that's an important part of solving America's social problems: not just giving it [the deduction] to roughly the 33 percent richest taxpayers, but to all taxpayers." At its core, the charitable giving proposal reflected a classic conservative belief that the best way to alleviate poverty and social ills is through private giving and civil society, not government programs. But liberals liked the idea as well because it finally acknowledged what they had been pointing out for years – while the largest share of charitable contributions may come from the very wealthy, when you look at the percentage of total wealth that individuals donate, Americans at the lowest end of the income scale give the most, an empirical illustration of the biblical "widow's mite" story. And they couldn't ignore the fact that a study by the group Independent Sector predicted the plan (which would cost an estimated $20 billion) would spur $80 billion in new donations to charity.

Potential givers and recipients lobbied on behalf of the plan, which the White House sent to Congress in early 2001 as part of its faith-based legislation. Universities, fund-raising associations, religious groups, advocates for the poor, and corporate lobbyists all urged that the provision be included in the tax plan barreling through the usually sluggish legislative process on the Hill. Quickly incorporated, the charitable giving provision seemed destined for speedy enactment and flew through both houses of Congress.

And then the plan that everybody liked, that would have unleashed the armies of compassion with an injection of eighty billion new dollars, ran into one insurmountable obstacle: greed. When congressional and White House negotiators sat down to iron out the differences in the two separate tax cut bills that had been approved by the House and Senate in the spring of 2001, they were faced with a price tag that topped $1 trillion. Fiscal conservatives started to balk, protesting that the cost was simply too high. Something had to go. Sitting next to each other on the potential chopping block were reductions in the tax rate, the repeal of the estate tax, and the charitable giving proposal. The choice for Republicans was, in the end, simple.

"In reality, the bottom line was that their priorities were in the rates, the death tax, marriage penalty, and the child credit," a senior Republican staffer told The Washington Post at the time. The charitable tax deductions were "never high on anyone's list," including the White House's. A Democratic aide involved in the negotiations agreed: "There wasn't a lot of push coming from the White House." Even worse, for advocates of charitable giving, was the fact that the repeal of the estate tax was expected to hurt charities by depriving them of an estimated $6 billion each year from bequests, a traditional way of getting around tax payments.

DiIulio was outraged, according to a source, by the political calculations which had tossed the charitable deduction overboard in favor of repealing the estate tax; he left his position at the White House in disgust just a few months later, telling Esquire writer Ron Suskind that "what you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm."

The White House assured supporters of their initiative that this was only a temporary set-back. "The president is hopeful this will happen," said press secretary Ari Fleischer soon after the deal was cut. "It's the right thing to do." Right or not, two additional tax bills came and went without charitable deductions. Hoping to capitalize on the proposal's popularity, Republicans reattached it to the broader faith-based legislation to expand grant eligibility to faith-based organizations and exempt those groups from restrictions against discrimination in hiring. "There was some sentiment in the House and the Senate that this was such a positive thing with legs that you could attach other things to it, and it would carry them along," Stanley-Carlson-Thies, who served as DiIulio's deputy at the White House, explained to me. What they found, however, was that "opposition to some of the religious hiring stuff was so strong that it put an anchor on the private giving instead." And so the faith-based bill languished for the rest of the congressional session.

In 2003, Republicans finally separated the charitable giving plan and introduced it as a stand-alone bill that passed both houses with overwhelming support (the House version received 408 votes, the Senate garnered 95). But the bill has hit another roadblock as a result of the political hardball Republicans have played over the last few years. Incensed after they were effectively shut out of the conference committee on Medicare, Democrats have now refused to take part in any more negotiations that aren't conducted fairly. Instead of pulling rank to order congressional Republicans to play nice and work out their differences on the charitable giving legislation, Bush has backed off, choosing to focus on other priorities. "The White House has not pushed this bill," says one lobbyist for a religious organization. "They could have it if they wanted it."

In the meantime, Bush never misses an opportunity on the stump to remind voters that, religious groups are now receiving $1 billion more in grants than they did four years ago as a result of faith-based initiative. It's not nothing, but it's also not much. Compared to the $80 billion they could be receiving through private giving, his boast can't help but seem like Dr. Evil's preening "one meeelion dollars."

A Different Kind of Republican

On the third night of the Republican convention, one of the many gauzy "W." video-mercials that appeared on giant screens in the middle of Madison Square Garden during slow stretches featured images of Bush surrounded by people of color, while in a voiceover the president reminded viewers, "I rallied the armies of compassion." More than with any other piece of his domestic policy agenda, Bush has linked himself personally to the faith-based initiative. During a campaign stop in March, he told a crowd of religious leaders that he – and he alone – was responsible for the changes that have taken place. "Congress wouldn't act," Bush said, "so I signed an executive order – that means I did it on my own."

And so he did. Bush alone is responsible for supporting the distribution of taxpayer dollars without requiring proof that the funding produces results, for establishing a new government bureaucracy to give special help to a "discriminated" community that has always been on equal footing with everyone else, and for encouraging religious organizations to rely on government funding instead of encouraging private donations. It turns out that a "compassionate conservative" is a different kind of Republican after all. Just not the kind we expected.

Amy Sullivan is a Washington Monthly editor. This piece is being co-published with Beliefnet, where you may also read an opposing viewpoint from Jim Towey, director of the Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives.

Comments [] 7:50:08 AM    

THE REAL ISSUE: BUSH IS INCOMPETENT

Whether you agree or disagree with the words pouring from the podium over Americans who see reflections of themselves in George W. Bush, the real issue of this election will not be mentioned. The core issue is this: Our president is incompetent. He is not a good president.

Let me count the ways:

(1) He has divided the country; we are all part of a vicious little hissing match. We were united and humbled on Sept. 12, 2001. We are divided and humiliated now, telling lies about each other.

(2) He has divided the world. "We are all Americans now," headlined Le Monde on that Sept. 12. Now there are days when it seems as if they are all anti-Americans.

(3) He is leaving no child or grandchild without debt. He has taken the government from surplus into deficit in the name of national security and increased private investment. We can pay the debt in two ways: with more government revenues (taxation) or by borrowing -- against the sweat and income of new generations. The president has chosen to borrow.

(4) He campaigns as a champion of smaller government, but is greatly increasing the size and role of government. Ideological conservatism, it turns out, costs just as much or more than ideological liberalism. Conservative and liberal politicians are both for increasing the reach and power of government. The difference between them is which parts and functions of the state are to be empowered and financed. The choice is between military measures and order, or more redistribution of income. Money is power.

(5) He is diminishing the military of which he is so proud now as commander in chief. The invasion and occupation of Iraq have obviously not worked out the way he imagined -- naked torture was not the goal. But the far greater problem for the future is that our proud commander has revealed the hollowness behind the unilateral superpower. From the top down, we have not been able to win Iraq, much less the world. And going into Iraq has compromised or crippled the war on terror he declared himself.

(6) He is diminishing scientific progress, the great engine of the 20th century. Only the truly ignorant can believe that the proper role of government is to hinder medical research and environmental study in the name of God.

(7) He is diminishing the Constitution of the United States. Cheesy tricks like amending the great text of freedom to attack homosexuality can be dismissed as wedge politics. But it is worse to preach against an activist judiciary while appointing more activist judges who happen to hold different beliefs, particularly the idea that civil liberties are the enemies of patriotism, security and freedom itself.

(8) He has surrounded himself with other incompetents. The secretary of state is presiding over the rape of diplomacy and its alliances. The secretary of defense has sent our young men and women into situations they were never meant or trained to handle, and now they are being ordered into battle by an appointed minister in a faraway land. The national security adviser does not seem to know that her job description includes coordinating defense and diplomacy. And then there was our $340,000-a-month local hire, Ahmed Chalabi, sitting in the gallery of our House.

(9) He has been unable or unwilling to deal with declining employment and the rising medical costs of becoming an older nation.

(10) He is, as if by design, destroying the credibility of the United States as a force for peace in the world -- an honest broker -- particularly in the Middle East.

The list is longer, miscalculation after miscalculation. President Bush has not been able to function effectively at this pay grade. He may mean well, but this has been a difficult time, and he is in over his head. We and our kids will pay the price for his blundering, blunderbuss adventure in Washington. He has been tested in a difficult time -- and, unhappily for all of us and the world, he has not been up to the job.

COPYRIGHT 2004 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

Comments [] 8:36:57 AM    

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

By Mark Crispin Miller, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2004.

Following is an excerpt from Chapter 6, The Clear and Present Danger, from Mark Crispin Miller's book, "Cruel and Unusual: Bush and Cheney's New World Order."

The radical collapse of all distinction between church and state and the promotion of an angry "Christianity" as the USA's official state religion have grown increasingly apparent as the Bush regime has turned more grandiose and reckless after 9/11. That revolutionary program has gradually come into view despite the press's failure to expose it, and despite the random efforts of the White House to conceal it ("Well, I – first of all, I would never justify – I would never use God to promote policy decisions," Bush said, without conviction, to Brit Hume in an interview on September 22, 2003). A cursory survey of Bush/Cheney's foreign and domestic innovations will make clear that from the start, this regime has been hard at work transforming the United States into a theocratic system, and, globally, at the gradual creation of a nominally Christian New World Order.

Although the president made quite a show of mounting no rhetorical attack on Islam or on Muslims in the dark days after 9/11, as if to reassure the world that the United States was not intent on waging a religious war, that tolerant pose was shortly overwhelmed, those words of peace obliterated, by much graphic counter-evidence. The United States was obviously mounting a "crusade" – as Bush himself so tactlessly announced on September 16, 2001. All he meant was "a broad cause," Ari Fleischer reassured reporters two days later, and yet Muslim residents of the United States (and of Afghanistan) could not be blamed for thinking otherwise. At once John Ashcroft's troops began to sweep illegally through Muslim neighborhoods, hauling off "suspected terrorists" by the hundreds and treating them as enemy aliens, and there was like harassment by police departments all across the country.

Soon, moreover, some of Bush's best-known co-religionists and sometime spiritual advisers started venting anti-Muslim propaganda. Franklin Graham called Islam "a very evil and very wicked religion," and Pat Robertson, who compared the Koran to "Mein Kampf," declared, projectively, about the Muslims: "They want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy." Said Jerry Falwell: "I think Muhammad was a terrorist." The White House offered no rebuke.

Bush himself has carefully avoided venting such anti-Islamic sentiments in public. He has also tried not to repeat the word "crusade," or otherwise betray the war-like zeal that motivates his strain of Christianity. At this he has been less successful, unable, as he is, to mask his true intentions and desires. Five months after urging his "crusade" on 9/16, he did it once again in speaking to our troops in Anchorage. (The Canadians, he said, "stand with us in this incredibly important crusade to defend freedom, this campaign to do what is right for our children and our grandchildren.") I am not a fanatic, Bush sometimes tries to say – and then, as ever, contradicts his wan pretense at moderation and humility with some insanely grandiose remark. "I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God," he awkwardly assured Bob Woodward. However, Woodward also reports the president's explanation for his refusal to consult his dad for guidance: "You know, he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to."

God told him to run for president, Bush says, and God told him to strike al Qaeda, and God told him to occupy Iraq. "I haven't suffered doubt," Bush said to Woodward (adding, without irony, "I hope I'm able to convey that in a humble way"). For all his weak demurrals, Bush does in fact perceive the "war on terrorism" as a new crusade, as a member of his family makes explicit:

George sees this as a religious war. He doesn't have a p.c. view of the war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know.

Of course, it would be comforting to see this only as a case of individual mania, which reasonable people – Christian and non-Christian – might shrug off. And yet this is no laughing matter, as Bush is not alone in his apocalyptic frame of mind, but aided and abetted very powerfully. Having variously seized our nation's government, the GOP also pursues "religious war."

In a fund-raising letter mailed on March 3, 2004, Marc Racicot, director of the Bush/Cheney's "re-election" drive, again deployed the c-word, Muslim perceptions notwithstanding: "From leading a global crusade against terrorism to signing into law two of the largest tax cuts in history," the letter reads, "[Bush] has provided strong, steady leadership during difficult times." Questioned by reporters, Racicot was unapologetic, claiming that the word need not denote a holy war. However, he then sounded something like a holy warrior himself, in offering the ecstatic statement that the letter's focus, and therefore Bush's goal, is "to protect the cause of freedom – not just for a moment, not for a day, not for ten years, but for a hundred years." Although he stopped short of "a thousand years," that millenarian utterance would have come as no surprise.

Apparently the U.S. military also is on board for Bush & Co.'s grand new drive against the Saracens. The spirit of crusade shines forth from the hearty countenance of Army Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who caused a momentary stir by giving talks, sometimes in his military uniform, at fundamentalist churches, where he would call America "a Christian nation," assert that Bush had been "appointed by God," and tell the rapt believers that our enemy in the "war on terrorism" is "a guy named Satan." Christians believe in "a real god," whereas the god of Islam is "an idol." He would also show the audience a photograph that he had taken in Somalia, clearly demonstrating "a demonic spirit over the city of Mogadishu." That Bush & Co. did not replace or even reprimand the general (who did not apologize, insisting, quite sincerely, that he was "not a zealot") stood out as mere further evidence of just how militant the regime's Christian doctrine really is.

Shortly after the invasion, U.S. troops stationed in Iraq received a booklet called "A Christian's Duty," adjuring them to pray for Bush and even mail the president a special tear-out form assuring him that, while dodging potshots and firing on civilians, they were praying for him. Meanwhile, the ravaged theater of the occupation has been overrun by Southern Baptist missionaries seeking to exploit Iraqi misery for Jesus' sake. Laden with clean blankets, bottled water, bread, and bandages – and countless Bibles – the Christian soldiers of the International Mission Board (IMB) use such material inducements to convert as many Muslims as they can, waging what their Web site calls a "war for souls":

Southern Baptists must understand that there is a war for souls under way in Iraq... Even as Islamic leaders try to tighten their grip on the country and its people, cult groups like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are sending hundreds of their missionaries into Iraq to spread their pseudo-Christianity.

Bloody are the consequences also of the U.S. government's impossibly hard line on Israel – a partiality dictated less by well-connected Zionists inside the Pentagon than by the president's millennial co-religionists, who call the shots in this administration. On July 14, 2003, Condoleezza Rice met secretly with 40 "Christian Zionists," including Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, and Tom DeLay, to hear their views about a future Palestinian state. (They opposed it.) Such confabs are routine. In May 2004, a stray e-mail revealed that Elliott Abrams, the National Security Council's major expert on the Middle East, regularly holds long meetings with the Apostolic Congress, "the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital." Asked why the Congress deems itself "the Christian Voice," rather than a Christian voice, Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton answered, "There has been a real lack of leadership in having someone emerge as a Christian voice, someone who doesn't speak for the right, someone who doesn't speak for the left, but someone who speaks for the people, and someone who speaks from a theocratical perspective."

Thus prompted, Bush has given up all possibility of honest mediation, in favor of the Manichaean paradigm that dominates his consciousness and theirs: Israeli violence is good, and Palestinian violence is evil. This apolitical and antidiplomatic view is based entirely on the dictates of apocalyptic Christian eschatology: The Jews must stay in Israel so that a number of them (i.e., 144,000) can turn into Christians prior to Jesus' return. On the basis of Romans 9-11, Reconstructionist Greg Bahnsen prophecies the magical effect of Jewish mass conversion:

When the world sees "all Israel" become saved (through Jewish longing for the saving blessing experienced by the Gentiles), there will be yet further and greater blessings from God upon the whole population of the world because Christ will then be internationally recognized and exalted among men.

The war on terror is not a misunderstanding. It is not an opportunity for negotiation or dialogue. It's a battle between good and evil, between the Truth of liberty and the Lie of terror.

Freedom and terrorism will struggle – good and evil – until the battle is resolved. These are the terms Providence has put before the United States, Israel, and the rest of the civilized world. They are stark, and they are final.

That the White House would permit a congressman and Christian Reconstructionist – and, at foreign policy, a frothing amateur – to make so visible and partisan a public statement on and in the Middle East suggests that faith, not reason (and not Colin Powell), drives Bush/Cheney's foreign policy. And the result has been predictably disastrous: Israeli/Palestinian relations at their worst, the death toll at unprecedented levels, extremists on both sides resolved and popular among their own, and mounting worldwide hatred for the Jews.

Stateside, meanwhile, the theocrats continue to exert their wonder-working powers, as they have been doing ever since the president's first public act, which was to make John Ashcroft his attorney general. That step alone should have made clear to all that Bush was no "uniter" but averse to "reaching out," and, indeed, uninterested in solving any worldly problems, dedicated as he is to stealthily theocratizing this republic.

Thus the White House has an "Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives," while each of the Departments of Labor, Commerce, Health and Human Services, et al., boasts a departmental "Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives" – a grand administrative stroke that blurs the crucial line dividing church and state. This move has served both to legitimize the political activism of pro-Bush churches and denominations and to further propagate the view that social services should be performed not by the government but by religious groups, whose charity should take the place of federal programs. Although advertised as purely altruistic, and as an equal boon to the communities served by churches, synagogues, and mosques alike, this innovation is primarily intended to abet the proselytizing efforts of the Christian right, whose "armies of compassion" can now save souls under the auspices of Uncle Sam.

Comments [] 7:22:03 AM    

Thanks to Geodog:

An Army officer serving in Iraq writes

I just ran across this brilliant essay, The Military: Losing Hearts and Minds? by Captain Oscar R. Estrada, that was published earlier this summer in the Washington Post. I can't believe that it hasn't been more widely circulated. It is worth reading in it entirety, but here are a few excerpts:

The General and the Colonel have told us that we are the main effort, at the forefront of helping to rebuild Iraq. But how do you rebuild when all around you destruction and violence continue? Do the facts and figures showing levels of electricity restored, the amount of drinking water available, the number of schools reconstructed or the numbers of police officers hired and trained really convince the Iraqi people that we are here to help? Are we winning their hearts and minds?

Winning hearts and minds is my job, in a nutshell. I'm an Army Reserve civil affairs (CA) officer stationed in Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. In Vietnam, winning hearts and minds was mostly a Special Forces task, but after that they were smart enough to get out of it, and the responsibility has since fallen into the laps of reservists like me who are trained to deal with every conceivable problem that arises when Big Army meets Little Civilian. And that's why CA soldiers are among those most often deployed overseas in the Reserve.
...

One day last week we rolled into the town of Zaghniyah to win some of the local hearts and minds. In a country where most people are unemployed, we offer the townspeople $1 for every bag of trash they can collect. Our "docs" -- medics, assistants and physicians -- set up shop in the local health clinic and we try to "engage local leadership." ... An old man waves me off and tells me that they know the Americans control everything and will do so as long as they are here. The rest of the men nod in agreement.

As the day wears on, every ray of sun seems to add weight to my Kevlar helmet and body armor. I am at a loss as to why our efforts aren't recognized or appreciated. But then, as I look at the children collecting trash and the main road clogged with military vehicles, as I watch one of our docs try to help a woman carrying a gaunt and sickly baby in her arms, and as I listen to an old sheik struggle with our demands that he hold American-style town meetings, I realize that Iraqis may see our help as something else. I see how paying them to collect trash may be demeaning and remote from their hopes for prosperity in a new Iraq. I see our good faith efforts to provide medical care lead to disappointment and resentment when we have neither the medicine nor the equipment to cure or heal many ailments. And I see how our efforts to introduce representative democracy can lead to frustration.

Some experiences here have reminded me that our sacrifice for the rebuilding of Iraq is minor compared with that of the average Iraqi. ...

"Hey, what the hell are we shooting at?" I screamed at my buddy as I continued to squeeze off rounds from my M-16.

"I'm not sure! By that shack. You?"

"I'm just shooting where everybody else is shooting."

But everybody else was shooting all over the place. Small puffs of white erupted in front of us as our own soldiers lobbed grenades at the grove but came up short; tracers from .50-caliber machine guns flew past us, and the smell of cordite filled the air. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the tumult ended. We sat in silence and listened to the crackling radios as a patrol dismounted from a couple of armored Humvees and began to search among the trees.

"Dagger, this is Bravo 6. Do you have anything, over?"

"Roger. We're going to need a terp. We have a guy here who's pretty upset. I think we killed his cow, over."

"Upset how, over?"

"He can't talk; I think he's in shock. He looks scared, over."

"He should be scared. He's the enemy."

"Uhm, ahh, Roger , 6 . . . he's not armed and looks like a farmer or something."

"He was in the grove that we took fire from; he's a [expletive] bad guy!"

"Roger."

...

Only I can't outrun it. I stay up that night thinking of the old man and the young soldiers who fired into the darkness in response to bullets and mortars and RPGs hurled at them from somewhere "out there." I think of the man with the dead cow and of the rush of adrenaline I felt firing from the back of that Humvee at the perceived threat. I think of the old man on the cart, the children who burst into tears when we point our weapons into their cars (just in case), and the countless numbers of people whose vehicles we sideswipe as we try to use speed to survive the IEDs that await us each morning. I think of my fellow soldiers and the reality of being attacked and feeling threatened, and it all makes sense -- the need to smash their cars and shoot their cows and point our weapons at them and detain them without concern for notifying their families. But how would I feel in their shoes? Would I be able to offer my own heart and mind?

It still makes me angry that large parts of America were neoconned into believing that a mostly Christian, English-speaking army was going to be able to bring democracy to Iraq wand win their hearts and minds with M-16's and tanks. As Captain Estrada's essay makes clear, those who are serving there know better.

For those who aren't there, the cynicism of installing Ayad Allawi, a former CIA agent, car bomber and member of Saddaam Hussein's assassination squads as Iraq's new dictator should make it clearer for anyone who cares to look closely.

And the Army's response to Captain Estrada's essay? According to a recent Washington Post article:

In response, he was transferred to a post near the Iranian border, resulting in the loss of a home leave during which he planned to get married. According to the Army Times newspaper, he also was reprimanded by his brigade commander, Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, who told him he was "aiding the enemy."

I salute Captain Estrada for his honesty and his willingness to tell the truth as he sees it.

Comments [] 7:49:58 AM    

See?

50 Ain't so bad...

Thought I was gone, dincha?

Comments [] 6:59:03 PM