Howard Dean Supports Sutter Strikers

"Dean, the Democratic National Committee chair, has opted to stick to a calibrated partisan line of attack that endorses the essence of the war in real time. "The president has created an enormous security problem for the U.S. where none existed before," Dean said in Minneapolis. "But I hope the president is incredibly successful with his policy now that he's there."

Of course, the idea that Bush could be "incredibly successful with his policy now" in Iraq is the stuff of fantasy. But it's the kind of politician-speak that makes a preposterous statement because it seems like a good media tactic. That's what most Democratic Party officials on the national stage, and some activists who should know better, are still doing. They're the rough equivalent of those who, like Ellsberg for a time four decades ago, mainly regretted that the war was "a stalemate." Objections to the war along that line depict it as a quagmire.

But the U.S. war effort in Iraq is not a quagmire. It is what Daniel Ellsberg came to realize the Vietnam War was: "a crime."

Cindy Sheehan -- and many other people who have joined her outside the presidential gates in Crawford, and millions of other Americans -- understand that. And they're willing to say so. They have rejected not only the rabid militarism of the Bush administration but also the hollowed-out pseudo-strategic abdication of moral responsibility so well articulated by Howard Dean."
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0813-27.htm

"In my meeting with Howard Dean, he told me that the Iraq issue was "hard" and the new Dem "Contract with America" is going to have 10 points and the first one is going to be "Universal Health Care." I told Mr. Dean that if the Dems didn't come out strongly against the war and against George's disastrous policies, we were going to become irrelevant as a party (which is already happening) and the "hard" issue should be the one that is worked on the hardest!"
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/3371

Howard Dean Becomes Leader of the Other Pro-War Party
Written by Kevin Zeese
Thursday, 21 April 2005
Dean on Iraq: "We're There and We Can't Get Out"
http://democracyrising.us/content/view/206/151/

It didn't take long, the former anti-war presidential candidate has now become the pro-occupation leader of the Democratic Party. Just when a majority of the public is saying the Iraq War is not worth it, Howard Dean the new leader of the Democratic Party is saying: "Now that we're there, we're there and we can't get out."

Like the good partisan he is Dean blames Bush for a war most in his party voted for and an occupation that most in his party recently voted to continue to fund. Of the President Dean said: "The president has created an enormous security problem for the United States where none existed before. But I hope the president is incredibly successful with his policy now that he's there."

Chairman Dean does not seem to understand that the illegal occupation of Iraq is part of the problem, not part of the solution. In fact, the many fears he expresses regarding pulling out of Iraq are made more likely by the US occupation of Iraq.

According to an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune, Dean claims that an American pullout from Iraq could endanger the United States in any of three ways: by leaving a Shiite theocracy worse than that in Iran, which he called a more serious threat than Iraq ever was; by creating an independent Kurdistan in the north, with destabilizing effects on neighboring Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran and Syria, and by making the Sunni Triangle a magnet for Islamic terrorists similar to the former Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

From his comments, it is evident that Chairman Dean only believes in democracy if the voters support the kind of government the U.S. wants. U.S. officials find a puppet government led by U.S sympathizers preferable to what Iraqis want. Indeed, we find autocratic governments like Saudi Arabia and Egypt preferable to democratic governments that are likely to oppose U.S. interests.

The fears expressed by Chairman Dean indicate that we really don't want a democracy in Iraq. We want a government that will continue to keep Paul Bremer's decrees as law, decrees that make Iraq very friendly to U.S. corporate interests. The decrees allow complete foreign ownership of Iraqi industry, very low tax rates that allow profit to be funneled out of Iraq, no trade unions to be organized by workers and no lawsuits against U.S. contractors. And, where through our puppets we get a seat at the OPEC table and first dibs on Iraqi oil. And for our military interests, a government that allows the U.S. to build 14 permanent military basis so Iraq becomes the center of U.S. military dominance over the region.

If we wanted a democracy in Iraq we would have announced an exit timetable. Iraqis have shown in many ways that they want the U.S. to leave. Author Naomi Klien summarized the evidence for this proposition on Democracy Now! on April 20:

"A majority of Iraqis voted in the election for a political party, the United Iraqi Alliance. The second plank of their platform was calling for a timetable for withdrawal. Then you have all the people who boycotted the elections because they believed that a clear statement about withdrawal was the prerequisite for having elections, that you couldn't have elections before you had that commitment. So immediately after Iraqis have expressed this through opinion polls, through protests, through their votes . . ."



Add to her list the growing insurgency that seems to be primarily made up by Iraqis, religious leaders from both the Shiite and Sunni community calling on the U.S. to leave and recent protests involving hundreds of thousands and it is impossible to deny the obvious - Iraqis want the United States to leave. If we wanted majority rule in Iraq we would be announcing a timetable for U.S. withdrawal

A responsible withdrawal plan will minimize the risks that Dean fears by stopping mainstream Iraqis from supporting the resistance to U.S. occupation. If Iraqis know they will be getting back their country and that there will be a dual withdrawal of U.S. troops and corporate interests in the near future the resistance will lose support. Our presence empowers anti-US views in Iraq - our exit will make the U.S. invasion truly into a liberation of Iraq from Saddam. Our continued presence makes clear this was not a war of liberation but a war of occupation and dominance of the region.

Democracy Rising has put forward a three step exit strategy that includes real elections under international, not U.S., supervision; an international peace keeping force from neutral countries, preferably in the region; and continued humanitarian aid to help rebuild Iraq. See: http://www.DemocracyRising.US for details on this exit plan.

Recently, Robert Novak reported that the Bush administration plans to get out of Iraq within a year. Wouldn't is be ironic if while the Democratic leadership - John Kerry, Hilary Clinton, Howard Dean - is calling for continued occupation, the Republican leadership announced a withdrawal plan!

"Dean’s platform overall has always been right of center. Despite his critiques John Kerry’s Beltway ties, Dean himself is not much more than a fiscal Republican.

That’s right. During Dean’s rule in Vermont, he was renowned for cutting state budgets and promoting rigid economic conservatism. And that fiscal austerity caused few Vermonters to consider Dean a friend of labor. IBM, one of Vermont’s largest employers, consistently downsized their workforce as employees attempted to unionize. The manager of IBM’s government relations at the plant in Essex Vermont was quoted in Business Week in August of 2001, as saying, “[Dean’s] secretary of commerce would call me once a week just to see how things were going.”

What a friendly governor, but labor advocates claimed Dean rarely listened to their concerns.

Political science professor at the University of Vermont Garrison Nelson, also says that “[Dean] is not a liberal. He’s a pro-business, Rockefeller Republican.”

Conservative pro-business individuals in Vermont especially loved Howard Dean’s perplexed business agenda. As Business Week reported, Wayne Roberts who worked for the Reagan Administration thought Dean was a “frugal man.” “There is no way in heck he would tolerate a deficit,” Roberts blasted.

John McClaughry, president of the conservative Vermont think tank, the Ethan Allen Institute, says “The Howard Dean you are seeing on the national scene is not the Dean that we saw around here for the last decade. He has moved sharply left.” Many of these critics site Dean’s political ambitions as the reasons for changing his rhetoric when rallying his young supporters along the campaign trail.

Nevertheless Dean still claims to be an old school fiscal conservative, and hails his balancing of the state budget in Vermont. On August 30th 2003, the Washington Post quoted a Democrat and former Vermont state Senate president Dick McCormack as saying of Dean that, “He made us very disciplined about spending, even if we didn’t really like it. I was a liberal Democrat, and I fought him a lot.”

Vermont is not legally bound to balance the state’s budget, but for Dean, it may as well have been.

“I’m a fiscal conservative,” Dean said in early in the primaries. “I’m most proud of our fiscal stability—I left the state in better shape than I found it … Capitalism is a great system.”

So what did Dean do for Vermont? Not as much as he takes credit for.

On Dean’s watch Medicare costs in Vermont skyrocketed. Dean’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich’s economic program in the 1990s was grossly apparent. Dean time and again praised Gingrich for slashing Medicare and other social programs in order to help balance the federal budget. Dean said at the time, “The way to balance the [federal] budget is for Congress to cut Social Security, move the retirement age to 70 … [cut] Medicare and veterans pensions, while the states cut everything else.” And Dean took that initiative.

As the Associated Press noted on November 24th of 2003, “[Dean] did make cuts in Vermont to programs for the elderly, blind and disabled when balancing budgets … [And he] did cut some social programs in Vermont.”

Under the guise of “fiscal responsibility,” Dean also managed to cut the Aid to Needy Families with Children program, public education, and as noted, funding for public defendants.

In total governor Dean cut $6 million in state education and retirement funds for public school teachers in Vermont, as well as $7 million of state employee benefits. Dean crushed health care for the elderly with a $4 million dollar gouge, and stomped a $2 million dollar reduction in Vermont welfare programs that were earmarked for the disabled and blind in state. Medicaid recipients also lost over $1.2 million in much needed benefits.

Dean claimed these cuts were mandatory and unavoidable because the state had a $60 million dollar deficit. All this in a state where the population is a little over 600,000.

Vermonter Keith Rosenthal points out in an article for the International Socialist Review last fall; during Dean’s tenure, he was able to fund a $30 million for a new prison in Springfield Vermont, a $7 million for a low-interest loan program for businesses, as well as cut the state’s income tax by 8 percent which accounted for to $30 million dollars in revenue.

Many liberals in the Vermont state legislature were angered by Dean’s balancing tactics. The legislators did not feel comfortable with “cutting taxes in a way that benefits the wealthiest taxpayers.” And by 2002, Dean’s prosecutor friendly government increased investments in state prisons by nearly 150 percent, while funds for state colleges grew by a mere 7 percent.

So what is so wrong with humming the tune of balanced budget responsibility? Certainly President Bush has been singing in the wrong octave for the last three years. But when eliminating every cent of deficit is done at expense to the common good, progressives should feel queasy when confronted with Dean’s conservative mantra. But then again they won’t have to be faced with such rhetoric too much longer. Dean is dying fast. Too bad these same arguments can be made against botox injected John Kerry. Sure we need Bush out; it is just unfortunate the Democrats are the likely replacement."
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2004/02/howards_end_dea.php

Are there any Democrats that would like to defend
their party now?

Here is a few names mentioned in the New York Times today:

"(Leslie) Dach, who is active in environmental and Democratic causes, was an outside adviser to President Clinton during the impeachment..."

"Jonathan Adashek, director of national delegate strategy for John Kerry..."

"Paul Blank, former political director for the Howard Dean presidential campaign..."

"Chris Kofinis, who helped create the DraftWesleyClark.com campaign."

"Jim Jordan, former director of the Kerry campaign..."

"Tracy Sefl, a former Democratic National Committee aide responsible for distributing negative press reports about President Bush during the 2004 campaign."

What, besides being at the top of the Democratic Party, do these people have in common?

Give up?

They're a large portion of the team helping Wal-mart repel organizing campaigns by labor unions and environmental groups. I don't really have much to say about this, it speaks for itself. How bad does the Democratic party have to get before you will decide its not worth fighting for anymore?

Here's the article for reference:

link to http://www.nytimes.com