June 25, 2008
by Robert Fantina

It has not been a banner month for U.S. President George Bush.

Things started out poorly in Europe. As the lame duck president strutted around that continent in a last-ditch effort to appear 'presidential,' something he has never achieved, he once again targeted the 'threat' posed by Iran. In his attempts to gain support for additional measures to force Tehran to surrender its uranium enrichment program, which that country claims exists for peaceful purposes, Mr. Bush said he wanted to resolve the situation diplomatically, but that "all options are on the table."

The president even refused to remove the disastrous option of invasion that he used with such dismal results in Iraq. How he expects anyone to take his current rantings seriously is not clear. But he goes on and on and even continues to proclaim that, despite five years of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the invasion of Iraq was 'the right thing to do.'

Regardless of the various 'options' that clutter Mr. Bush's table, a look at the motivation of having them is somewhat puzzling. What is more puzzling is the fact that European leaders met with him at all.

Mr. Bush, along with many world leaders and the United Nations, claims that he is anxious for Iran to stop its nuclear program. He and they apparently fear some undefined horror resulting from Iran having nuclear weapons. They see Iran as a rogue nation with designs of destroying its many enemies.

Would it not make sense for the United Nations and world leaders to demand that the U.S. surrender its weapons programs? The horror that the U.S. could inflict with its weapons is not undefined or undetermined: just ask the people of Iraq or Afghanistan. Why is the world not offering the U.S. incentives, as it is offering Iran, to give up its weapons of mass destruction? Iran is suspected of attempting to develop such weapons; it is no secret from anyone that the U.S. possesses enough of them to destroy the world several times over. Surely Mr. Bush could be persuaded to give them up if provided with enough oil.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had harsh but optimistic words regarding Mr. Bush. Addressing a large crowd in Iran, he accused the U.S. president of wanting to spread his death and terror from Afghanistan and Iraq to Iran. "I tell him (Bush) ... your era has come to an end. With the grace of God, you won't be able to harm even one centimeter of the sacred land of Iran."

The grace of God was apparently insufficient to prevent Mr. Bush from harming far more that one centimeter of Iraq. The sand under which exists the oil Mr. Bush covets is red from the blood of his million victims.

As Mr. Bush hopped from one obscure city in Europe to another (he avoided the anti-Bush crowds in some of the larger cities), things were not looking particularly bright back home. The House of Representatives last week passed legislation extending unemployment benefits for three months. This is an apparent, although extremely belated, attempt to throw some bone to those who are suffering because of seven years of an administration that cares only for the rich.

The legislation would extend unemployment benefits from the current six months, to nine. Unemployment, by the government's skewed reasoning, now stands at 5.5%. It must be remembered that, after a person has been unemployed for six months, the government ceases to count that person. It assumes that he or she has either found work, or has simply given up looking.

(Article Continues Below)

Can we all just sit back and take a look at that reasoning for a minute? After six months of unemployment, does one no longer need food, shelter and clothing? Does one's landlord or the bank that holds one's mortgage stop looking for payment after six months? At the current rate of home foreclosures, that does not seem likely.

So why, one might ask, does the government feel that an unemployed person, after six months, has the luxury of simply giving up seeking employment? If people were sufficiently wealthy to live without working, they would probably not have become 'unemployed' in the first place, because they probably wouldn't be working. They would be too busy enjoying any number of leisure pursuits.

So the House passed this legislation, but it is only symbolic; it has little chance of passage in the Senate, and Mr. Bush has promised to veto it anyway.

Republicans, once again following their leader off the cliff, have stated that extended benefits should only be offered in states with high rates of unemployment. Apparently unemployed people in states with low rates don't count. Perhaps they have all been looking for more than six months, and are now sailing the South Seas on their yachts, rather than seeking minimum-wage work on an assembly line similar to the one that laid them off six months earlier.

Not unexpectedly, the Republicans are casting the House's vote in political terms. Representative Doc Hastings, R-WA, weighed in with this puzzling statement:

"It's an unfortunate spectacle to see the leaders of this Congress manipulate the extension of unemployment benefits into a partisan weapon."

So now the efforts of Congress to assist the people it has sworn to serve is 'a partisan weapon.' Attempting to provide the 8,500,000 people that the government admits are unemployed with the means to subsist is 'partisan.'

But Mr. Hastings is wrong; the failure of Congress to assist the growing numbers of unemployed people in the U.S. is not partisan; it spans both major parties. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D- NV, continued in his role as Congress's biggest disappointment when he said he wouldn't force a vote on this issue, but that he might tie increased unemployment benefits to the next Iraq war spending bill. He must believe that Americans are all afflicted with poor memories.

In the past when he has sent a bill to Mr. Bush that the president didn't like, and promptly vetoed, Mr. Reid has provided him with exactly what he wanted. So we can now try our hand at predicting the future: a war spending bill with increased unemployment benefits attached to it is sent to Mr. Bush; he vetoes it; Congress then sends him a war spending bill with no strings attached (we have all given up on any possibility of a date for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq); Mr. Bush signs it and Mr. Reid and his fellow Democrats proclaim a victory. No, when one thinks about it, that is not predicting the future, it is merely rehashing the past.

This is the land that Mr. Bush presides over: two disastrous wars abroad and people not able to provide the basic necessities for themselves and their families at home. A Congress that calls abject failure victory, and that continually deprives U.S. citizens of basic needs in order to 'support the troops' by providing increased opportunities for them to be killed and maimed. And what is Mr. Bush's view of it all? Perhaps start a third war with his remaining seven months in office, and veto a bill that assists the unemployed.

It has been a long, hard seven and a half years for the United States, but one has little sympathy; its citizens may not have elected Mr. Bush in 2000, but they did in 2004. A victory by GOP presidential candidate John McCain in November, which will mean four more years just like the previous eight, will remove any sympathy from even the most compassionate onlooker.

If you enjoyed this post, please make a donation to help keep this website active:

Click Here for the Free Populist Party Newsletter

Robert Fantina [send him email] is a long-time activist for peace and social justice. He has worked with the Coalition for Peace Action in New Jersey. Following the 2004 presidential election, he moved to Canada, where he now resides. Robert is the author of Desertion and the American Solder: 1776-2006.

More Articles from Robert Fantina