Freedom and Security: Not a Zero Sum Game

Matthew Yglesias has an excellent post regarding the “tradeoffs” between liberty and security.

These kind of pragmatic considerations aren’t the last word on torture or civil liberties generally, but they at a minimum ought to be the first word. Before people even contemplate “trading off” liberty for security, someone needs to present convincing evidence that security will actually be enhanced.

The requirement that, say, investigators get warrants isn’t only something that’s supposed to protect people’s privacy. It’s also a response to the basic fact that bureaucracies need rules and guidelines by which they operate. There are limited quantities of time and resources and they need to be focused on something or other. I think it obviously makes sense to mandate that investigators focus their attention on people who they have “probable cause” to suspect of being up to something rather than initiating random dragnets.

Read the whole thing, because this is an excellent little post, and the idea worthy of a book or two. The fact of the matter is that, by and large, when we ignore concerns for human rights and due process, the end result is counterproductive. Torture and inhuman treatment produce false information that leads law enforcement on wild goose chases. Racial profiling breeds resentment and decreases average citizens cooperation with police. Decreased evidentiary thresholds for search warrants lead to raids on innocent people’s homes.

To paraphrase Ayn Rand, moral actions are practical actions. The best way to fight crime and terrorism is to stay rational and keep fighting for the American system by preserving that system. The constraints on government provided by the Constitution are not weaknesses in combatting terrorism–they are strengths. And when we abandon those constraints, we become more vulnerable to terrorism, not less.

FILED UNDER: National Security, Terrorism, US Constitution, US Politics, , , , , , , ,
Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. William H. Depperman says:

    Analysis and Theses: The Ongoing U.S. Invasion of Iraq,
    The Runaway Greenhouse Effect and the U.S. Government�s
    Planned Biowarfare Bird Flu Pandemic: Results and Prospects�
    The Tasks of the Working Class in the Present Situation

    This combined analysis and Theses for the Working Class and its allies focuses primarily on the three major problems confronting human civilization, all of which have been created by capitalism-imperialism now in its final stage of Permanent War: 1.) The Invasion, Subjugation and U.S. Goal of Division of Iraq, 2.) The Runaway Greenhouse Effect and 3.) The U.S. Government�s planned Biowarfare Bird Flu Pandemic. In addition, several other crucial issues are discussed which are necessary to an understanding of today�s situation and the overall solution. The solution to all of these problems, and the entire complex of problems created by capitalism, is to abolish the economic-political-social system of capitalism, a system which is fundamentally based on war and mass murder in order to steal new resources and markets, with a new system based entirely on human need. That system is Socialism, which cannot be elected under the capitalist dictatorship in the United States or through any type of capitalist �election reform,� because the capitalist ownership and structure of the state remains intact. The capitalist class owns everything and dictates what happens under their class dictatorship. On the other hand there is no founding document which enshrines capitalism as the permanent economic system for the United States!

    On the contrary, the primary founding document of the United States, The Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson is actually a transitional document which provides for and authorizes the necessity of a Socialist Revolution in the United States as the only prudent and appropriate response to the domestic and international tyranny, oppression and threat to human civilization and indeed all life on Earth which the United States Capitalist Class Dictatorship has subjected the entire world! All the founding fathers signed this document, which states: �whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of�the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness�it is their right, it is their duty, to�throw off such Government to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness�and �to provide new Guards for their future security�� In no way could this language possibly be interpreted to mean to hold new �elections� under capitalism when it is clear that the problems have all been created by the capitalist system itself. �Alter� in this instance means first to try to reform capitalism but the one-way dynamic of capitalism (see below) combined with the absence of the Soviet Union as a counter-force makes that now impossible as history has demonstrated. Abolishing the capitalist dictatorship is the only correct approach. �Form of Government� in this context refers to the class structure of the state, not to electing different capitalist politicians. The document calls for laying new foundation and principles, which in today�s context means to organize a new type of state and society on a different basis of class ownership based on control by the Working Class, which is the only possible means to actually achieve the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. The state is nothing more than a machine for suppressing one class by another. Unless this question is understood, there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution. Although the capitalist regime today is composed largely of Fascists we do not have Fascism in the United States. We have Rule By Decree, technically known as Bonapartism, in the form of a bureaucratic-military police state. This is further explained below. What is most important to understand is that capitalism is a class dictatorship based on the fact that the capitalists own the means of production, the factories, the land, the banks, the military, the media (a privatized arm of the U.S. government�s so-called �intelligence community�), the educational system, where the state begins the brainwash of the youth who become the brainwashed adults who are instructed to pledge allegiance to the hardening capitalist dictatorship, which is falsely labeled �a democracy,� and to be ready to fanatically fight and die for the capitalists� interests only�never their own interests! Finally, the capitalists own and operate the entire political process with their 2 parties which represent only capitalist interests. Even under a parliamentary system such as in France, Italy or England the capitalists run all of the parties including those that falsely claim to be �Communist.� In addition, all of the presidential �elections� outcomes are rigged in advance, or if need be, during the election or after the election as they were in 2000 and 2004�and have been ever since Watergate. (See below.) The Working Class, Middle Class, middle-income earners and the Poor can never be fairly represented under capitalism. Even the capitalists have no future under capitalism! The survival of civilization as we will see below therefore depends on carrying out a Socialist Revolution here in the United States, which will then follow automatically worldwide because there will be no more center of world capitalism-imperialism. See toward the end of this Analysis and Theses�The Correct Dialectical and Historical World View.

    The capitalist dictatorship in the United States is hardening by the day, which is obvious to even the casual observer. This is due to the natural dynamic or development sequence of capitalism, a dynamic which is largely independent of the wills of the individual capitalists and the capitalist politicians themselves. The capitalists can not change that reality! That�s why elections under capitalism cannot change anything. This dynamic leads to a constantly hardening capitalist class dictatorship finally to Fascism, which is the hard dictatorship of capitalism. There is no �democracy� under capitalism�not even for the capitalists themselves. Not since the 1960 election where Kennedy bought a few more votes than Nixon have there been 2 separate capitalist factions! After that all elections were settled by assassinations and gunplay until Nixon was removed bloodlessly through the Watergate scandal by Nelson Rockefeller�not a second in line at the FBI (Mark Felt)�who merely carried those messages to the Washington Post which were authorized by Nelson Rockefeller in 1974. (See below.) Another topic which is analyzed in depth following the discussion of the main topics, is the Big Lie of a �collapse of the Soviet Union.� That Big Lie is used to demoralize the masses against the only solution to the complex of problems created by capitalism-imperialism and was refuted even by the Central Intelligence Agency, on network television in 1990 and 1991. Briefly, the USSR simply backed down from the Reagan era �full court press� of a stepped-up nuclear arms race where the capitalists launched their First Strike Star Wars program and placed First Strike Pershing II Nuclear missiles in Germany 10 minutes from Moscow. This escalated the situation to Launch on Warning. It was that situation alone which caused the Soviet surrender in 1988-90 and subsequent dismantlement of that Workers� State, but which has left the former Soviet power structure intact. (See further below.)

    Remember that U.S. patriotism-chauvinism-jingoism means being willing to die for the capitalist warmongers and exploiters and super-exploiters. As a first step we should never be sucked into saying �we� or �our� in referring to United States policy or actions! That opportunistic choice of words deceives the speaker into thinking that his or her interests coincide with the interests of the capitalist dictatorship and is wrong in the first place because the United States is not �our country.� In addition, such an opportunistic choice of words immediately implicates the speaker in the crimes of U.S. capitalism-imperialism against the entire world and against its own citizens. It is the capitalists� country! Nobody should lose sight of that fact for one moment! Under capitalism �democracy� is simply a euphemism for capitalist dictatorship and enslavement. �Freedom� under capitalism simply means the freedom to exploit and oppress. Only after class society is abolished through a Socialist Revolution can there be genuine democracy for the Working Class and everyone else. The capitalists have divided the population and intimidated and brainwashed the masses to fear Socialism and have at the present successfully inoculated people against the only solution to their problems. This is the true meaning of brainwash!

    Once the Socialist Revolution has been consolidated, the capitalists have been expropriated and class society has been abolished worldwide, the primary function of the state as a class dictatorship to suppress one class by another disappears and the state as such begins to wither away. But before that process of the withering away of the state can be entirely completed the reality is that because the capitalists have created such a range of problems that immediately confront the very survival of the human race the Socialist States of the entire world will have to work together very closely to undo the damage which has been done, for example to the Runaway Greenhouse Effect, which has now begun. (See below.) Only a Socialist Revolution will permanently end the capitalist tyranny by an insignificant minority of millionaires and billionaires by expropriating all of the capitalists� wealth and will actually make it possible for everyone to live like a millionaire with a future and with complete security. There is more than sufficient wealth to achieve this. Remember that all of the capitalists� wealth was originally expropriated and stolen from the labor�the Surplus Value from the goods and services created and generated from the labor of the Working Class.

    Only a Socialist Revolution in the United States can abolish racism because racism is an integral part of capitalism. Racism is defined as that systematized set of false beliefs in the racial inferiority of Blacks and other People of Color in order to justify exploitation and super-exploitation of Blacks and other People of Color. Racism is thus simply a brainwash used to justify economic exploitation, which began with slavery and exists now as wage slavery. This truth is also covered up by the fake �left.� Communists oppose exploitation and super-exploitation of U.S. born Workers employed in so-called �McJobs.� Communists also oppose super-exploitation of immigrants. Immigration is being used by the capitalists to drive down the wage scale of U.S. Workers and fragment the U.S. Working Class. Immigration can be supported by simultaneously calling for the union wage scale and equal status for all Immigrants! Equal focus must also be placed on the reality that such objectives cannot be achieved under capitalism, but only after a Socialist Revolution in the United States, after which the main economic motivation for mass immigration of workers will largely disappear, because the Socialist Revolution will take place worldwide and with it exploitation and super-exploitation in all countries!

    Only a Socialist Revolution will make it possible for life to continue on this planet as explained in the analysis of the Runaway Greenhouse Effect below. That is how serious and acute the situation actually is at this time! Capitalism offers a world with no future! After a Socialist Revolution all officials in the U.S. Socialist government, without exception, will be elected and subject to recall at any time and their salaries reduced to ordinary union workman�s wages which along with the salaries of all workers will rise substantially enough to be quite sufficient to live like a millionaire in the Socialist system. That fact alone will demonstrate more clearly than anything else the permanent break from capitalist dictatorship to a genuine worker�s democracy, from the dictatorship of the oppressors to the democracy of the oppressed classes, from the state as a �special force� for the suppression of the Working Class, the middle class and the Poor, by a insignificant minority, to the suppression of the oppressors by the general force of the majority. There will be an end to the present situation where elections are staged periodically to decide which predetermined members of the capitalist class will repress and crush us through the �presidency� and congressional parliamentarism. After the capitalists have been completely expropriated and the Socialist Revolution has triumphed, a reconstituted Socialist Congress, will become the ruling body in the United States, a truly flexible Working-Class government. The final name for it would be decided at that time.

    The Congress, which will be constituted with directly elected representatives of the masses, will be transformed from the present talking shop given over to phrasemongering and resolutions for the special purpose of fooling the credulous masses, where the real business of state is performed behind the scenes and is carried out by the general staffs in the White House, the National Security Agency, the Department of War (so-called �Defense�), and other departments of state, to a real working, not a parliamentary body, both executive and legislative at the same time. Remember that under capitalism all issues reduce to a single question: how best to preserve capitalism-imperialism! There is no other agenda! The U.S. Constitution, which has been largely abolished in practice by the parasite capitalist dictatorship, will be completely rewritten to encompass the reality of the abolition of the capitalist state and its replacement with a Socialist Government and organization of society on the basis of a network of Workers� Councils in every city and town. Most of the Amendments to the present U.S. Constitution will be retained except those dealing with maintaining the capitalist state and its bureaucracy, which will be abolished totally, though many if not most of the personnel will help in the transition to a Socialist system. These measures, which involve the reorganization of the state and purely political reorganization of society, take on their full meaning and significance only in connection with the expropriation of the expropriators, i.e. with the transformation of capitalist private ownership of the means of production into true social ownership. With the achievement of the Socialist Revolution worldwide, which will occur virtually simultaneously with the Socialist Revolution in the United States, the basis for all wars will cease because Socialism unlike capitalism is based fundamentally on human need, not war and mass murder.

    Religion will not be suppressed in any way but it will also not be supported in any way. All religious points of view will be heard equally as will the atheist and agnostic viewpoint. People will make their own decisions over time. The hundreds of $billions and trillions spent on war will be freed up for human need. Socialist Revolution in the United States is thus the only practical means possible to achieve world peace. Today capitalism has moved into its final stage of Permanent War and State Terrorism justified through the pretext of a preposterously fraudulent �War on Terrorism.� See below. This crucial point is entirely covered up by the capitalist-operated pacifist and fake �left� groups (See below), who deceive the masses with such �airtight� appearing appeals as �Bring All the Troops Home� as opposed to the correct position: �Support the Only Position With Successful Historical Precedent�Call For Mutiny in Iraq as in Vietnam�the Real Reason the Vietnam War Ended in 1975!� See below on Slogans. Mutiny saves lives! Mutiny at an earlier date could have saved the lives of over 2 million Vietnamese and 58 thousand plus Americans! (This omits the 2 million Vietnamese murdered by the French imperialists.) Mutiny in the armed forces is also the absolute precondition for Socialist Revolution, because the capitalists must be deprived of the ability to send bodies of armed men against the masses before there can ever be genuine free speech where opposing viewpoints can be fully heard by the masses, for example on NBC, ABC and CBS television at prime time every night of the week. Mutiny is also the first step in abolishing the standing army while arming the vanguard of the Working Class. This is of course conditional on the success of the Socialist Revolution in all other countries, where if necessary, we will provide every assistance.

    The capitalists campaign nonstop to try to instill fear in the masses against Socialism, and most people are genuinely concerned about what Socialism would look like. The capitalists do not want such questions to even be discussed. The reality is that there are no downsides to Socialism! First of all, life on this planet would be able to survive. Almost all of the jobs would still be there too except some of the jobs involved in the military industrial complex which would be terminated immediately, while most of the others in that area would be transformed into projects more in line with human need not mass murder. Most large corporations and businesses would not disappear. Far from it! The only difference will be is that the all corporations will be owned and run entirely by the workers, but all executive positions will be based on elections and be subject to immediate recall, within the corporation or company, and no one will be paid more than the wage of a union worker, just as government officials, which with the end of the huge military budgets and the expropriation of the expropriators, will be more than sufficient to live like a millionaire. That would be the starting point. In addition, there will be no more exploitation and super-exploitation by landlords although a much-reduced rent will be paid to the Socialist State. Society will finally be placed on a basis of human need. The capitalists wage a continuous Big Lie campaign, just like they do on every other issue to brainwash the masses against Socialism. Anti-Communism, which is imposed on the masses through the capitalist-puppet media, the educational system and loyal fake �left opposition� and divide and conquer �single issue groups� has as much basis in truth as the capitalists� claim that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, as we will see below.

    The question is fundamental: If you understand and agree that capitalism cannot be reformed, that we have reached a dead end, and that the problems which confront society and civilization cannot be solved under capitalism and that we need a new system now based on human need not private profit and you want to help organize and achieve a Socialist Revolution�not reform of capitalism�then you qualify as a Communist. Those who are NOT Communist still falsely believe 1.) that capitalism, through reform, can solve the complex of problems which has been created by capitalism and which now confronts the very survival of humanity, or 2.) they agree with the first statement but are unwilling to do anything to help organize a Socialist Revolution. This latter defines the position of opportunism. Anti-Communism and opportunism will be carefully analyzed further below and exposed and dissected point by point in order to remove all confusion and obstacles which exist to organizing a Socialist Revolution in the United States. The significance of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Soviet Workers� State and the misleadership of Stalin, who was not in practice a Communist, are discussed comprehensively further below. The key point there is that all gains which were achieved through the 1917 Russian Revolution and which existed in the Soviet Union must be defended; these include full employment, no homelessness, free education to the highest level and free medical and dental. In New York City approximately 90% of the people this writer randomly approaches, most of whom are unknown to him, agree with the suggestion: �We need a Socialist Revolution in the United States!� or �We need a new system based on human need not private profit!� This is a straightforward Communist response, although these people would certainly not identify themselves as Communists because 1.) they have been brainwashed against the word and often do not understand what it actually means and 2.) they fear reprisals from the government which they know opposes Socialism and does everything possible to try to intimidate the masses in this regard. With proper organization these obstacles can be overcome. The economic-political-social conditions under capitalism have already created the support for Socialist Revolution in the United States.

    The capitalists have already chosen Hillary Clinton to be the next �president� of the U.S. (See below under Subhead for comprehensive discussion of this topic) because she supports the continuing Invasion of Iraq and Permanent War�the phony �War on Terrorism.� But equally important, she along with all Democratic Party leaders, has agreed to abolish the function of Social Security by switching from wage-based indexing of Social Security Benefits to price-based/inflation-based indexing, which will end the function of Social Security, which is to keep people alive in late middle age and old age. The capitalists� objective is to bring a large percentage of the population to an earlier death as a capitalist means of population reduction and population control. They all cover up the fact that merely increasing the Social Security Tax on incomes over $90,000.00 by only 6% as proposed by their own Robert Wechsler (D) of Florida, would make Social Security permanently solvent and could even increase benefits. This solution was only briefly blipped in the media and is now covered up by the Democratic Party leadership and all the media even the New York Times Editorials and Op-Eds, which scream for �necessary cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to preserve them.� (!) It is calculated that Hillary with her Democratic Party constituency �backed by women� (!) can ram it through just like her liberal husband abolished Welfare, the first part of the Social Security Act. See below. They will falsely scream �unsustainable growth in entitlement spending,� �necessity,� �cutting the budget deficit� and �democracy!� Under Hillary Clinton or anyone else the capitalist dictatorship will continue to harden and become more oppressive not less! This is because the capitalist system is in control not the individual capitalists or politicians. See further below for more complete discussion of this topic.

    U.S.-led capitalism-imperialism has presently become overextended militarily and economically and is no longer in a viable position to invade such countries as Venezuela or Bolivia, which have actually elected Communist (not �populist�) leaders who have begun the partial nationalization of the oil and gas industries as occurs after a Socialist Revolution. But the capitalists have not been completely expropriated in either country. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly self-evident that capitalism–�Globalism� is a loser in Latin America and worldwide. These victories, although they are partial victories, are great victories and must be fully supported by the Working Class in the United States and in all countries. World capitalism-imperialism remains extremely dangerous and if left to its own devices will destroy all life on this planet. This will not stop until capitalism is overthrown and abolished at its center�in the United States. In the place of capitalism there will be a global planned economy based on human need not private profit. The 1917 Russian Revolution was the most important event in the 20th Century and is important for 2 reasons: 1.) Because it proved that capitalism can be overthrown and 2.) For the economic-political-social gains it achieved. Remember that in the final analysis all wars are won and lost on morale and all movements begin with the call!

    Expose Capitalists� Divide-and-Conquer Statecraft to Partition Iraq
    Under False Pretext: �To Prevent Civil War� after U.S. Failed Attempt to Instigate a Civil War by Provocation, which the Iraqis Recognize and Reject!

    United States Sacrifices Their Own Agent Provocateur Zarqawi
    Recognized by the Majority of Iraqis to be Working For the U.S.!
    Zarqawi�s Zero Credibility Made Him Worth More Dead Than Alive!

    U.S. Trumpets Phony �Great Propaganda Victory� For Bush Regime!
    And Steps Up Sectarian Bombing Provocations as Pretext for Partition!

    The U.S. Invasion of Iraq affects every person on this planet either directly or indirectly, and ultimately provides the basis for the Call for Mutiny by the U.S. armed forces in Iraq�which in turn is the Precondition for a Socialist Revolution in the United States. The U.S. objective from before the invasion has been to instigate a civil war in Iraq and short of that to PARTITION IRAQ by any means possible, which has been the main objective of the United States! The capitalists have used their agent, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi (see below), to manipulate Sunni Islamic fundamentalists to blow up Shiite Mosques on a regular basis and to frequently attack innocent civilians (Innocent civilians are not those applying to work for the United States puppet military!) in order to try to: 1.) Discredit the Iraqi Liberation Movement, which is mostly separate and apart from the fundamentalist provocateurs manipulated by the U.S. through Zarqawi & Co., which are not supported by the Iraqi masses 2.) Create division and to try to set the basis for a U.S.-instigated civil war and 3.) help the Bush Regime domestically. Having failed to actually instigate a civil war, which the majority of Iraqis recognize as the divide-and-conquer objective of the United States, the U.S. still plans to partition Iraq under the phony pretext of �preventing a full-scale civil war!�(!)

    This objective has not changed in the slightest with the U.S. assassination of their agent Zarqawi. In fact Zarqawi�s assassination was a deliberate provocation which was carried out partly in order to try to recruit more Islamic Fundamentalists from among the Iraqis to increase the scale of Sunni-Shiite division in Iraq as a supposed �backlash� against murder of the �great martyr.� Meanwhile the U.S. media have pored it on and falsely try to equate the U.S.-instigated provocations/atrocities by the Zarqawi-led Sunnis and the retaliatory atrocities by the Shiites as �proof of civil war,� and many Americans have even been �convinced� that there is a civil war�just as convinced as they were that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! It�s time to wake up. A tape from Osama Bin Laden released on July 2, 2006 praising Zarqawi documents an apparent reversal of the previous Al Qaeda policy of opposing Sunni-Shiite division and now supports the same civil war objective of the United States in Iraq. (See below for comprehensive discussions of Occupied Palestine, the statecraft of capitalism and religion and the 911 Attack where the U.S. used the Osama Bin Laden Islamic Fundamentalists to carry out what was a carefully planned and executed U.S. Government-Facilitated Provocation.) In Iraq the actions of Abu Al Masri, the new U.S. chosen front man for the divide and conquer policies of �Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia� continue e.g. with huge car bombs targeting even the poorest Shiite areas�Sadr City markets killing and injuring hundreds. Now with the support of Osama Bin Laden, who plays directly into the hands of the United States, the U.S. Invasion of Iraq which was carried out to steal the oil and directly dictate to the entire Middle East, can be more easily falsely portrayed as a �key to the War on Terrorism!�

    The fact that Zarqawi had so little credibility in Iraq increased his expendability rating off the charts. His assassination was actually another act of desperation by the United States! The U.S. assassination of Zarqawi was designed 1.) To turn Zarqawi into a some sort of �martyr� to try to generate recruitment of more fundamentalists and 2.) To falsely disassociate the U.S. from their agent, widely understood in Iraq to be a U.S. agent. It is widely recognized throughout the Mideast that Zarqawi�s deliberate attempt to foment Sunni-Shiite division and a civil war in Iraq, which has not happened, has defined the U.S. divide and conquer policy in Iraq. The recently released outtakes made from the recently released promotional film (see below) were an indication that Zarqawi�s usefulness as a �fundamentalist hero� in Iraq had come to an end. 3.) The third objective of Zarqawi�s assassination by his own masters was also to try to pump up the Bush regime prior to the 2006 Midterm �Elections� and build support for the continuing Invasion of Iraq within the U.S. domestic audience with the ridiculous claim that �Zarqawi�s death is a severe blow for Al Qaeda� and �now represents a turning point for Bush regime in Iraq.� The U.S. media have gone all out to falsely equate Zarqawi with the Iraqi Liberation Movement, which he is not, and when the reality is that the U.S./Zarqawi objective has been to manipulate those who sincerely oppose the U.S. invasion into instead helping to achieve the U.S. objective of partition of Iraq! The overwhelming majority of Iraqis hated and despised Zarqawi because his objectives were and remain the U.S. objectives!! Note that the U.S. chose not to capture and arrest Zarqawi but to kill him. The U.S. knew his location precisely and could easily have gotten the drop on him. The reason that they did not want to capture him was because he was a U.S. agent and would have revealed his myriad connections with his U.S. masters. The capitalist media have also use Zarqawi�s assassination to take the focus of the U.S. massacre in Haditha and other routine massacres and atrocities committed daily by the terrorist U.S. invaders all over Iraq.

    The bottom line is that there is no civil war in Iraq and the majority of Iraqis themselves won�t buy it. Despite phony denials from the Bush Regime, the divide and conquer partitioning Iraq has been the U.S. plan from the beginning in order to help impose U.S. dictatorship and steal Iraq�s oil, while they threaten the entire Mideast and the entire world to bow down and be subjugated by U.S. imperialism. Partitioning of Iraq was formally broached by Peter Galbraith, former Ambassador of Croatia, where he helped partition and divide up the former Workers� State of Yugoslavia! Preparatory steps to partition of Iraq included the installation of a puppet regime controlled by Shiites through phony staged sham �elections,� where only U.S. capitalist-approved candidates could seriously run, just like in the United States! The new Iraqi �Constitution� was also a total fraud written in order to set the basis for division of Iraq and a hoped-for civil war. No government installed under the aegis of the U.S. invaders, including any U.S.-installed, supposed �national unity government,� can represent the interests of the Iraqi masses. In Vietnam 87% of the South Vietnam VOTED in elections staged to install a U.S. puppet regime�a higher percentage of the population than in the Iraq �elections,� but the vote numbers do not change the fact that the regime in South Vietnam was a U.S. puppet regime and that the present regime in Iraq is also a U.S. puppet regime. It is a compelling fact that the Iraq under the dictator Saddam Hussein and the Baath Socialist Party modeled somewhat after the Soviet Communist Party provided full employment, no homelessness, free education to the highest level and free medical and dental care and had the highest living standard in the entire Mideast, including Israel, up until the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988, which was also instigated by the United States! See below. In addition to the purpose of diverting focus away from the U.S. invasion, the capitalists believe that either a civil war or �Partition of Iraq to prevent civil war� would also be very helpful because it would not decrease oil production any more than it already is and would permit the U.S. to move their forces mostly into the Iraqi oil regions which they think would then permit an increase in oil production! But everything the U.S. does turns to failure and a fiasco!

    The Shiite-controlled U.S.-puppet regime has been given the green light to torture and kill Sunni Muslims on a regular basis in order to try to foment further division, while the U.S. at every opportunity falsely disassociates itself at the top of its lungs from its divide and conquer objectives in Iraq and the puppet regime it has installed, by falsely claiming that �the U.S. would not support sectarian policies,� which has been their actual goal from before the invasion! On February 22nd the U.S. agent Zarqawi directed his group of manipulated Sunni fundamentalists dressed in military uniforms to blow up the Askariya golden-domed Shiite Mosque in Samarra, an act which was deliberately designed to invite widespread retaliation and bring Sunni-Shiite division to a feverish peak. (The U.S. claim that they do not want civil war in Iraq�which the Iraqis reject�is like Brer Rabbit pleading with Brer Bear not to throw him in the briar patch!) The U.S. wants to instigate civil war in Iraq in order to divert the hostility of the invaded country away from the U.S. invaders and let the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds fight among each other and wear each other out, just like what happened when the United States previously instigated the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988!! (The U.S. got their Khomeini-installed Islamic fundamentalist/anti-Communist government to violate the Iraq border 175 times before the Iraqis finally declared war and the U.S supported both sides of that war!) The United States brought back Khomeini from Paris and installed him in power in order to counterpose Islamic Fundamentalism against the Marxist-Leninist People�s Fedeyeen and the National Liberation Movement in Iran when it looked like Iran might possibly become a Workers� State after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and might ally with the Soviet Union, with all that oil! Not if the capitalists could help it! Ramsey Clark, now posturing as �some sort of leftist opposition,� which he most certainly is not, who now demands Bush�s impeachment in order to keep people within the fold of capitalist reformist illusion and to try to pump up his credibility (see below), carried out the Shuttle diplomacy at that time to bring Khomeini back from France. At the time Khoumeini was paraded as an �intransigent revolutionary� by the fake �left� Workers World, led by the U.S. government�s chief not-very-deep-cover political police agent, Ramsey Clark himself, in order to hide the U.S. anti-Communist objectives behind that move.

    The Truth of the Zawahiri Letter

    It was previously admitted on December 16, 2005 by CNN and elsewhere that the U.S.-puppet Iraqi �security forces� had captured Zarqawi last year and released him. The reality is more likely that Zarqawi was actually captured by mistake and released on purpose by the U.S. puppet Iraqi military on direct orders from its U.S. masters!! In order to hide the fact that he was working for the U.S. invaders and simultaneously to help falsely portray the Iraqi Liberation Movement as a bunch of �terrorists,� Zarqawi pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden, who said in a tape on Al-Jazeera that he recognized Zarqawi as the Al Qaeda representative in Iraq, CNN, December 27, 2004! Later Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden�s doctor and second in command, apparently tried to halt Zarqawi�s attacks on Shiite Mosques with a long letter apparently written by al-Zawahiri on July 9, 2005, laying out plans for Jihad, but directly condemning Zarqawi�s attacks on the Shia and their Mosques and warning that such a policy would undermine popular support for Jihad. That letter, which U.S. �intelligence� supposedly intercepted and released, sounds completely authentic and makes perfect sense from the Jihadists� point of view. But on October 13, 2005 the letter was declared to be a forgery by Zarqawi, who continued willy-nilly to bomb Shiite Mosques under orders from his U.S. masters, even escalating the policy to include the Askariya Mosque in the recent U.S. push to instigate civil war!

    The Zawahiri Letter does not appear to be fabricated (see: http://www.dni.gov/letter_in_english.pdf �some piece of work if were fabricated, which appears unlikely), or it is entirely legitimate, which is more likely, and was released by the U.S. in order to falsely justify the U.S. presence in Iraq and the phony U.S. �War on Terrorism� by falsely hyping the threat from Jihad in Iraq, where Jihadists remain in the minority, and to act as the pretext for the present shift into the final stage of capitalism�Permanent War. In fact that is exactly how the U.S. Director of National Security and the capitalist media played it (See: http://www.dni.gov/release_letter_101105.html), while simultaneously allowing their agent Zarqawi to denounce the correct advice in the letter to stop bombing Shiite Mosques, as supposedly �fraudulent,� thus permitting Zarqawi to falsely disassociate himself from his U.S. masters and strengthening his hand while escalating the bombing/provocations! The reason that the United States deliberately did not report the specifics of how they intercepted the letter in this case was a tactic used in order to strengthen Zarqawi�s false claim among his constituents that the letter was supposedly fabricated by U.S. �intelligence.� Remember how eager the U.S. was to report all the specifics of how they captured Saddam Hussein! It is indisputable that Zarqawi�s actions clearly defined him at the very minimum as an objective agent of U.S. imperialism. Undoubtedly Zarqawi was much more than simply an objective agent of the U.S.! Up to now he was crucial to U.S. objectives in Iraq and would have to have been fully in full confidence on virtually every detail.

    Despite the U.S./Zarqawi strategy of provocation the majority of Iraqis have not swallowed the bait and are not accepting the U.S. planned civil war scenario, despite the stepped up systematic atrocities carried out by Zarqawi, and the retaliatory slaughters carried out by the Madi Army and other Shiite militias which will not stop after Zarqawi�s assassination! The Iraqi masses smell a rat and are not eager to play into the hands of the United States clumsy divide and conquer plans. The condemnation of the attacks on February 25th by religious leaders simply reflects this awareness and reality as much as it may have been to hide their part in it. The Iraqi Liberation Movement, the main opposition to the U.S. invaders, targets the U.S. invaders almost exclusively and sees through Zarqawi and the U.S. objective to partition Iraq and they do not support a civil war! Even the cleric Moktada al-Sadr does not seem ready to commit to a civil war immediately in the conventional sense despite the fact that his followers the Madi Army, supposedly numbering several thousand fighters, who to their credit previously fought in 2 uprisings against the U.S. invaders, have recently been manipulated into attacking Sunnis in response to U.S. agent Zarqawi�s campaign of bombing Shiite Mosques. Their attacks on Sunnis have increased following the bombing of the Askariya Mosque by the U.S. agent Zarqawi and Co. Moktada al-Sadr may believe that he could play a leadership role in a divided Iraq based on the strength of his militia, which has already infiltrated the Iraqi police and military, but the reality is that he would still wind up where he is now�on his knees to his U.S. masters.

    In order to try to pump up the credibility of their agent provocateur Zarqawi among his constituency of brainwashed Islamic fundamentalists, after the totally discrediting bombing of the Askariya golden-domed Shiite Mosque in Samarra, the U.S. dishonestly released a video made in November 2005, which his U.S. masters had received earlier but had been saving to release, showing Al Qaeda�s second in command Zawahiri still praising Zarqawi apparently in the vain hope that he might yet still have some influence on Zarqawi in line with the recommendations made in the Zawahiri letter. This was before Zarqawi and his Islamic fundamentalist fanatics/manipulees blew up the Askariya mosque which as mentioned above, was carried out in order to elicit escalated retaliatory killing of Sunnis by Shiite militias, all designed to help set the stage for the long-planned U.S. goal of partition of Iraq! Divide and Conquer! In another apparently weird attempt to simultaneously pump up Zarqawi among his tiny devoted brainwashed Sunni fundamentalist constituency, while falsely disassociating themselves from their agent provocateur as supposedly �a bumbling idiot,� the U.S. evidently had Zarqawi make a videotape which was then played repeatedly all over the Mideast media where Zarqawi fires a machine gun and appears to look very macho. But on �closer examination� several days later on outtakes from the preparation of that video, outtakes that the U.S. claims were captured but which they could only realistically possess if they were the ones to commission the making of that promotional film (a specialty of the capitalists) in the first place, it was revealed that Zarqawi did not even know how to fire and clear the chamber of a 50-caliber machine gun himself and that he wears U.S. New Balance athletic shoes�which may have been provided to him by his U.S. masters. (New York Times, May 5, 2006.) The reason for the outtakes became completely clear with Zarqawi�s assassination on June 8, 2006. (See above.)

    So far the U.S. efforts in ethnic cleansing of Sunni areas in order to set the basis for a de facto partition of Iraq, have resulted in the displacement of over 60,000 Shiites by April 2006 from Sunni areas who now live in tents. The U.S. helped engineer the very same ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and have tried to blame people such as the Serbians Slobodan Milosevic and Milan Babic for this divide and conquer policy. The U.S. had both Milosevic and Babic poisoned in The Hague after Milosevic won his case at the International War Criminals Trial at The Hague. The U.S. now demands that Serbia turn over Ratko Mladic for �trial� to be likewise assassinated, who the imperialists want to take the rap alone for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, one massacre among many which was a result of implementation of the United States� ruthless plan to divide and conquer Yugoslavia, a country where people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds previously lived in peace and complete harmony! This ethnic cleansing is exactly what is happening in Iraq at this moment! The capitalists� most recent divide and conquer efforts have resulted on May 22, 2006 in the division of Montenegro from Serbia thereby punishing the Serbian people and permanently cutting it off from the sea! The U.S. had already installed a puppet government in place in Serbia to facilitate this final divide and conquer of Yugoslavia.

    While some U.S.-controlled Iraqi print media scream for civil war, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has a strong influence on Iraqi Shiites also correctly fingered the United States in the Askariya Mosque bombing, but incorrectly also blamed the Israeli Zionists. (The U.S. does not need much direct help from Israel in Iraq! But in Lebanon recently the U.S. did authorize the Zionists to blow up and assassinate the politically expendable Rafik Hariri! See detailed explanation below under subhead!) The majority of the population in Iraq knows that the only player which actually benefits from a civil war in Iraq is the United States. Divide and conquer is a well-known policy of capitalist statecraft and is also used within the United States and around the world, as is explained further below. On the other hand the Muhammad Cartoon Provocation, which is analyzed extensively further below (see subhead on this topic below), was also designed to elicit anger and a violent response from Islamic fundamentalist everywhere, which in turn provides the continuing pretext for the capitalists� policy of Permanent War. During this whole time conspiracy theorists have continued to insist that either Zarqawi or Bin Laden or both were dead or make other bizarre claims, in order to keep their followers confused and unable to even follow what is going on! Now they can have their way on Zarqawi while they cover up the role he played. See section further below on conspiracy theory. A large section on the Middle East, the U.S. Proxy State (so-called �Israel�) in what is Invaded and Occupied Palestine, which also covers the details and purpose of both the U.S./Israeli �Queen Sacrifice� assassination of Rabin and assassination of Lebanon�s Rafik Hariri, follows toward the end of this Analysis and Theses.

    The only correct political position for all progressive opposition to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq must be: Support the only position with successful historical precedent: Call for Mutiny of U.S. armed Forces in Iraq as in Vietnam�the real reason and the only reason that the Vietnam War finally ended in 1975. The slogan �Bring Home The Troops� is a double-edged pacifist deception carefully designed 1.) To demoralize the masses when they see that the capitalists do not �bring home the troops� after protest demonstrations and venting which does not propose a realistic solution and leads nowhere and 2.) To deliberately deceive the masses to believe that capitalism, which is fundamentally dependent on war and mass murder to steal new resources and markets, can somehow be �reformed� and made �peaceful.� That is not happening because it ignores the dynamic and the history of capitalism. The �Bring Home The Troops� slogan appears even more absurd as capitalism has now entered its final stage of Permanent War! Permanent War is actually the most ideal Pre-Revolutionary situation possible because the likelihood of mutiny is maximally increased, and cries out for mutiny. The capitalists cannot reverse from the stage of Permanent War. But we cannot wait 13 or 14 years before there is a mutiny as in Vietnam, which was quickly quelled by the U.S. evacuation. Mutiny must be called for by all revolutionaries in the United States and carried out by developing Communist soldiers in Iraq. (A Communist is anyone who wants a new system based on human need not private profit and actively works to further this objective.) It is well known that the morale in the U.S. armed forces is very �bad.� Bad for the capitalists! Good for us! So do not adopt an opportunist position or be fooled or scared by the U.S imperialists bravado or threats of listening to phone conversations or monitoring your bank records. The release of such information in the capitalist media is purely for purposes of intimidation of the U.S. domestic population, which overwhelmingly opposes the policies of the capitalist dictatorship, which they recognize is hardening by the day. The phony �protest� by the capitalist dictatorship at the exposure of these domestic spying programs by the main flagships of U.S. imperialism, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal is done precisely in order to falsely disassociate the media which is doing the bidding of its master, to make the media appear �free� and �independent,� when in fact the information is released for one purpose only�to intimidate people�to scare, divide and more easily control the masses.

    There is no substitute for a mutiny, which is the Pre-Condition for a Socialist Revolution, because the capitalists must be deprived of the ability to send bodies of armed men against the masses before opposing viewpoints can even be heard on an equal basis. All levels of military leadership should be targeted to support the mutiny because survival of the human race is in everyone�s interest! In the armed forces only Fascist militarist zombies are unable to realize that. All wars are either won or lost on moral and every movement begins with the call! The experience of the U.S. Mutiny in Vietnam must be widely publicized�not covered up as is done by all of the fake �left,� which is run by a network of political police agents led by fanatical anti-Communists such as Ramsey Clark and other misleaders of the fake �left.� With the Mutiny an accomplished fact and as the military comes under the control of the Socialist Revolution it will be supplemented with the armed vanguard of the exploited and working people. In addition, we have to make every effort to break the morale of the capitalists themselves. This is both possible and necessary and occurred to some extent in Russia in 1917 and it must occur to an even wider degree in the United States. The basis for this is the Law of Unity of Opposites�a person can be both a capitalist and a Communist simultaneously. This is a corollary of Dialectical and Historical Materialism which is covered up by the all of the fake �left� groups. Friedrich Engels himself was a capitalist and owned a large factory! Every possible effort must be made to recruit the capitalists themselves to break their class loyalty! The huge philanthropic effort made by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet can not go very far toward achieving their imagined illusory objectives because it is opposed by programs already in place and policies of the United States government which are based fundamentally on mass murder and designed to spread disease and reduce the population. The one possible exception might be a vaccine for malaria because the capitalists want to develop Africa. See below.

    The United States Now Threatens to Bomb Iran!

    In an article in The New Yorker magazine, April 17, 2006, Seymour Hersh, a longtime U.S. intelligence agent, was provided with the information to make the case for bombing Iran. The capitalists have used Hersh in previous situations. Among his many disservices to humanity Hersh previously wrote a book in service of the Fascist Reagan regime entitled: �The Target is Destroyed� in order to systematically cover up the U.S.-orchestrated Korean Airliner (KAL) Provocation which was used to undermine Soviet opposition to the placement of U.S. Pershing II First Strike missiles in Germany less than 15 minutes from Moscow, a move which did in fact result in the 1988 Soviet surrender to the threat of a nuclear war�not an �economic collapse.� In that provocation an altitude bomb (described by the Soviet pilot Gennadi Osipovich as �a large secondary explosion which destroyed the aircraft as it descended�) was placed in the Korean 747 airliner to insure that even if the USSR did not shoot it down, which it did, the U.S. could claim the plane was shot down. The Korean pilot was directed to fly straight into the Soviet Union over the Kamchatka peninsula and was personally assured by the disgraced murderer Richard Nixon who was at the airport in Anchorage, Alaska before it took off, that the Soviets would not shoot down the plane because they would not risk the bad publicity! The official story was that Nixon �almost took the flight!� So disingenuous! See further below.

    The New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh on the other hand actually makes the strongest possible U.S. case to bomb Iran citing all the fanatics in the CIA and Israel as well as those who argue that it would be a big mistake. While some believe that the article is merely a threat, the dynamic of capitalism, which is in its final stage of Permanent War, and which is independent of the wills of the capitalists and politicians which make it up, makes such a military strike targeting �at least 400 targets� in Iran including the possible use of �tactical nuclear bunker-buster weapons such as the B61-11,� very likely, unless Iran backs down and submits. While there is no direct proof of a nuclear weapons program in Iran the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. This is also the reason why North Korea is unlikely to agree to ever give up its nuclear weapons program, because to do so might invite U.S. bombing. The U.S. does not threaten countries which possess nuclear weapons. If Saddam Hussein had actually had actually been able to develop nuclear weapons, which the U.S. knew very well that Iraq had not, the U.S. would never have invaded Iraq. Both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons and the U.S. does not bother either country and forms alliances with them. The only way to permanently end nuclear weapons worldwide and the threat of a nuclear war is by carrying out a Socialist Revolution in the United States thereby permanently ending the system of capitalist-imperialism, which is fundamentally based on war, subjugation and mass murder in order to steal new resources and new markets. Only on this basis will the world have a genuine basis to completely and permanently disarm!

    Capitalism Poses A Direct and Immediate
    Danger to All Life on Earth! The Runaway
    Greenhouse Effect Has Already Begun!

    The Runaway Greenhouse Effect has already begun! This is not a joke and is not something which might occur in the distant future. It is no longer simply a matter of Global Warming or euphemistically described �climate change� that we have to contend with, but the beginning of the Runaway Greenhouse Effect. Professional climatologists risk losing their jobs if they reveal the rapidly approaching reality. The vast majority of them must lie to keep their jobs! Nevertheless, according to the latest published results in the October 11, 2004 British Guardian, which were just blipped in the media, for the last 3 years the CO2 level for the first time has begun to rise in an accelerated fashion indicating that a Runaway Greenhouse Effect has already begun. Ethical and Honest (bucking the trend!) scientists, at Hawaii�s Mauna Loa Observatory reported that average CO2 levels increased by 2.08 ppm in 2002, to 373.1 ppm, and by 2.54 ppm in 2003, to an average of 375.64 ppm. This is the first recorded example of the average CO2 level jumping more than 2 ppm in two consecutive years. See: British Guardian, Oct 11, 2004. It became three consecutive years in 2005 when the Associated Press reported on March 20th that scientists at Mauna Loa Observatory had recorded the atmospheric CO2 level peaked at a record of 379 ppm! The apparent significance of this newly observed increase in atmospheric CO2 levels is that the CO2 reservoirs, namely the rain forests and oceans, are now exhausted and from this point on the atmospheric CO2 level will start to increase in an exponential fashion.
    U.S.-led world capitalism-imperialism is controlled by the oil industry and the military industrial complex and cannot reform itself. While falsely claiming to be in favor of alternative energy, for example the Bush Regime cut money for alternative energy in 2005 by 50%! A real solution, which cannot take place under capitalism, and can only take place under a new system based on human need not private profit�after a Socialist Revolution in the United States�would include: 1.) Beginning to introduce realistic large-scale alternative energy sources like Tidal Power and certain large hydroelectric sources such as the world�s largest waterfalls. This can and must be done on a large scale to the degree where fossil fuels no longer supply the majority of the power for residential and business needs and the world�s dependency on fossil fuels actually ends and 2.) Ending completely the deforestation and destruction of the rainforests which trap much of the Earth�s CO2 in vegetation and planting new forests. Although China, under pressure to compete with the capitalist countries, has added substantially to global air pollution and the Runaway Greenhouse Effect, due to its burning of coal for power, is making every effort to switch to clean energy technologies such as hydroelectric power with the Three Gorges Dam and Tidal Power. But China, a Workers� State, based on human need not private profit, despite doing business with the capitalists on a massive scale, a policy which Lenin himself recommended, has led the world and reversed Asia�s net loss of 3000 square miles a year of forests from the 1990�s to a net gain of 4000 square miles since 2000. China�s yearly loss of 950 sq. miles to the Gobi desert is to be stopped by the �Green Great Wall�- a 2,800-mile network of forest belts designed “terminate expansion of new desertification caused by human factors” within a decade as reported to the United Nations. By 2050, China believes that much of the arid land can be restored to a productive and sustainable state. Possibly the largest proposed ecological project in history, the Great Green Wall calls for planting more than 9 million acres of forest at a cost of up to $8 billion. Those interested in reversing the Runaway Greenhouse�and we must make every effort�should research the details of the Great Green Wall which are available on the Internet. But the capitalists on the other hand do nothing to reverse the situation of the worldwide loss of vegetation�just the opposite! This is because of the one-way internal dynamic of capitalism, which is largely independent of the wills of the individual capitalists and politicians which make it up.
    That dynamic leads inexorably to a constantly hardening capitalist dictatorship finally ending in Fascism, barbarism and the end of civilization. Today, the capitalists rule essentially by decree in a form of bureaucratic, military-police dictatorship (technically designated Bonapartism) where the un-elected Fascist usurper Bush now openly attaches a Signing Statement to the bottom of any legislation which he signs, stating that the Executive Branch of government can interpret the legislation in any way it sees fit! (New York Times, January 16. 2006. p. A11.) Bush has already issued 100 �Signing Statements.� This is the reason that Bush has not had to issue a single veto since usurping office. (New York Times lead editorial, May 5, 2006.) The capitalists are powerless to control the hardening dynamic of capitalism. The system controls the capitalists; the capitalists do not control the system. Capitalism generates the scum and the scoundrels such as Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, the Clintons, the Bloombergs, the Ferrers, the Sharptons, the Spitzers (the liberal who called for the decertification of TWU Local 100!) etc., who rise to the surface to the extent which they express the dynamic and further the dynamic of capitalism.

    Republicans as well as Democrats cover up their role in Rule By Decree by the Executive branch: �The inherent power (of the executive) argument, if you take it to the natural conclusion, there is no role for Congress in a time of war.� New York Times, February 10, 2006. �Time of war?� This statement by Lindsey Graham covers up the fact that Congress rubber stamps virtually all decrees by the dictatorship, of which it forms an integral part and which can now be completely overridden in practice with the signing statements! Capitalism cannot be reformed through elections, �voting reform� or in any other way. In fact today the word �reform� is simply a nebulous sounding codeword, like Gorbachev�s �Perestroika,� generally used by the capitalists with the understood meaning to be an attack on the Working Class, middle-income earners and the Poor. So-called �Social Security Reform� is just one example. (See below.) It is absolutely vital that we establish a new economic-political-social system based on human need not private profit. That system is Socialism and it cannot be �elected� under capitalism. That can only come about through a Socialist Revolution here in the United States, where the capitalists are relieved of their ownership of the military�first and foremost, the means of production, the factories, the land, the banks, the media, the educational system and the entire political process. Possession or acquisition of huge material wealth by the few automatically means misery, pover

  2. spencer says:

    It is interesting to observe how as this war continues the libertarians or conservatives and the liberals are coming together to use the same arguments about this administration.