Bush's war at home demands new thinking

The terrorist outrages of Sept. 11 and succeeding wave of anthrax attacks have served to "legitimize" the unpopular regime of President-select George W. Bush. It has now been one year since this country experienced the shock and outrage of his stolen election. The blatant vote rigging, racism and thuggery that stole the Florida vote (presided over by Governor Jeb Bush) appeared to leave an indelible stain upon his ill-gotten presidency. At his inauguration festivities Bush was hard-pressed to buy a spectacle that would make him appear presidential in the face of more protestors than supporters.

Now, Bush is momentarily enjoying the highest popular approval ratings that have been recorded for any modern president. Some of the most reactionary forces in American life, as represented by our Confederate-speaking Attorney General John Ashcroft, have been given a free hand to implement policies that they have only been able to dream about in the decades since Richard Nixon's push for single party rule.

THE BANNER OF 'LAW AND ORDER'

Bush and Ashcroft, along with a compliant Congress, have pushed through new "get tough on terror," "law and order" measures that surely represent their own long-standing dreams of power, but that just as surely represent the worst possible response to the current crisis.

The new laws passed by the House and Senate give drastic new powers to law enforcement agencies: an increased ability by government agencies to conduct secret searches of properties and business records; increased use of wiretaps with a decrease in judicial oversight, including surveillance of email and internet use; and, despite some toning-down, broad threats of detention and deportation of immigrants.

There could be even worse to come. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz discussed the possibility of using the U.S. military in domestic law enforcement under the rubric of the posse comitatus act so beloved by the radical Right. The FBI is openly discussing the use of drugs and torture in order to extract confessions from suspects.

This is indeed "law and order" beyond the dreams of Nixon's avarice. But all the inhuman laws and orders that went into the creation of the prison-industrial complex did absolutely nothing to prevent the carnage of Sept. 11. No extension of its clampdown logic can successfully protect the American people from further acts of terrorism, whether from bin Laden-style fundamentalist fanatics or from the homegrown neo-Nazis who are their admirers.

The knowledge of this is openly stated in the announcement by the Bush administration that this war is PERMANENT. The FBI has begun to single out domestic political organizations that it might target and, unsurprisingly, they are groups that have been involved in left and anti-globalization politics. This targeting began immediately after Sept. 11 when many domestic political prisoners were placed in isolation, from Sundiata Acoli to José Solís.

'CRIME' AND TERROR AND HISTORY

Bush is attempting to use the terrorist threat to stamp out the living heart of the American revolution. The technology of anti-humanism can serve Bush and bin Laden equally well, but the struggle for human dignity inevitably escapes them. What is vital now is for the forces of revolt in this country to reconnect with a vision of a new society that is the absolute opposite of both Bush and bin Laden and other terrorists.

The terrorist attacks on the U.S. brought out the tremendous reserve of compassion, bravery and heroism that exists within the American people as among all people. These qualities do not find their historic counterparts in the American slavemasters who, Taliban-like, outlawed education. They are found in the Abolitionist and Civil Rights Movements which fought in the press, in field and forest, on the battlefield and at the schoolhouse door against injustice.

This courage and strength is seen today in the movement against the prison-industrial complex and police brutality, among the family members of victims of police murders who fight for justice in the teeth of state terror, and among prisoners who fight to understand the social relationships that have put millions into prison and to articulate alternative social visions. This is a world away from the Bush administration's media-focused food drops over Afghanistan, done even as it contrives dirty political deals which, after the war, will betray the hopes of the Afghan people for genuine freedom.

It is necessary as well to see the heroism that exists among the oppressed people of Afghanistan, as with the efforts of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and other secular and revolutionary forces there who fight against the fascistic misogyny of the Taliban.

Before Sept. 11 the greatest challenge facing the Bush administration, and the ruling class as a whole, came from the movements from below, from the streets: the movement against police brutality and the prison-industrial complex, from Los Angeles to Cincinnati, and the movement against global capital, from Seattle to Genoa. These movements are struggling for an assertion of human dignity as an absolute value as against the dehumanization of racism, sexism, homophobia and capitalism.

Now these movements themselves are profoundly challenged by Bush's reinvigorated reaction and bin Laden's reaction that poses as anti-imperialism. Any movement against the current war must also be, first and foremost, a war of ideas and visions of the future.

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