Watching
the “debates” between John Kerry and George
W. Bush was like traveling into the pages of Alice
in Wonderland. I did derive a certain pleasure from
watching Mr. Bush squirm and scowl and, in the final
session, smirk like a child whose successfully raided
the cookie jar. I found Mr. Kerry’s verbal
dexterity and ability to think on his feet quite
impressive, and I don’t think anyone was really
surprised when the resident in the White House tried
to overwhelm his opponent with political rhetoric,
misinformation, and not-so-clever story telling.
After
each debate, pundits and commentators chatted about
the candidates’ demeanor, their style of delivery,
and how they might have differed on important “issues”.
They then went on to speculate who might have won,
and to flash instant polls across the screen showing,
they said, how viewers felt about the candidates’
performance. No one bothered to ask why these two
men, vying for most powerful political office in
the world, failed to talk about the Israeli government’s
attacks on Palestinian refugee camps during the
past two weeks, killing more than one hundred people,
including thirty children. No one demanded to know
why the candidates didn’t talk about the threat
global warming poses to our planet. No one asked
how the United States of America intends to export
“democracy” to the Middle East, when there
are more people in prison per capita in the U.S.
than any other country, with the possible exception
of Russia, when 45 million Americans do not have
health care, millions more live in impoverished
crime-ridden ghettoes, and the gap between the rich
and poor in the U.S. is greater and growing faster
than any other western nation.
Mr.
Bush and Senator Kerry were not asked about Northern
Ireland, which saved the candidates from what might
have been an embarrassing moment. Neither man has
demonstrated that he knows much about the struggle
to create peace and social justice in N. Ireland.
Nor do they appear to think that part of the world
is all that important. After all, Exxon-Mobil isn’t
rushing to explore for oil in downtown Belfast.
The Pentagon may not think that residents of Derry
would welcome a star wars missile silo near their
city. American companies scouring the world for
cheap, read slave, labor are not about to “outsource”
manufacturing jobs to N. Ireland.
Neither
candidate mentioned a bill recently introduced in
Congress that will have serious implications for
Irish immigrants. This bill, designed in part to
intimidate political opposition in the United States,
expands the draconian Patriot Act. According to
the American Civil Liberties Union, the Republican-sponsored
bill will make “mere association or membership
in the [designated terrorist group] a crime, even
if no money or resources are provided. It would
apply even to a person that has nothing to do with
the group’s violent activities and even to
a member that is trying to persuade the group to
give up violence and join the political process.”
Translated, this means that Irish immigrants who
may have belonged to or supported a group deemed
“terrorist” by the United States government
can be jailed and deported, without judicial review
of immigration deportation orders. Whether the deportee’s
life might be in danger if he or she is ejected
from the United States will not matter. “Practically,”
says the ACLU, “a
refugee from the genocide in Sudan who arrives without
proper documentation could be sent back without
a hearing.”
For
90 minutes, on three occasions, the two men who
believe they are best suited to be president jousted
over the war in Iraq, each man claiming that he
alone will lead the United States to victory over
Iraqi “insurgents”; each candidate insisting
that he alone knows how to fight the war on terrorism,
he alone will lead the United States to victory
over evil. For 90 minutes, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush
danced back and forth over the same rhetorical ground,
repeating the same accusations and the same promises,
conjuring the same grandiose schemes for making
the world a kinder, gentler, place for ordinary
people.
Neither
candidate would admit that the war on Iraq is a
calamity for the people of that battered nation.
Neither dared to say that occupying Iraq is not
the way to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi
people, and that bombing Iraqi cities is not the
way to convince people in the Middle East to embrace
American-style “democracy”.
Undoubtedly,
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush will continue to claim that
they have a plan for winning the un-winnable war
in Iraq, They will talk about spreading democracy
throughout the world, and they will insist that
they intend to win the war on terrorism. They will
profess their admiration for the Irish people, while
refusing to demand why the United States Congress
may soon pass a bill that will further undermine
the United States Constitution and threaten Irish
immigrants--even if they have lived here for years,
opened businesses here and raised their families
here—with jail and deportation.
