IT’S WHO’S BEHIND THAT COUNTS

Candidates pose and posture, strut and bellow, salute and sing the National Anthem, but looking at what’s behind them will tell us more about what to expect from them than the fronts they put up for us. If there is anything Americans should have learned from the last eight years it is that the face our political parties paint on their candidates is not what we should be looking at. We need to look behind them.

George W. Bush masqueraded behind a façade called the war on terror while he danced to the tune called by his neocon backers and led us into a war that had nothing to do with the terrorism he decried and everything to do with seeking the goals the neocons wrote position papers on to sway the Bush camp, but kept from the American people because they knew we wouldn’t buy into it.

If you need proof of that assertion, think back to the crocodile tears Paul Wolfowitz shed in his 2003 speech about how no one wants war in Iraq, but Saddam Hussein’s actions have made it impossible to avoid. Then compare that to the statement that while Hussein’s presence in the middle-east provided the rationale for war in Iraq, the real reason was to establish a permanent American military presence in that country. The paper that appeared in was written in September, 2000 by the neoconservatives of which Wolfowitz was a prominent founding member. (www.newamericancentury.org: Rebuilding America’s Defenses p. 14)

John McCain purports to have been a “maverick” on the war due to his support for the removal of Donald Rumsfeld from the Defense Department, but his history as a supporter of the neocon movement and its war long precedes and further succeeds that moment. As far back as January of 1998, he joined the neocons in signing an open letter to then President Bill Clinton urging him to go to war with Iraq.

Even during this presidential campaign he announced his willingness to stay in Iraq for 100 years. The neoconservative movement is the single most influential body in taking us into the Iraq war, and John McCain has been an active proponent of their philosophy. It stands to reason that if he is elected to the presidency, we can expect him to further their clearly stated goal of American hegemony through military domination.

The conduct of the war in Iraq is, to me, the single most meaningful issue being put before the American people in November’s election, and it should settle the vote in favor of anyone willing to seek a reasonable exit. But the single most important issue is not being presented at all.

That issue is the nature of the people who stand behind the candidates and in that regard no one who stands with the neoconservatives has a right to a single vote for any office in the country. A vote for John McCain is a vote for the continued dominance of a group of money grubbing, power hungry people who believe that the continuation of America’s dominance of world economic policies and the distribution of wealth through American coffers is more important than the well-being of the earth and all its people. That is not a position that should be acceptable to anyone.

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR