US ELECTIONS

John Pilger: John Pilger: 2004: Choose Your Favorite Pro-War Candidate

BUSH OR KERRY? LOOK CLOSELY AND THE DANGER IS THE SAME

A myth equal to the fable of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is
gaining strength on both sides of the Atlantic. It is that John Kerry offers a
world-view different from that of George W Bush. Watch this big lie
grow as Kerry is crowned the Democratic candidate and the "anyone but Bush"
movement becomes a liberal cause celebre.

While the rise to power of the Bush gang, the neoconservatives,
belatedly preoccupied the American media, the message of their equivalents in the
Democratic Party has been of little interest. Yet the similarities are
compelling. Shortly before Bush's "election" in 2000, the Project for
the New American Century, the neoconservative pressure group, published an
ideological blueprint for "maintaining global US pre-eminence,
precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security
order in line with American principles and interests". Every one of its
recommendations for aggression and conquest was adopted by the
administration.

One year later, the Progressive Policy Institute, an arm of the
Democratic Leadership Council, published a 19-page manifesto for the "New
Democrats", who include all the principal Democratic Party candidates, and
especially John Kerry. This called for "the bold exercise of American power" at
the heart of "a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party's tradition
of muscular internationalism". Such a strategy would "keep Americans safer
than the Republicans' go-it-alone policy, which has alienated our
natural allies and overstretched our resources. We aim to rebuild the moral
foundation of US global leadership ..."

What is the difference from the vainglorious claptrap of Bush? Apart
from euphemisms, there is none. All the Democratic presidential candidates
supported the invasion of Iraq, bar one: Howard Dean. Kerry not only
voted for the invasion, but expressed his disappointment that it had not gone
according to plan. He told Rolling Stone magazine: "Did I expect George
Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did."
Neither Kerry nor any of the other candidates has called for an end to the
bloody and illegal occupation; on the contrary, all of them have demanded more
troops for Iraq. Kerry has called for another "40,000 active service
troops". He has supported Bush's continuing bloody assault on
Afghanistan,and the administration's plans to "return Latin America to American
leadership" by subverting democracy in Venezuela.


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