BUSH opened his 2007 State of the Union speech with an open admission that his regime is facing defeat both at home and abroad. He said: ‘We must have the will to face difficult challenges and determined enemies – and the wisdom to face them together. . . We are not the first to come here with government divided and uncertainty in the air.’
However his first thought was to deal not with the foreign ‘terrorist threat’ but with the enemy within.
He urged Congress: ‘First, we must balance the federal budget. We can do so without raising taxes. What we need to do is impose spending discipline in Washington, DC. . . In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years.’
Bush first of all assured the rich that he does not intend to take back the massive tax cuts that he awarded them. Then he pledged to end the $406 billion government deficit in five years. This can only be done by privatising government departments and cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs.
He added: ‘Finally, to keep this economy strong we must take on the challenge of entitlements.
‘Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience – and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound.’
Bush intends to carry out this task by privatising them and handing them over to the banks and big business!
He also made it clear that for illegal migrants there would be no amnesty.
‘And we need to resolve the status of the illegal immigrants who are already in our country – without animosity and without amnesty.’
The armed police raids on workplaces where there are illegal immigrants doing jobs that nobody else will do are to continue, ‘without animosity’.
On the question of oil, Bush revealed the cost of the failure to grab and privatise Iraq’s oil.
He revealed that all of the green measures put together would still leave the US dependent on foreign oil sources. He said: ‘Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but will not eliminate it.’ This situation forced him to ‘ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’, pushing oil prices up again.
Dealing with the US failure to hold down and exploit Iraq, he had to resort to a new definition of success. It is no longer achieving your aims. Success has become the failure of every possible imaginable disaster to happen. In Bush’s words: ‘Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen.’
His perspective in the Arab world is now completely revised. At one time he was leading a struggle for democracy with the Arab masses desperate for his victory.
Now he is looking to ‘advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy’. Instead of leading a crusade he is now looking for a few pilgrims.
Meanwhile the Arab world is now said to be made up of equally ‘murderous’ Sunni and Shi’ite factions.
‘Al-Qaeda and its followers are Sunni extremists, possessed by hatred and commanded by a harsh and narrow ideology.
‘In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America and are also determined to dominate the Middle East.
‘The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat.’
He neglects to say that the Saddam Hussein regime that he overthrew was secular and kept both religious trends at bay, and that it is his intervention in Iraq that has brought a regime of Shia fanatics to government and established Al Qaeda there.
Faced with this debacle he can only say ‘I wish I could report to you that the dangers have ended. They have not.’ Bush is bankrupt as is his lieutenant, Blair. Both are politically dead men walking.
In 2007 both regimes must be brought down by the working class and all US-UK troops withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the only road to peace and security in the Middle East and throughout the world.
