William Greider | The Nation
The Puppet Talks Back
The news that the Iraqi government has banned Blackwater USA, the notorious mercenary firm, from operating in the country reveals another of the great fictions promoted by the Bush crowd in the course of this catastrophic war. The notion that Iraq is a sovereign nation in control of its own destiny.
The Bush Administration announced this myth several years ago after Iraqis adopted a Constitution and started electing a government. It was shrewd political propaganda--a reassuring sign of progress--but the claim was not true then or now. Major media and American political leaders, nevertheless, embraced the happy talk and pretended it was real.
(The Nation's own Jeremy Scahill has done pathbreaking reporting on Blackwater: See Bush's Shadow Army and Mercenary Jackpot, among others. Scahill also testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense in May about the impact of private military contractors on the conduct of the war.)
The Lies of Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan has come back from the tomb of history to correct the record. He did not make any mistakes in his eighteen-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. He did not endorse the regressive Bush tax cuts of 2001 that pumped up the federal deficits and aggravated inequalities. He did not cause the housing bubble that is now in collapse. He did not ignore the stock market bubble that subsequently melted away and cost investors $6 trillion. He did not say the Iraq War is "largely about oil."
Check the record. These are all lies.
Greenspan's testimony endorsing the Bush tax cuts was extremely influential but now he wants to run away from it.
Now That's a Patriot Act
Now here is a Patriot Act everyone can get behind. It's called the Patriot Corporation of America Act and it rewards the companies that don't screw their employees and weaken the country by moving the jobs to China and elsewhere.
In these troubled times, doesn't that sound like common sense? Government policy presently works in opposite ways. It literally assists and subsidizes the disloyal free riders who boost their profits by dumping their obligations to the home country. It's called globalization. Establishment wisdom says there is nothing politicians can do about it.
But the bills introduced Thursday by three senators and seven representatives, all Democrats, can begin to reverse this political perversity. Don't expect a roll call anytime soon, but I think the governing principle is pivotally important.
Pax Pelosi
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has demonstrated admirable shrewdness in the fight she provoked with her own Democrats over approving new trade agreements for George W. Bush. She backed off.
The conflict is not entirely settled yet, but Pelosi wisely decided to defuse the intense anger in the Democratic caucus rather than try to bull through it. In pursuit of unity, she has shown respect for the new folks elected last fall and other rank-and-file Democrats determined to challenge the free-trade status quo and to change it. That is good for them. And good for her.
The surest sign Pelosi is moving in the right direction are the hostile rebukes from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. "Trade Double-Cross," said the headline on the Journal's editorial. "House Democrats go protectionist." This is nonsense, but typical of the Journal's slanderous style. Pelosi is demeaned as a pawn of organized labor and lefty extremists. Makes you wonder if the doctrinaire right-wing Journal could get any worse with Rupert Murdoch as the owner.
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