The hard left will tell you it is business as usual, whatever the outcome of next Tuesday’s United States presidential election — that George W Bush and John Kerry are two sides of the identical coin. Left-wing commentator George Monbiot has even urged Americans to vote for professional egotist and martyr Ralph Nader. We disagree.
With the candidates neck and neck, the intense international interest in Tuesday’s poll underscores its unique importance. In the world at large, Bush is a hugely unpopular president who many fear will do irreparable harm to human society, and its prospects, if he is returned for four more years. Rarely can such a wide spectrum of non-Americans have been so unanimous about the need for “regime change”.
Yes, liberal democratic presidents are as prone to military adventurism as conservatives, as John Pilger points out. Yes, Kerry’s record on the Iraq war is ambivalent — he voted for it and will continue it, however much he may castigate Bush for launching “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time”. But the Democrats have at least set a tentative time frame for US withdrawal from Iraq. And this is not the only war at issue. South Koreans fear Bush will destroy the peace and unity process with their northern neighbour by pre-emptively striking at one of his listed “rogue states”. Iran is at similar risk. Which candidate is more likely to start new wars?
Kerry has pledged to end Bush’s bullying unilateralism, rebuilding the US’s damaged relationship with Europe and engaging the alienated Muslim world. One can argue, as Pilger does, that this will merely lubricate US imperialist designs. Another way of viewing the matter is that it will enable the Europeans — lapdog Tony Blair obviously excepted — to exert a moderating influence on the volatile superpower.
But in any event, there are other election issues of vital interest to the world. While Bush refused to endorse the Kyoto Protocol, Kerry has authored legislation requiring the reporting of global arming pollutants and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. While Bush has cut funding for alternative energy options, and conspired with the oil cartels to block improved fuel efficiencies, Kerry has pledged $10-billion towards the building of more efficient vehicles and undertaken to replace 20% of US oil consumption with renewables. In every area, from the environment to gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research, Bush represents ignorance, the forces of vested interest, prejudice, superstition and intolerance. Ambivalent and vacillating though he may be on some issues, and plain wrong on others, such as Israel, Kerry clearly represents the forces of decency and rationality in the US.
What, for those opposed to Bush and everything he stands for, is the alternative? Pilger implies that any vote is irrelevant, Monbiot urges Americans to vote for Nader, as a step towards a new politics. But Nader’s support has fallen to 1%; he is plainly not an alternative in the making. His insistence on splitting the anti-Bush vote — despite the pleadings of such as filmmaker Michael Moore, hardly an establishment liberal — suggests a stubborn and wrong-headed self-conceit.
In the end, the hard left position is Lenin’s infantile disorder, not practical politics. Kerry is the “lesser evil”, however much Pilger may scoff at the idea, and Americans of goodwill should do everything in their power to ensure he is elected.
Blush hour
So, according to Department of Foreign Affairs spin-controller Ronnie Mamoepa, “the South African government accepts that Zimbabwe is an independent, sovereign state that has an inalienable right to determine and apply its immigration legislation as it may deem appropriate and in its own interest”.
Never mind that the midnight deportation of a Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) observer team was in defiance of a court order; never mind that Cosatu were there to meet civil society and labour groups who also have inalienable rights, and never mind the slap in the face for our quiet diplomats. Perhaps Mamoepa shares President Robert Mugabe’s inability to distinguish between government and the state. Perhaps he thinks the will of the executive should trump the decisions of the judiciary (we can’t imagine where that idea came from).
Unfortunately the nonsense doesn’t end there.
The ordinarily sensible Mosiuoa Lekota reckons relations with Harare are in rude good health following the release of South African prisoners from Zimbabwean jails, even if the African National Congress is “a bit” embarrassed by the Cosatu incident.
It is understandable that the national chair of the ANC would try to make light of the affair, but perhaps someone should drop off a few copies of The Herald at his office. In the course of a rambling diatribe, most of it written by the odious Zimbabwe Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, Lekota’s alliance partners are described, among other things, as lackeys of neo-colonialism. With its customary concern for the rule of law and human rights, the Pan Africanist Congress agrees.
Not for the first time Cosatu has demonstrated the moral and strategic leverage it can exert from within the tripartite alliance. We sincerely hope recent developments help to jolt the government out of its complacency about the Mugabe regime — but we may have to wait until the blushes subside.