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The vast majority
of non-Americans, including Europeans and Arabs, along
with some 50 million U.S. voters were hoping they could
finally say adieu to George W. Bush and his coterie of
corporate cronies, pro-Israel neo-cons, gung-ho
flag-wavers and religious right-wingers on November 2.
It wasn’t to be. Now that the shock has warn off, it is
time to reflect upon what went wrong and what another
four years of the Bush administration may mean for
America and the world.
Post-election America is polarised as
rarely before. There are now two Americas with 50
million of the electorate having cast their ballots for
an end to the Bush doctrine of endless wars and a
re-embracing of international laws and institutions, the
other 54 million out to impose their so-called “morals
and values” on others and show who’s boss in the global
arena.
Numerous polls had put the candidates
neck and neck, while on the day itself exit polls had
come up with a definitive Kerry win. Democrats knew that
voter turnout was at an unprecedented high, which
conventional wisdom said was good for their candidate,
and believed John Kerry had done enough to influence
Hispanics, African Americans and blue-collar workers in
the so-called swing states of Pennsylvania, Florida and
Ohio. Kerry was already a favourite with women voters
and the under-25s.
Then came the shocker. Florida fell
to Bush and so did Ohio, the latter by a whisker.
Although provisional and absentee
ballots remained uncounted in Ohio, with allegations of
voter intimidation and tampered-with electronic voting
machines rife, the Democratic contender, choking back
tears, generously conceded defeat, just as his
predecessor Al Gore did in the year 2000.
So what happened? Some pundits say
Kerry wasn’t ruthless enough when it came to exposing
the shenanigans around Bush’s illegal war in Iraq and
wasn’t decisive about bringing America’s ‘finest’ home
from the killing fields.
Others say he simply lacked charisma
or the common touch, which Bush allegedly has mastered
despite his being a multi-millionaire Yale grad and
member of its elite Skull and Bones society as is Kerry.
Yet others believe the final result
came down to moral or social issues, such as the merits
of stem-cell research, same-sex marriage and the
pro-lifers’ wish to bin Roe versus Wade.
But in the final analysis, Kerry
represented little other than an “anyone but Bush”
candidate. Millions of dollars were spent on
discrediting him as a flip-flopper while several of his
fellow Vietnam vets banded together to make what came to
be known as “Swift Boat” ads in an attempt to discredit
Kerry’s national service.
At the same time, the Republican
campaigners were creatively hyping the fear factor with
television ads showing menacing wolves depicting
America’s enemies, while other, highlighting the
flag-draped caskets of 9-11 victims, played on voter
emotions and patriotism.
Just days before the election
America’s bogeyman numero uno Osama bin Laden,
looking well groomed and relaxed, conveniently popped up
from no-where to threaten America with doom and gloom in
the event their Texan Commander-in-Chief was allowed to
keep his pretzels in the Oval Office.
And in case the so-called “Security
Moms” weren’t yet shivering in their slippers, the Bush
propaganda arm Fox News aired a video of the 25-year-old
suspected American terrorist and Moslem convert Adam
Pearlman, aka Adam Gadahn. His face covered, Pearlman
threatened a worse attack than 9-11 was planned when
America’s streets would run with blood.
Those lurid videos could well have
tipped the balance in Bush’s favour with the more
gullible but when it came to the cosmopolitan sceptics
of New York, the glossy Californians, the upper crust
Bostonians and the political savvy sophisticates of
Washington D.C., they fell on deaf ears. Indeed, a
massive 90 per cent of Washington voters opted for
Kerry.
Probably the most decisive factor in
this election was the energising of the President’s
grass roots supporters, messianic evangelical Christians
of which there are said to be 70 million.
Bush makes no secret of his
Born-again status thanks to evangelical family friend
and preacher Billy Graham, who baptised him and turned
him into a reformed black sheep of the family. In every
speech, Bush covertly signals to this group that he is
one of them and has made it clear that he is running a
faith-based administration.
Bush believes the Creator is in his
White House guiding his decisions and so do a
significant number of well-heeled television preachers
and Baptist university heads, who, for the first time,
rallied their flocks with fire and brimstone to the
polling stations.
Catholic leaders got into the act
this time, too, with several warning their congregations
of eternal hellfire should they vote for pro-choice
Kerry, himself a catholic.
Frighteningly, a large sector of the
evangelical community is eager for the end-times
scenario of Armageddon as a prelude to the Second Coming
of the Messiah. But before this catastrophic event, they
believe the Jews must build a third temple in Jerusalem,
where the Haram Al-Sharif, including the golden-domed
Al-Aqsa mosque now stands.
It is for this reason that most
evangelicals side with Israel against the Palestinians
and could explain why George W. Bush has displayed such
fervent pro-Sharon bias and illogical antipathy towards
Yasser Arafat. His appointment of such pro-Israel hawks
as Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, Donald Wolfowitz, and
David Frum (originator of the infamous “Axis of Evil”)
in his administration does nothing to counter this
theory.
Many of Bush’s detractors accuse him
of blurring the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church
and state and putting religious belief and gut feeling
before debate and logic. This he denies, saying he has
sworn to protect the Constitution and the freedom of
worship enshrined therein.
Two “nations under God”
As things
stand, the U.S. is now two “Nations under God” and both
detest the other with unprecedented venom. Small town
Middle America along with the cowboy states of Texas and
Arizona and the southern Baptists perceive residents of
the Western and Eastern coasts as pretentious, immoral,
croissant munching, tree-hugging leftists. For their
part, Californians, Bostonians and New Yorkers view the
Bush supporters as gun-toting, hymn-singing, parochial
rednecks.
Some are warning of an upcoming
ideological civil war. Kirwan, an angry Democrat writing
on the far left Rense website, encapsulates the mood of
many with this. “Most of us went to bed on November 2,
thinking we were all still Americans, only to discover
when the sun came up on November 3 that 48 per cent of
us were now ‘people without a country’. Becoming
stateless overnight is not something anyone should take
lightly…
“Fight this takeover of your country
as you would if they were wearing foreign uniforms…” the
writer advocates, adding, “America is gone, the idea is
dead and its people have become the thing they feared
the most – that mindless mob with that sheen of the
zealots in their glassy fear-filled eyes, while the
stink of victim-hood radiates from their every pore.”
The fury and disgust of Ben Tripp
writing on CounterPunch is evident too. He says,
“The American voter, the Average Joe, is a poltroon.
This wretched specimen has the wit of a condolence card,
the courage of a shaved rabbit, the morals of a
schoolyard dope peddler, the integrity of a counterfeit
nickel, and the gall of a second-hand coffin salesman”
“How dare your vote against other
Americans,” Tripp accuses. “That’s all ‘morals’ is these
days: a code word for hate. How many millions of puffed
up poisonous psalm singing sons-of-Birchers voted, not
for Bush but against… black people and Northerners and
single women and poor children? What is the matter with
you that you want nothing more in this life than to
stick a jackboot into the ribs of the downtrodden?”
In his November 5 article in the
mainstream New York Times entitled “No
Surrender”, Paul Krugman writes: “I don’t hope for more
and worse scandals and failures during Mr. Bush’s second
term, but I do expect them. The resurgence of Al Qaeda,
the debacle in Iraq, the explosion of the budget deficit
and the failure to create jobs weren’t things that just
happened to occur under Mr. Bush’s watch. They were the
consequences of bad policies made by people who let
ideology trump reality”.
Britain’s former Foreign Secretary
Robin Cook despondently writes in The Guardian in
an op-ed entitled “Bush will now celebrate by putting
Fallujah to the torch”: “Now the world is fated to four
more years of confrontation, which will widen rather
than narrow the gulf between the west and the east. It
is ironic, given that terrorism played such a central
role in the election, but Osama bin Laden must be as
gratified as Dick Cheney that George Bush is back.”
Although Bush has made noises to the
effect he wants to reach out to his country’s allies, in
particular France and Germany, Cook is highly sceptical.
“What makes this web of reactionary ideologues a menace
to the world is that they believe complex, historic
problems have simple, instant, military solutions,” he
says.
“And it is an article of faith with
them that America must acquire full-spectrum dominance
of military capabilities in order that it can impose
such solutions unilaterally. They are the product of an
era in which America has emerged as the sole
hyper-power, and they regard allies not as proof of
diplomatic strength but as evidence of military
weakness,” writes Cook.
While he urges Tony Blair to pressure
his U.S. counterpart to engage in the Mid-East peace
process, he doesn’t hold out much hope, again, due to
Bush’s evangelical support base. Bush owes them big and
they know it.
New York columnist Thomas L. Friedman
says: “My problem with the Christian fundamentalist
supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the
fact that I am of a different faith (Friedman is
Jewish). It is the way in which he and they have used
that religious energy to promote divisions and
intolerance at home and abroad.”
As nations pondered in a daze of
disbelief on how they should react – apart from Israel,
Russia, Belarus and Kuwait, which all wanted a
Republican win – an elated Bush, now armed with a
mandate from the majority of Americans, made it clear
there will be more of the same and reaffirmed his
commitment to exporting democracy to the Middle East.
In Washington, D.C on May 29, 2003
Bush boasted: “I’ve got very good relations with
President Mubarak and Crown Prince Abdullah and the King
of Jordan, Gulf Coast countries,” while on January 20
this year, he said: “King Abdullah of Jordan, the King
of Morocco, I mean, there’s a series of places – Qatar,
Oman – I mean, places that are developing – Bahrain,
they’re all developing the habits of free societies.”
Reassured? Perhaps not!
One thing we must all do is hold on
to our hats for a rough ride. Syria, Iran and North
Korea are vulnerable and the Palestinians never more so.
Moslems entering the U.S. will continue to be profiled
and, in some instances, humiliated, while Americans can
gradually kiss goodbye to their civil liberties.
If you are not a Bush convert, and
you can hang on until the next U.S. election in 2008,
you may be faced with another presidential battle
between another member of the Bush family dynasty Jeb
Bush, or alternatively former New York Mayor Rudi
Giulliani, or even the muscle bound Terminator Arnold
Schwarzenegger (provided that part of the constitution
disallowing foreign-born presidents can be amended)
facing off against Hillary Clinton. Depressed? You
should be.
We can only keep our fingers crossed
that the prediction of Teresa Heinz Kerry that four more
years of Bush would be four more years of hell doesn’t
materialise. Who knows! In his second term, Bush might
soften into a compassionate conservative and morph from
a warmonger into a peace purveyor. And, as we all know,
spaghetti grows on trees. | 
