THE BAD AND THE UGLY
By Gery Armsby
On July 25, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush chose Richard B. Cheney as his running mate. Significant media coverage has centered on the vice-presidential candidate's record.
Cheney began his high-profile political career as deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon. Later Cheney was President Gerald Ford's chief of staff.
From 1979 to 1988 Cheney represented Wyoming in the House of Representatives. He became a leader of the Congressional Republicans.
In 1989, President George Bush appointed him secretary of defense.
More recently, Cheney was chief executive officer of Halliburton & Co., a Fortune 500 oil-drilling services firm. Cheney's experience running Big Oil's war against Iraq helped land him that job, according to a July 27 New York Times report.
After Cheney accepted Bush's offer, the Democratic National Committee hurriedly set up a "war room" to leverage support for Al Gore's presidential campaign by attacking Cheney's right-wing positions. The DNC launched a Web site highlighting Cheney's conservative congressional voting record.
Democratic leaders denounced the Republicans for running a "two Big Oil" ticket. They neglected to mention Gore's lifelong ties to Occidental Petroleum.
There is no question that Cheney's voting record is downright racist, anti-poor, anti-woman and anti-gay. He's a big-business boss whose "achievements" in Congress reflect big-business interests.
Why are the Democratic leaders putting so much effort into exposing Cheney's conservatism?
Because they hope voters catch a whiff of Cheney's foul-smelling politics while ignoring their own equally rotten record.
The DNC condemned Cheney's opposition to Democratic-sponsored legislation during the Reagan era. These included 1983 bills supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and nutrition programs for poor mothers and children; a 1985 bill to reauthorize the "Superfund" for hazardous waste site cleanup; a 1986 funding bill for Head Start; and the 1987 Clean Water Act.
Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But what is the Democratic Party's record on these issues?
The Democrats' so-called Superfund lined the pockets of Pentagon contractors. Fifteen years and $10 billion later, hazardous wastes continue to poison the environment at sites like the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington. Under the Democratic Clinton-Gore administration welfare benefits were signed away, reinforcing inequality for poor women and taking food off the tables of millions of children.
There are plenty of other examples.
BIPARTISAN WAR AGAINST IRAQ
Anti-war activists have spoken out about Cheney's role in preparing "Operation Desert Storm" a decade ago.
As the senior Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney engineered high-pressure "negotiations" with Saudi Arabian officials in August 1990 after Iraq occupied Kuwait. The Saudi monarchy, which holds onto power with the aid of U.S. weaponry, agreed to cooperate after Cheney claimed Iraq planned to attack the country's border.
Cheney led similar missions to Egypt, Morocco and other Middle Eastern and North African countries to garner military cooperation. Without this arm-twisting, the Pentagon would have faced much stiffer opposition to its war on Iraq.
The 1991 Gulf War devastated Iraq's people and infrastructure, causing enormous casualties.
However, Bush-the-elder, Cheney and the Republicans didn't act alone in these war crimes. Democrats in both the Senate and the House gave the war their blessing in a Jan. 12, 1991, vote.
To this day, the Clinton-Gore administration carries out aerial bombardments of Iraq every week.
Then there are the sanctions.
On Aug. 2, 1990--before a single bomb was dropped or artillery shell fired at Iraq--"liberal Democratic" U.S. Sens. George Mitchell, Edward Kennedy and Joseph Biden stood alongside right wingers Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms to submit a resolution urging "a full economic blockade against Iraq."
Democrats and Republicans alike continue to uphold this genocidal policy.
Sanctions have taken a terrible toll on the Iraqi people. At least 1.5 million people, mostly children under 5, have died as a result of the U.S.-imposed United Nations sanctions. Five thousand more perish each month.
HYPOCRISY ON SOUTH AFRICA
Another concern raised in the media is Cheney's 1986 vote against a resolution urging the release of Nelson Mandela, who had been languishing for 25 years in an apartheid South African prison.
In a TV interview, Cheney admitted that his vote reflected his view of the African National Congress as a "terrorist organization."
While some of Cheney's critics rightly pointed out the racist character of his vote, the DNC--so eager to attack Cheney on other issues--conspicuously withheld comment.
The Democrats won't willingly open the subject of racism. Doing so would leave them vulnerable to questions about issues they don't want to talk about: the prison-industrial complex, Africa's HIV/AIDS crisis, racist repression and police brutality.
The Democratic-sponsored resolution Cheney voted against in 1986 was non-binding. It did nothing to aid the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. If anything, it was calculated to encourage imperialist interests to find new tactics to maneuver with a movement that was already on course for political revolution in that country.
It should be remembered that the CIA--under a Democrat, President John F. Kennedy--helped South African security forces capture Mandela in the first place.
If the Democratic Party were independent of the big-business interests that Republicans are so obviously tied to, then the Democrats might have long before intervened to help South Africans oust the white-supremacist regime.
But the Democrats are not independent. They answer to the same class of super-rich bosses that the Republicans do.
The Democratic Party always makes big promises to the workers and the oppressed during election years. But it can never deliver what's really needed: authentic leadership for a growing movement to end imperialist wars, jail killer cops, shut down prisons for profit, cancel the debt of poor countries and restore the social programs that were won through decades of struggle.
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