International Socialists

While Bush's war in Afghanistan appeared to be winding down, his war at home was only just beginning. The extent to which President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have shredded constitutional protections is breathtaking. Creating military tribunals for so-called terrorism suspects with the stroke of his pen, Bush appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner to potentially anyone in the world who is not a US citizen. Shortly thereafter, Ashcroft announced plans to lift restrictions on FBI and CIA spying on domestic political and religious organisations.
 

"Anti-American Material"

In a hurry to use its new powers, the FBI has already "visited" such national security threats as a Houston art museum accused of displaying "anti-American material"; a young activist in Raleigh, North Carolina, who had a satirical poster of Bush on her college dorm wall; and a retired phone company worker who criticised Bush at his San Francisco gym. But more serious crackdowns on dissent are sure to follow.

 

Before a cowering Senate Judiciary Committee in December, Ashcroft offered no apologies. Instead, in his best imitation of Joe McCarthy yet, he proclaimed that anyone who criticises his methods is "giving aid and comfort" to terrorists.

 

Despite all of these repressive measures, the government has little to show for its crusade. Of the hundreds of Arab men held virtually incommunicado for months, only a handful have been charged with any crime more serious than some violation of immigration laws. By January, the government had announced a new roundup of 6,000 visa holders it wanted to deport.
 

Anthrax

At the same time, the Bush administration seemed unable to find the perpetrators of the most serious terrorist attack after September 11 - the anthrax mailings that killed five people. This may be a case of government incompetence, but it's more likely a case of selective investigation. When the anthrax attacks were panicking the country in October, a parade of so-called terrorism experts filled editorial pages and television screens with assertions that the attacks had the fingerprints of al-Qaeda or Iraq. Even Bush said that he "wouldn't put it past" bin Laden or Saddam Hussein to try to kill Americans with anthrax.

 

Most bioterrorism experts without an axe to grind said the attacks bore the hallmarks of domestic terrorists. By late December, even the Bush administration had to concede as much. In addition, the US Army had to admit that it had been manufacturing, since 1992, the "weaponised" variety of anthrax used in the mailings.

 

The focus on "evildoers" had its uses for Bush and Co., however. At the height of the anthrax hysteria, a panicky Congress pushed through the USA PATRIOT Act, the worst attack on civil liberties since the FBI ran COINTELPRO operations against radicals in the 1960s. What's more, the focus on the likes of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein diverted attention from what should have been a bombshell revelation: The US military admitted to manufacturing weapons of mass destruction that it said it hadn't manufactured since 1969.

 

An investigation of the most likely suspects in the anthrax case, such as the far-right outfits that terrorise abortion providers, might have brought the feds a little too close for comfort for the likes of Ashcroft. Before losing his US Senate seat to a dead man in 2000, Ashcroft tested the waters as a presidential candidate for the Christian Right. He received $26,500 from AmeriVision, a Christian Right fundraiser, according to a Salon magazine investigation. In addition to Ashcroft's presidential campaign, AmeriVision funded Prisoners of Christ, a support organisation for anti-abortion zealots who have been imprisoned for bombing clinics and murdering abortion providers.

 

If anything exceeded the seriousness of Bush's attacks on civil liberties, it was the shamelessness with which the administration and its corporate cronies continued to push their self-serving agenda. Under the guise of a recession-fighting "stimulus package," Bush signalled his willingness to open wide the taps of corporate welfare. Not content to shovel out $15 billion in aid to the airline industry and $22 billion in a sweetheart plane-leasing deal to Boeing - corporations that have laid off about 150,000 workers since September 11 - Bush now wants the government to refund tax money to a list of top-ranking US corporations. In the understatement of the year, Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, told the Wall Street Journal, "There is a general feeling George W. Bush has been a great president for the business community."
 

Handouts

Bush and his supporters have had few scruples about invoking the "war on terrorism" to defend the most naked handouts to big business. As we went to press, Bush was readying regulations that would undermine crucial parts of the Clean Air Act applied to energy producers. These changes are crucial to the war on terrorism, the administration insists, because they will aid in developing non-Mideast sources of energy. In December, House Republicans also wielded the "national security" club to win one-vote passage of another corporate handout: trade promotion, or "fast-track," authority. To big business, sacrifice is for suckers and patriotism is just another marketing angle.

 

The White House and its media toadies have sounded calls for national unity behind Bush's programme, virtually equating any criticism of Bush's right-wing agenda with support for terrorism. The Republican Party even ran an ad in South Dakota depicting Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle side by side with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Never mind that Daschle helped Bush to push the airline bailout and the USA PATRIOT Act through Congress. Since Daschle doesn't support drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, the ad contends, he's in Saddam's pocket.

 

This political spin has grown more hysterical because Bush and his handlers know that Bush's high approval ratings can only go down. In opinion polls, worries about the recession and the economy have recently displaced worries about terrorism. "The economy is Bush's soft underside," Republican pollster Bill McInturff told the Los Angeles Times. "[Bush's] father lost [the 1992 election] because he had a kind of patrician, 'let them eat cake' attitude. He's sworn not to let the same thing happen to him." But that may be a difficult charge for Bush's handlers to keep.

 

Bush has countered his father's passivity in the face of recession with Clinton-like "I feel your pain" expressions of concern and a fanatical pursuit of tax cuts for the rich and handouts to big business. He's banking on the fact that his media acolytes won't notice that he plans a banquet for Corporate America while throwing a few bones to unemployed workers. He's also getting a hand from the Democrats, whose 2002 election pitch seems to be "vote for us for a balanced budget." If anything is guaranteed to give Bush and the Republicans a free ride, it's Democrats sounding like lobbyists for the banking industry while workers continue to get hammered.
 

Lining up at the trough

As Corporate America lined up at the trough, it sent more workers to the unemployment line. In just the last few months, standard-bearers of American capitalism such as LTV and Bethlehem Steel went under. In a spectacular collapse, the white-collar crime syndicate known as Enron imploded, leaving 15,000 workers - stripped of their retirement savings - on the street. General Motors and Ford announced nearly 40,000 layoffs - in addition to job cuts already announced.

 

The social inequalities of the 1990s will only worsen in a recession. Even if the economy begins to rebound, unemployment will continue to increase. The recession will deal some devastating defeats to unions, which were unprepared to take advantage even of the boom years. But it will also make other groups of workers fight harder.

 

School districts, city halls, and state universities will try to push through cuts in essential programs. Meanwhile, the lifetime limits in former president Bill Clinton's welfare reform are taking effect now in states around the country - just as the effects of the recession take hold. The US will now experience the full impact of the shredded safety net.

 

These developments will heighten the issue of class inequality in all areas of US society. It will be harder to sell corporate giveaways as necessary concessions to national unity. More people will ask why their Social Security or Medicare has to be sacrificed for the Pentagon or corporate welfare. The issues of class inequality, the American injustice system, and others that moved people before September 11 will re-emerge in a sharper way.  

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McSally

The images that streamed from Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul were a propaganda dream for the US regime. Afghan women, after years of cruel subjugation by the Taleban, were daring to shed their veils and expose their faces once again to the world.

 

Cut now to the Prince Sultan US Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia. An American fighter pilot is climbing into a Chevrolet Suburban to make a trip off-base. The pilot, a Lieutenant-Colonel, is not wearing an Air Force uniform. The officer of the US military is instead wearing an "abaya" - a slightly less restrictive version of the burqa, it is still a suffocating head-to-toe robe.

 

The officer is of course a woman.

 

Martha McSally  was the first woman to serve in combat missions and is America's most senior female officer. At the beginning of 2002 she won a legal battle to overturn an Air Force regulation requiring women to wear the abaya when away from their bases. Now, it is no longer required, but merely

"strongly recommended."

 

That's right. After dropping bombs on Afghanistan, supposedly (amongst other things) to liberate its women from such gross injustices as having to wear the burqa, America's women pilots were then required to don an almost identical garment should they wish to venture out of their own base.