Well, Bush has done it all. In an ad that appeared last night and which bears the slimy fingerprints of Karl Rove, Bush was declared 'the most powerful man in the world' and 'the only one who can keep us safe.'

This self-serving megalomania aside, it is clear that there are a few things this benevolent omnipotent god-like creature could not do or did not even try to do. He did not protect our civil rights and liberties; he didn’t put us back to work; he couldn’t protect the living standards of most working people; he didn’t even try to protect the environment; he shunned science for religion and ideology; he thwarted democracy for political and personal gain; he couldn’t balance the budget; he couldn’t improve public education, provide universal health care; or, protect the poor and the retired.

Even on 'his' issues, when warned about imminent terrorist strikes in the US, he wanted to talk about Iraq. He didn’t protect us on September 11th, but sat reading a children’s story book for several minutes with a perplexed, terrified look on his face. This most powerful man in the world couldn’t win a simple war on a militarily backward and economically impoverished country that lost its leaders just months after the invasion began. Meanwhile, terrorism is on the rise in Iraq and it has become a magnet for terrorist organizations and individuals with like-minded ideas. Bush’s claims to victory in Afghanistan are laughable as US soldiers occupy only cities and some large towns, but control, by their own admission, very little of the countryside. His own Department of State admitted that terrorist attacks had risen after 9/11 rather than declining as his administration initially claimed. His war on terror? By any objective standard is a failure. In humanistic and democratic terms, it is a butchery of innocents – recent studies have pointed to the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis alone – and not a single democratic society has emerged from the killing fields of Bush’s armies.

His Middle East policy has failed to bring the Palestinian and Israeli nations down the road to peace. In fact, these two parties are farther away than in many decades. His response to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan has more deeply enshrined the genocidal fundamentalist dictatorship in power and has failed to foster the conditions in which a long-term and peaceful resolution can be made.

His support for violent coups in Haiti and Venezuela, led by open terrorists, have earned him the ire of millions in this hemisphere and have solidified his credentials along with the likes of Henry Kissinger and Pinochet.

His policy regarding nuclear weapons has brought us closer to nuclear war than we’ve been since the late 1980s. By refusing to take leadership on non-proliferation and anti-testing treaties, let alone his refusal to participate in them, Bush has essentially decreed an open season for nuclear proliferation. He led the US to war in Iraq while Iran and North Korea have moved closer to nuclear weapons arsenals. Additionally, by calling for funding for 'usable nukes,' he has virtually set the conditions for actual nuclear warfare in coming conflicts, quite possibly in the next four years if he is reelected.

No he hasn’t kept us safe, and he hasn’t made the world safer. He hasn’t brought democracy and liberty to anyone anywhere. He is the commander of fear, a proponent of tyranny, the deliverer of injustice.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in one of his most enduring speeches, his State of the Union speech in 1944, in the depths of the struggle against fascism, spoke in a completely opposite way about security, freedom and democracy. He urged the people of the US to see that 'security … means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors,' but it also means 'economic security, social security, [and] moral security.' '[E]ssential to peace,' Roosevelt insisted, 'is a decent standard of living for all individual men and women and children in all nations. Freedom from fear is eternally linked to freedom from want.'

FDR’s words were meant to unify, to encourage the people to work together to accomplish these great tasks, not to divide or insist that a single divisive ideology of power and domination could be the sole guarantor of freedom and security. FDR and the social movements and groups that gathered together to build a 'new deal' for the people of the US established the kernel of an enduring tradition in the US: equality and justice for all are essential elements to peace and security for any.

Bush knows nothing of these ideals. Because of this, he has failed to inspire us and to cultivate a sincere effort to rebuild America after two decades of economic decay. He has pushed an agenda that favors the already powerful over the vast majority. He has exerted the worst imperialist impulses into full-fledged strategies for dominance and theft. These are the characteristics of our past that should be relegated to the graveyard of history if we wish for real liberation and democracy in the world and here at home.

If there is to be regime change in this country today, let the new administration learn the lessons of the failures of the Bush administration. The new administration ought to lead based on the aspirations of the vast majority of the people: the working people, the working mothers, the retirees, the unemployed, teachers, factory workers, truck drivers, artists, janitors, doctors, dock workers, farmers, miners, nurses, bus drivers, writers, restaurant workers, grocery clerks, the youth and all of the rest – the backbone of America. The people who have broken their necks over the past four years to fatten Bush’s filthy rich deserve a break.

It is simple. We want peace. We want jobs. We want social security from our cradles to our graves. We want equal treatment for all. We want affirmative action for those who experience discrimination. We need quality public education. We all want to be cured when we are sick without ransoming our financial security. We want to breathe clean air, to drink clean water. We want fairness not competition with our working brothers and sisters in other countries. We want our power as a people back. We did not surrender this to Bush. He took it. We don’t want to be led and dominated by the self-proclaimed 'most powerful man in the world.' We want and deserve a new direction.



--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.



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