A War Without Gore

By Don Ogden

Here’s an interesting quote. Tell me who recently said:

“If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion; if what we represent to the world is empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion.”

Was it Noam Chomsky? Howard Zinn? Molly Ivans? No, it was actually Al Gore speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco and seeming to finally discover some backbone in the struggle to help Democrats overcome their absurd fear of being labeled unpatriotic in the face of the Bush regime’s war machine. Last week it appeared as if both houses of the entire U.S. Congress were about to roll over and let the far-right cabal in the Whitehouse have its way with them with regard to invading Iraq. This week it’s not so sure. Part of that change in atmosphere is the propensity of the present occupant in the White House to shoot his mouth off before engaging his brain. In the course of his saber rattling and war drum beating, Mr. Bush has managed to finally raise the ire of the likes of Tom Daschle and Robert Byrd by accusing Democrats of having no interest in the nation’s security. But perhaps of more interest is Al Gore’s coming out in opposition to the Bush policy of pre-emption, the latest face of ugly empire. The man who should be sitting in the Oval Office, as opposed the one enthroned there by certain members of the Supreme Court, launched a relatively commendable salvo at the Republican warmongers and their marketing campaign to win more seats in Congress while filling more body bags on the battlefield. That cynical effort was referenced in Gore’s speech by pointing to the smoking gun of Carl Rove’s lost computer disc and the duplicity of the present alleged Veep, Dick Cheney, who abhors talk of political motivation in the Administration’s war effort from one side of his mouth, while boosting the effort from the other.
Gore’s gorge rightfully rose in the face of the Administration’s blatant manipulation of public perception, the mishandling of the so-called War on Terrorism, and their bullyboy antics in the schoolyard of international politics. But, on careful reading of his speech one finds that, in spite of his grand words, the former Veep is still very much a fan of American Empire. Naturally, rightwing ideologues like the New York Times’ William Safire were quick to jump on Gore for such inconsistencies. Be that as it may, the fact that Gore said anything at all that smacks of dissent against the rising tide of war is to be commended. While unilateral U.S. military pre-emption has always been in the Empire’s bag of tricks, the seeming national acceptance of actually establishing an international policy of pre-emption was correctly pegged by Gore as a highly dangerous precedent. In the Nuclear Age, the last thing in the world we need is a green light for nations to take each other out on the pretext of a perceived threat. As Gore noted:

“President Bush is presenting us with a proposition that contains within itself one of the most fateful decisions in our history: a decision to abandon what we have thought was America's mission in the world - a world in which nations are guided by a common ethic codified in the form of international law -- if we want to survive”

Regardless of Gore’s own inconsistencies in the business of empire and the political implications of his coming out so publicly against the Bush regime, who would you rather have his finger on the trigger? Some little wannabe cowboy surrounded by dangerous rightwing fanatics or just Al?