Excerpt
THE BUSH BETRAYAL
by James Bovard
INTRODUCTION
His hard-hitting critiques of Democrat and Republican administrations
in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, and
other national publications have made him a "bipartisan scourge." Now,
James Bovard launches a blistering attack on the Bush administration
that will add new fuel to the fires of Bush opponents while giving presidential
supporters much to think about.
In a series of cogently argued allegations, Bovard shows how the campaign
promises of 2000 have betrayed not only the electorate, but the Constitution
itself: from the erosion of civil liberties, massive debt, and the arrogance
of federal agencies, to economic policies that favor the wealthy, and
the deceptive maneuvers that led to war in Iraq and the alienation of
former allies. For every American, The Bush Betrayal will
be required reading in this election year.
James Bovard has written for The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, the
American Spectator, The New York Times, Reader's Digest, The New Republic,
The Washington Post and Newsweek. He is one of Washington's
most controversial journalists.
The
Bush Betrayal won a Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing
the Literature of Liberty. The book is available for purchase at
Laissez Faire Books -- http://LFB.com --
delivering the highest value in books since 1972.
Chapter One: Introduction
by James Bovard
As we defend liberty and justice abroad,
we must always honor those values here at home.
-- George W. Bush, October 28, 2003
George W. Bush came to the presidency promising prosperity, peace, and
humility. Instead, Bush has spawned record federal budget deficits, launched
an unnecessary war, and made America the most hated nation in the world.
Bush is expanding federal power and stretching prerogatives in almost
every area that captures his fancy. Though Bush continually invokes freedom
to sanctify himself and his policies, Bush freedom is based on boundless
trust in the righteousness of the rulers and all their actions.
Truth is a lagging indicator in politics. A president's promises and
speeches receive far more publicity than subsequent reports and revelations
about how his cherished programs crash and burn. This book does not aim
to analyze all Bush policies. Instead, it examines an array of his domestic
and foreign actions that vivify the damage Bush is inflicting and the
danger he poses both to America and the world.
Bush governs like an elective monarch,
entitled to reverence and deference on all issues. Secret Service agents
ensure that Bush rarely views opponents of his reign, carefully quarantining
protesters in "free speech zones" far
from public view. The FBI has formally requested that local police monitor
antiwar groups and send information on demonstrators to FBI-led terrorism
task forces. Thanks to the campaign finance act Bush signed, Americans
have also lost much of their freedom to criticize their rulers -- at
least in the 60 days before an election.
After 9/11, privacy is a luxury
Americans supposedly can no longer afford. The administration has left
no stone unturned, giving itself powers to sweep up people's e-mail
with the FBI's Carnivore system, unleash FBI agents to conduct surveillance
almost anywhere, allow G-men to secretly search people's homes, bankroll
Pentagon research on creating hundreds of millions of dossiers on Americans,
expand the military's role in domestic surveillance, and vacuum up
personal data to create a federal "color
code" for every air traveler. The administration is defining freedom
down, pretending that protection from federal prying is no longer relevant
to liberty. Americans are supposed to accept that freedom from terrorism
is the ultimate freedom -- and nothing else matters any more.
Bush is dropping an iron curtain around the federal government. The
Bush administration is hollowing out the Freedom of Information Act,
making it more difficult for citizens to discover government actions
and abuses. Bush invoked executive privilege to block a congressional
investigation into the FBI's role in mass murder in Boston and in framing
innocent men for those murders. The Supreme Court tacitly endorsed the
Bush doctrine that the feds may carry out mass secret arrests and suppress
all information about the roundup (including names of those detained,
charges, and details on prison beatings).
Bush is wrapping himself in a flag drenched with the blood of Americans
who died due to the failure of the federal government he commanded. The
Bush reelection campaign is running television ads showing an American
flag flying in front of the ruins of the World Trade Center towers and
a flag-draped corpse being carried out of Ground Zero by firefighters.
The Republicans will hold their national convention in New York days
before the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Bush exploits
the 9/11 dead while he stonewalls the 9/11 commission. The Bush reelection
team seems convinced that Bush's actions on that day entitle Bush to
rule Americans for four more years.
KING OF ALL BOONDOGGLES
Americans will be forced to pay trillions of dollars in higher taxes
in the coming decades to finance George Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.
Bush browbeat Congress into enacting the biggest expansion of the welfare
state since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The White House blatantly
deceived Congress about the cost of the new Medicare prescription drug
entitlement, withholding key information that would have guaranteed the
defeat of Bush's giveaway. The administration launched a federally financed
ad campaign showing a crowd cheering Bush as he signed the new law; federal
auditors ruled that the ads were illegal propaganda. The new drug benefit
will expedite Medicare's bankruptcy and do nothing to improve medical
care for most seniors.
Vote-buying is the prime motive
of many Bush policies. Bush signed the most exorbitant farm bill in
history in 2002, bilking taxpayers for $180 billion to rain benefits
on millionaire landowners and other deserving mendicants. Bush repeatedly
bragged that his farm bill was "generous" --
as if Washington politicians have carte blanche to redistribute Americans'
paychecks to any group they choose. Bush imposed high tariffs on steel
imports, wantonly destroying thousands of American manufacturing jobs
simply because he wanted to try to snare the endorsement of the United
Steel Workers and to boost his reelection chances.
After 9/11, almost every expansion
of government became a coup for homeland security. When Bush announced
plans to bloat the AmeriCorps "paid volunteer" program,
he declared: "One way to defeat terrorism is to show the world the true
values of America through the gathering momentum of a million acts of
responsibility and decency and service." While Bush portrays AmeriCorps
recruits as heroes, AmeriCorps members busy themselves putting on puppet
shows to persuade three-year-olds of the value of smoke alarms, hoeing
corn at tourist farms, and sanctimoniously picking up litter in bad neighborhoods.
Bush summoned every citizen to give four thousand hours of "service." After
dubious federal statistics showed a marginal rise in volunteering, Bush
hyped the uptick as proof that his leadership is morally rejuvenating
America.
The Transportation Security Administration
and its 45,000 member airport occupation army is one of the Bush administration's
biggest shams. Despite more than $10 billion spent since 9/11, airport
screeners are not any more competent than they were in 1987. Yet, as
long as TSA brags about seizing millions of pointy objects each year
from grandmothers and other scofflaws, Americans are supposed to believe
that the endless delays are worthwhile. TSA is punishing critics, slapping
fines of up to $1,500 on airline passengers guilty of showing the wrong "attitude" as
they pass through TSA checkpoint gauntlets.
Some of Bush's cherished reforms consist of little more than finding
new names for old boondoggles. Bush sharply boosted foreign aid and created
a new program, the Millennium Challenge Account. Bush denounces traditional
foreign aid for bankrolling corruption, and insists that his program
rewards governments for being honest. Even though the aid still goes
to many of the same Third World politician-looters, the new program's
lofty rhetoric automatically converts the money into a force for goodness.
Political cosmetics pervade many
Bush policies. The No Child Left Behind Act is perhaps Bush's biggest
domestic fraud. The act was falsely sold as giving freedom to local
school officials. In reality, it empowers the feds to effectively judge
and punish local schools for not fulfilling arbitrary guidelines. Many
states are "dumbing down" academic standards,
using bureaucratic racketeering to avoid harsh federal sanctions. Though
the No Child Left Behind Act promised to permit children to escape "persistently
dangerous" schools, most states defined that term to claim that all their
schools were safe. As long as people believe Bush cares about children,
it doesn't matter that his education policy is a charade.
While Bush hypes himself as a "compassionate conservative," his
drug policy relies on wrath and harsh punishment (except for special
cases like his niece Noelle Bush and talk show host Rush Limbaugh).
John Walters, Bush's drug czar, demonized drug users in federally funded
TV ads, portraying people who buy drugs as terrorist financiers threatening
America with complete destruction. Federal drug warriors have arrested
cancer patients who smoke marijuana to control their chemo-induced
nausea, busted doctors who give suffering patients more pain killers
than the DEA approves, and carried out high-profile crackdowns on targets
ranging from hemp food makers to comedian Tommy Chong (busted for bong
trafficking).
TERRORIZING IN THE NAME OF ANTITERRORISM
Bush appears determined to force
Americans to pay almost any price so that he can be a world savior.
He declared in December 2003: "I believe
we have a responsibility to promote freedom [abroad] that is as solemn
as the responsibility is to protecting the American people, because the
two go hand in hand." But the Constitution does not grant the president
the prerogative to dispose of the lives of American soldiers any place
in the world he longs to do a good deed. Though Bush is adept at destroying
freedom in America, he has yet to demonstrate any ability to create it
in foreign lands.
Bush greatly exaggerates the benefits of his conquests. After the Afghan
war, Bush repeatedly told Americans that they had liberated Afghan women
and that Afghan girls were now going to school. Yet, women are still
heavily oppressed in most of Afghanistan and most Afghan girls still
do not attend schools. While Bush portrays Afghanistan as a liberated
new democracy, most Afghans are brutalized either by warlords or the
resurgent Taliban. But the Bush White House rarely allows cold facts
to impede a warm and touching story line.
For Bush, the right to rule apparently
includes the right to lie. In his 2004 State of the Union address,
Bush proclaimed that, as a result of actions such as the U.S. invasion
of Iraq, "No one can now doubt the
word of America." A year earlier, in his 2003 State of the Union address,
Bush rattled off a long list of biological and chemical weapons that
he claimed he knew that Iraq possessed. No such weapons have been found.
Bush has never shown a speck of contrition for his false prewar statements.
Instead, he acts like a clumsy magician who assumes his audience is too
feebleminded to recognize the elaborate trick that fell to pieces in
front of their eyes.
The war in Iraq is the most visible
debacle of the Bush war on terrorism. The president pirouetted in a
flight suit on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003,
in front of a giant banner proclaiming, "MISSION
ACCOMPLISHED." But Iraq subsequently became far more treacherous. On
July 2, when asked about Iraqi attacks on American forces, Bush issued
a taunt: "Bring 'em on!" In the subsequent months, more than 600 American
soldiers were killed and thousands were wounded and maimed as Iraqis
took up the Bush challenge. While Bush continually brags of how the United
States "liberated" 25 million Iraqis, the U.S. military government vigorously
suppresses television stations and shuts down newspapers that criticize
American forces or U.S. policy. While Bush rhapsodizes about winning
Iraqi hearts and minds, U.S. troops carry out crackdowns with names such
as Operation Iron Hammer, conduct thousands of no-knock raids in people's
homes searching for weapons, routinely demolish the houses of suspected
resistance fighters, imprison people solely for being relatives of insurgents,
and kill hundreds of innocent civilians. Bush-style benevolence was best
captured by U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Nathan Sassaman, commanding a battalion
that enclosed an entire Iraqi town with barbed wire, when he observed: "With
a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I
think we can convince these people that we are here to help them."
Bush proudly declared last year: "No President has ever done more for
human rights than I have." In reality, Bush has done more to formally
subvert rights than any American president of the modern era. Bush claimed
the right to label people as enemy combatants and thereby nullify all
of their legal rights. Once detainees had no rights, torturing them apparently
became permissible -- at least in the eyes of some Justice Department
and Pentagon officials. The Bush administration ignored warning after
warning of the gross abuses that were being committed against detainees
in Afghanistan, Cuba, and Iraq. After the torture photos from the Abu
Ghraib prison became public in April 2004, Bush repeatedly falsely claimed
that the abuses were the result of a few wayward soldiers. In speeches
in his reelection campaign, Bush continued to brag about ending Saddam's
torture.
Foreign military "victories" have
done nothing to increase the competence of homeland security. Even
though federal agencies' failure to combine terrorist watch lists helped
allow two known Al Qaeda members to enter the United States before
the 9/11 hijackings, the federal government still does not have a single,
up-to-date terrorist watch list. The General Accounting Office concluded
in late 2003 that the feds are still doing a lousy job of pursuing
terrorist finances, despite a vast increase in the financial surveillance
of average Americans. A federal commission on terrorist threats reported
in December 2003 that federal, state, and local government agencies
are still doing a very poor job of sharing key information about terrorist
threats. And some of the information that the feds do send along --
such as the FBI warning that people carrying world almanacs could be
terrorist plotters -- aids only late-night television comics.
Bush's foreign policies are creating
more terrorists than he is vanquishing. There are far more terrorist
attacks in the Middle East now than before the United States invaded
Iraq. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee, declared in early 2004 that "Al Qaeda remains as dangerous as it was before September 11." British
intelligence experts warn that Al Qaeda is a greater threat than before.
Bush's interventionist policies and meddling are spurring intense animosity
throughout the Arab and Muslim world. And there is no evidence that the
Bush administration is competent to protect Americans from all the new
enemies its policies are breeding.
REPEALING 1776
President George W. Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and other
administration officials continually remind Americans that everything
changed after 9/11. But does that include the Constitution? Are the myths
of 9/11 undermining the truths of 1776?
The Founding Fathers taught Americans that power is dangerous regardless
of who wields it. Bush would have people believe that, after 9/11, America
will perish if the president lacks boundless power. The Founding Fathers
saw individual rights as bulwarks against government abuses. Bush acts
as if individual rights are barriers to public safety. The Founding Fathers
sought to deter tyranny with checks and balances within the federal government.
Bush acts as if the only legitimate check on his power is people's chance
to cast a ballot once every four years. Bush perennially talks as if
tax cuts are the only protection people need against Big Government.
The Bush presidency is continuing and accelerating many of the noxious
trends of the Clinton era, most of which started long before William
Jefferson Clinton became president. Many of the abuses of the last few
years would likely have occurred regardless of who was elected president
in 2000. However, the glorification of Bush after 9/11 would not have
reached such extremes without the slavish efforts of many Republican
congressmen and much of the conservative news media. The president's
rarely challenged power grabs revealed the cravenness of many of Washington's
avowed champions of freedom.
Though this book focuses primarily on the blunders and deceits of Bush
and his team, Democratic members of Congress are either complicit in
or acquiescent to most of Bush's abuses. Most of the budget disputes
in Washington involve how to waste tax dollars, not whether tax dollars
should be wasted. Some Democrats did yeoman work -- such as Sen. Robert
Byrd (D-W.Va.) in opposing the war on Iraq, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.)
in opposing the Patriot Act, and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in opposing
Ashcroft. Yet Democratic members of Congress as a group have been less
vigilant and courageous in opposing misgovernment than were Republicans
during the first Clinton administration.
Regardless of who wins in November 2004, Americans must recognize the
damage the federal government is inflicting on their rights, liberty,
and safety. Even if Bush wins reelection, the more Americans who recognize
the failures and frauds of his first term, the more difficult it will
be for Bush to perpetrate new abuses in his second term. Americans must
understand the Bush Betrayal if they are ever to rein in the government.
Copyright ©2004 by James Bovard. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted
here with permission of the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan. Please feel
free to duplicate or distribute this file, as long as the content is not
altered and this copright notice is intact. Thank you.
