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 Askia At-Large
Askia Muhammad
Columnist Page
Friday, November 5, 2004; Page 19
Pre-Election “Post-Op”
It’s hard to say what you want to say about the outcome of an election on Election Day, unless of course the outcome was never in doubt.
Not so the 2004 presidential balloting. So, I’ll analyze this contest, not knowing who will win, realizing that this will be read when the answers will already be known as to who is likely to be the next President, who will control the House and Senate, and how many new members there will be to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).
This was the most critical election in U.S. history. That’s an easy call. The issues of war and peace abroad vs. prosperity at home could not have been clearer.
And even though there were countless Washington insiders speaking out against what they allege are violations of the public trust by the incumbent, the 2004 election went down to the wire as possibly an even more tightly contested vote than in 2000 which was decided by one-vote on the Supreme Court, and only 500 disputed ballots in Florida. And the President is not only not ashamed to show his face on the campaign trail; he is proud of the quagmire he’s led the country into in Iraq. Can Cuba and Iran be very far behind?
On the issue of the Iraq War, which was declared by President George W. Bush in order to “disarm” that government of dangerous “weapons of mass destruction”--weapons which were never found because the Iraqi government destroyed them more than a decade ago after the first U.S. invasion, information the U.S. was in a position to know long before the war began--dozens of named individuals, along with dozens more on committees and panels, have all spoken out against the President’s decision to invade Iraq and his mishandling of the conflict.
Some of those better-known names (in alphabetical order) include: Hans Blix, former chief U.N. weapons inspector; Paul Bremer, the former top U.S. official appointed by Mr. Bush to govern Iraq after the invasion; Charles Duelfer, former Chief U.S. weapons inspector; Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator; David Kay, former Bush administration chief weapons inspector; Paul O’Neill, former Bush Treasury Secretary; Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine officer and U.N. weapons inspector; Gen. Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff; Joseph Wilson, former U.S. Ambassador; and Anthony Zinni, former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central Command; as well as numerous former CIA top analysts and 27 other former U.S. diplomats and military commanders, along with 52 former British diplomats who complained to their government.
And to think: Jimmy Carter was virtually hounded out of office because of inflation, long gas lines and deficits of around $70 billion per year, even before the Shah of Iran came here in exile which provoked militant students to seize the U.S. embassy and dozens of hostages.
In this election, Mr. Bush proudly campaigned based on the fact that he is leading what he calls a war against terrorism in Iraq. “But all of the terrorists are imaged as non-White people,” psychiatrist Dr. Frances Cress Welsing told this writer, “which is the emotional issue underlying his popularity, whether people are responding at a conscious level or at a sub-conscious level.”
It’s a terrible state of affairs.
“I can tell you, never before in my experience has the U.S. been in such danger as we are today,” former Sen. Carole Moseley Braun told me in an interview. “Danger, a lot of which is self-inflicted. People around the world are upset with us because of the kind of unilateralist foreign policy of this administration
“I was just in South Africa in August, and the people there are just downright mad at not just our government, but mad at Americans because of the kind of unilateral, arbitrary, disrespectful approach we’ve taken to dealing with our neighbors around the world.”
Domestically, millions of jobs have been exported overseas while the budget has gone from a surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars left over from the Bill Clinton Administration, to what is now being projected as a $500 billion deficit next year alone according to government estimates. More than 41 million Americans do not have health insurance; poverty and homelessness are increasing at record-setting rates to unprecedented levels. But the most important issue facing the Black community is not even on the table according to another expert.
“First of all, it is very unfortunate at this particular time in history that the Black community, through our many organizations and leadership, have not been able to craft and put on the table a clear agenda that reflects the interests of Black people,” Dr. Conrad Worrill, chairman of the National Black United Front, said in an interview. “This is a glaring absence in this election. So our observation of this election is that Black leadership in this country, for the most part, has abandoned the Black agenda to get along with White folks.”
“Our particular work in the movement at this time has been around the demand for reparations for Black people in America and in fact worldwide.”
From 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Plessy v. Ferguson case permitting “separate but equal” accommodations for Black folks to 1954 when that decision was reversed by the Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, the major issue that Black people united around was ending racial segregation under the law, according to Dr. Worrill. The Black movement, with the support of others he sad, was successful in dismantling racial segregation under the law in the 20th Century, he said.
“So the question today is what critical issue should be the issue to unite Black people in America? We suggest that critical issue is the demand for reparations.”
Reparations to the descendants of slaves in America. Now that would be a good place to start our political dialogue, no matter who is inaugurated President on Jan. 20, 2005. |
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