George Galloway 1 - 0 Senate [BBC news link]

Remove all ads!

I still don't understand why a "senate" hearing is Bush's fault.

 

Well, I'm not saying that Norm Coleman, along with most of the Senate, doesn't deserve to get knocked down a few pegs over their bungling of the run up to Iraq, etc.; in fact, I strongly support such a thing. However, I'm not sure George Galloway really is the right person to be "speaking truth to power," as it were...

 

I am begining to like this guy
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/22038/
No real idea who he is but he speaks atleast some truth. Which is more than can be said about those who accuse him.

 

Well, this is a really interesting point, because for many years that was the US take on the issue. America was all fired up to get Saddam, but Pol Pot died of old age. The point has been made over and over again that there are countless dictators out there in the world, but somehow Saddam was a special case. Yes, he was: he was sitting on millions of barrels of oil. The US would not give a rat's ass about what happens in the Middle East were it not for all that oil. Anyone who believes anything different is living on another planet.

This is the face of tyranny and murder. But the political uses of the phony "war on terror" far out weigh any search for REAL justice for the people who are the victims of the Pol Pots of the world. You never hear much about those victims because they don't have anything Americans want.

http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/pol_pot1.html

 

Er, he died what, seven years after the Cold War ended? And they were still just beginning to consider bringing him to justice?

Nooo -- they never intended to, period.

Sad but true. One of the things I'd like to see change.

 

You should probably be aware that in 1994 Galloway said to Saddam "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability." Which of Saddam's pursuits that he was tirelessly persistent in did Galloway have admiration for? From the same article, in his book he refers to Shiite resistance as a "fifth column" working against Iraq's interests. I thought that the left were all for Saddams removal, but they wanted it to be done internally by the people of Iraq? Galloway also defends the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

He opposed Saddam in the 1980s, but they suddenly switched sides and supported him in the 1990s. I wonder what changed?

Read the rest article and tell me if you still like Mr. Galloway.

By the way, before anyone writes this piece off a biased right-wing rant, you might skip down and read the last sentence of the article. Who is this George he is speaking of?

 

I would take your comment one step further, no one in politics is clean, at least in the US. Almost everything and everyone who is actively connected to politics is motivated by some agenda. The interesting thing is to look behind the agenda (not just the agenda of the people you oppose, but the ones you support as well). As they are all motivated by agendas, we are left with no choice but to accept the agenda of those whose work is most beneficial, or the least detrimental to our personal interests.

As an FYI, I wasn't attempting to discredit anyone or any argument in this thread. I was simply pointing out that Mr. Galloway is not somebody that is going to be very popular with most people in the west. Everyone is judged (fairly or unfairly) by who they support, and I wouldn't want to be judged based upon support of Mr. Galloway.

 

Remember kids, power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power

 

I guess that goes both ways.

I just returned from voting in my regional elections in Nordrhein-Westfalen. The some 40 year rule of our social democrats is about to end. Some fresh air after all.

As for Galloway, I found a nice article by Charley Reese: More Manly Galloways, Fewer Slimy Colemans. IMO he did admirably in front of a hostile congress comittee which sole purpose is to pummel on the U.N., that smeared him along the way to achieve that goal.

So, his undeniable flaws nonwithstanding, Galloway has balls and spine, which is quite something.

[ May 22, 2005, 20:55: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Or from Christopher Hitchens, who for some reason was there at the time, and has a rather more negative view.

 

I've seen Hitchens numerous times appearing as a right wing pundit on cable news channels and have never been impressed with his rhetoric. He has a new book on Thomas Jefferson coming out later this month. And I would still be curious to see how he renders him. The sub-title is "Author of America" and this is a view of Jefferson that I share - up to a point. Still I would give his book a fair reading.

As for his take on Galloway: it's pretty much what one would expect from a minon of the right:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/

He's just another Bush lackey, IMO.

 

"unfortunately, no one in the U.S. will home in on the witch hunters..."

Read these boards, Taluntain. They're "homed in on" over and over again by U.S. posters, including me. And it's damned frustrating to see nothing reported in the media over and over and over again as this administration blunders its way through the world and also of course through our own country where we have to live. At least you're only affected by their foreign policy. Only "The Daily Show" reports consistently and honestly on what this government is doing, and savages the news networks for their timidity and torpor. And they're on the Comedy Central network, for God's sake, sharing time with cartoons and stand-up comedians. (They did just win the Peabody Award though, the most prestigious award in newscasting.) As I said it's frustrating to point out the obvious and find out that so many people don't even know what facts you're talking about. It's like throwing pennies at a battleship that smiles and smiles and sails on.

 

I mean, Hitchens? Hitchens himself is a former lefty who sharply turned right and since George Bush hasn't found a war he didn't like. Usually, a convert hates his past most. I presume some 15 years ago, Hitchens and Galloway already wouldn't have found a lot of common ground, ideologically. Socialists and Trotzkyites loathe each other since the 1920s, with a venegance.

Hitchens' earliest political convictions were very left-wing, too. He became a Trotskyist during his years at Balliol College, Oxford. He wrote for the magazine International Socialism, whose publishers (the International Socialists) went on to be the nucleus of the British Socialist Workers Party. This group had a broad allegiance to Trotskyism but differed with more orthodox groups in refusing to defend Stalinist states as "workers' states". This was symbolized in their slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

The ideological difference between Galloway and Hitchens is that the former is an orthodox Socialist while the latter is a Trotzkyist. Oh then, swell

That is not so much to say that Hitchens is biased, he most certainly is, but to do just what he did to Galloway: Nothing Hitchens said did deal with Galloway's Senate hearings, but with his past and character.

And so Hitchens has a negative view on Galloway, an opponent of his favourite war? Surprise, surprise ... ... What else but a negative comment on Galloway would you expect from someone writing for the Weekly Standard, the second neocon outlet after the National Review, and, like FOX, owned by one Rupert Murdoch?

[ May 23, 2005, 14:04: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

From what I understand, Galloway's recent election over Oona King involved some rather nasty demogogery, played toward the prejudices of his Muslim electorate, involving King's ethnic heritage (half-black, half-Jewish). Why someone would have to be from the Right to be bothered by this character I don't understand; it's almost as bad as the Bush backers during the Repub primaries in the Carolinas in 2000 spreading the news that John McCain has a "black daughter," when he adopted a girl from Pakistan.

Just because he supported the overthrowing Saddam he's a Bush lackey? Aren't there other possible explanations? For example, imagine for a moment that he was still a Leftist, but at the same time a rapid partisan of the Kurds? Are you saying it's impossible for a Kurd to be Leftist, and still support (at least the idea of) US action against Iraq? He was also pro-intervention in Bosnia, which was perhaps the main split among the Left: between those who thought that they could only keep their Leftist credentials intact by opposing (US) power whatever policy it adopted, and those who decided that it would be morally irresponsible to not push for intervention, to ignore what was happening in Bosnia (or as some anti-intervention Leftists had it at the time, to "respect the national sovereignty of Yugoslavia").

Can someone really be a Bush lackey who:

1) As an avowed athiest, has never stopped hectoring the
Religious Right, whether over Schiavo, the former Pope, The Passion of the Christ, or Roy Moore, and who's favorite "founding father" was the notorious athiest Tom Paine.

2) Continues to agitate for the arrest of
Kissenger, has never reversed his opposition to the war in Vietnam, and, in commemorating his death, wrote of The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan.

3) Has supported (sorry, tired of linking!) Palestinian statehood for years, and critisized the Israeli occupation (tho yes, not a friend of Arafat or of Palestinian terror), while maintaining friendships with people like Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and while coming down on the Left on most economic and social issues.

So how does support of the Bush war trump all these other issues? Does regretting the fact that so many Leftists seem to think that authoritarian Sunni nationalists and islamists are freedom fighters, despite how they spend the huge bulk of their time killing other Iraqis, make one a Bush lackey?

Personal disclosure: I didn't at all like the lead up to the war, and I think the Bush team should pay political consequences for that. However, I was and am not in principle against the use of force to remove Saddam from power, and think that, if Bush incompetence doesn't screw things up, the whole adventure could turn out for the better. And yet I still see myself as a Leftist. I must be in denial, no?

Is it an orthodox Socialist position to speak blythly about the good things Stalin did (ala Galloway)? I've read a few arguments that almost seemed to hold that Trotsky must have been worse than Stalin, as so many so-called neo-cons were former Trotskyites, and obviously neo-cons are more of an evil threat to the world than Stalin ever was.

 

And what has all this to do with Galloway allegedly taking money from Saddam, which is practically what that Senate comittee implies, and which is doubtful to say the least?

Galloway has flaws, I never denied that, but hold him to his flaws, and don't conjur up evidence that is probably forged anyway, only to smear him.

Better deal with him on the issues - call him a racist, a stalinist, a silly character - fine with me, and he probably deserves it - but please no neo-McCarthyesque show as in front of that Senate comittee.

And that's my beef with Hitchens. He goes along cavalierly and suggests: ' Galloway is an a**hole anyway, so what?'

Hitchens isn't free of flaws himself Hitch criticises Kissinger as a one man rolling crime wave and points out his support for the odious regimes, and is utterly blind of that the Bush policy he supports is actually doing basically the same thing on a larger scale:

Cooperation with odious regimes like Karimov's and others, and disappearing people, aka rendition - and all that much more active than Kissinger - thanks to Bush's war the perpetrators of the odious parts are no longer sinsister moustached south american militaries but the enlighted US armed forces.

To quess the Kurdish uprising Saddam killed probably about ten thousand Kurds, a crime that cries to heaven - with his good intentions Bush well killed about five times that.

Hitchens is the Humanitarian with the Guillotine.

 

This will be difficult to explain, because it's not about politics, but about clarity. But what follows is largely off-topic, but I wish to make a case of what led up to the war, and its consquences for Americans, so I will need everyone's patience, please.

Hitchens appears regularly on cable news channels, usually touting his support for the war in Iraq and the neocon aganda. This is the centerpiece of George II's presidency, as well as that of Cheney's.

Point to another Bush accomplishment for us. Here at home: The tax cuts have been washed out by a huge and painful national debt; healthcare prescription drugs was a massive give away to the drug industry; bankruptcy reform was written by the credit card companies; energy policy, written by the energy companies. Investment is poor. The stock market is still not anywhere close to what it was in 2000 (and George is still trying to convince people that they should eliminate Social Security in favor of stocks and bonds). The only safe investment is your home. Great. Liberals understand all the above, Hithcens - as far as I know - does not.

Foreign policy: The war in Iraq. It has cost America almost all of the goodwill and sympathy that was generated after 9/11. Our allies now see us as a bully - a superpower that is arrogant and entirely one-sided in its appoach.

It is no accident that America's policy mirrors the man in charge.

Now, the talk is of "democracy" for all the world, with the construction of an American empire to keep it that way - yes? One of the major lessons learned from WWII is that a propagnda machine that can reach into people's lives can convince them of almost anything - say it enough times and it becomes a reality for them.

The drive for empire is typically centered around the notion that the nation is "surrounded by enemies." Everyone hates us because we are so free; they hate us for our way of life; they hate us because we are so successful. Does anyone really believe this? You bet. That's why Bush can give the Saudi Prince a big smooch on the lips, have him for dinner, and send him on his way back to continue one of the most oppressive, undemocratic regimes in the Middle East. So much for "democracy and freedom." Just give us what it's really all about - your oil. Liberals understand all of the above - as far as I know - Hitchens does not.

Hitchens has taken on the role of advocate for this war, one of such dubious motive. He is in effect a part of the propaganda machine that feeds all the misinformation that keeps the meager support that is left for this war alive. I can say with all honesty that if there was still wide spread support for this war, and if it had been successful, that America would have started another - Syria, Iran (maybe still), who knows who would be next with these guys.

Hitchens has close ties to the neocon movement in American politics. It is a movement that has advocated the "American Century" - an American empire. He has the right to change his mind on the issues and to write about what he thinks. But for him to use his former "liberal creditials" in the process is wholly dishonest. He's not a "liberal" who happens to support the war. He is now a right wing supporter and strong advocate for the war.

[ May 23, 2005, 18:21: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

What makes you think Kurds are so different ? US-Marines, Kurdish-Guerillas and Karl May. Doesn't sound like something.

[ May 23, 2005, 19:14: Message edited by: Iago ]