The peace candidate?

Who will be the peace candidate in the 2004 US presidential election? With Kerry talking about putting another 40,000 troops in Iraq among other highly militaristic moves (interview, Defense News, June 24, 2004) and beating back criticism of the invasion in the Democratic platform, is the peace field open to President Bush?

Bush seems to think so. After listening to some news clips and reading a transcript of yesterday's Bush campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I will go so far to say that the 2004 campaign has sunk deeply into an Orwellian chasm, where the newspeak flows and creeping proto-fascism has begun to take a chokehold.

"War is peace" is the theme. When Mr. Bush "interfaces" with the citizens we are told that the purpose of the Iraq war, and the Terror War generally, is to promote peace. So why should not the self-described War President also be the Peace President?

What Bush actually said so defies credulity that Orwell himself would have been proud to have written this line for the Squealer:

The enemy declared war on us, and you just got to know nobody wants to be the  War President. I want to be the Peace President.  (Applause.) I want to be the President -- after four years, four more in this office, I want people to look back and say, the world is a more peaceful place. (Applause.) America is a safer country. Four more years, and America will be safer and the world will be more peaceful. (Applause.)

The promise of peace the president spouts is highly dubious. What was he telling us going back 15 months? In April 2003, just after the invasion force had taken Baghdad, during a photo op with wounded soldiers Mr. Bush said:

It's a brave lot here in Bethesda; people who are willing to sacrifice for something greater than themselves. And I feel lucky as an American to be a part of a country where citizens are willing to do that. I reminded them and their families that the war in Iraq is—it's really about peace, trying to make the world more peaceful.

When Mr. Bush? When?? How many more will have to die or be hurt before all the enemies we've created in the meanwhile clue us in to the fact that your promise is nothing more than emotional cover designed to finesse minds and obtain consent for the horrors?

In truth, because the people we have attacked never will accept a peace on our terms, use of force will be a permanent feature of the landscape the president has created for us with his wars.

Returning to Cedar Rapids, the wild applause of a highly controlled audience—where only Bush-loyalist, middle-American brownshirts are allowed—belies the proto-fascist undercurrent of the whole Bush juggernaut. Oh no, Bush, and by extension his brownshirts never will forget September 11! No-siree:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It appears that some people are forgetting 9/11 ... remember 9/11 and those who are fighting for our freedom.

THE PRESIDENT: Interesting question. He says it appears to him there's an effort to forget about 9/11. We'll never forget 9/11....

The subtext is that disagreement with Bush's wars is tantamount to "forgetting September 11".

Iraq pseudo-sovereignty and Mr. Bush's claim on the peace mantle has Kerry and the Democrats in a box on issues of war and peace. Kerry can't budge from his Bush+ foreign policy orientation without being pummeled as a flip-flopper. But as a candidate he has none of the tools of the executive at his disposal in order to influence the colonial projects—or perhaps more importantly to influence how the colonial projects look to American voters. I don't think Kerry thought this through very well and it's going to hurt him.

There perhaps is a rough parallel here to the 1968 campaign where Humphrey was hamstrung into a deeply entrenched war in Vietnam his own president had dug into for him while he stubbornly rejected options that could have shown voters—including peace voters—an alternate course out of the war.

Nixon filled the void with his phony secret peace plan. The parallel with George W. Bush is that the hard-line Nixon suddenly made himself look like he could cash in the fruits of his bellicose stance in order to bring the boys home and to achieve the panacea of peace and security. But like Bush's droning rhetoric about peace and freedom following his masterful quenching of threats, the Nixon plan was nothing but vapor designed to manage public opinion.

Kerry better take note of what is happening here. What goes on at these Bush events is very powerful stuff. Bush loyalists and many other people in middle America do not possess an analysis adequate to counteract the falsehoods and blatant manipulation that feeds their group fervor. They are vulnerable to God and country messages that reach hearts and engender feelings of limitless power. They like to feel powerful because of the fact that we can dominate and destroy Iraq while changing its government, occupying its lands, and rebuilding it in our image at our president’s will.
 
With the right messenger, natural skepticism about creating peace with war and human feeling for those who become dead and maimed the process—amongst our own people and the population we have attacked—can be erased. Bush is an adequate performer in this regard. He slowly is filling the country with this poison on his campaign tour and with his organized marketing and advertising.

The Democrats could wake up the first week of November without a victory because of an inept decision to cast off the anti-war base while leaving Bush to create an Orwellian meaning of peace.