Both at home and abroad, reactions to this year's presidential elections have been quite mixed. Obviously there was a general sense of happiness on the right, but among liberals worldwide, there was no clear consensus on Nov. 3, 4 or 5 of what a second term for President Bush actually entailed. Everyone, however, had an opinion.
Some worried more than others. With an electoral mandate, no recount to worry about, and with control of both houses of Congress, Bush and his neo-conservative friends will run wild, many contended. He will appoint radical judges to the Supreme Court in hopes of overturning Roe v. Wade (and thus criminalizing abortion), he will try to invade Iran or Syria, and he will even bring back the draft. Others were not so pessimistic. "He only has support of half the voting population," they argued, "he can't truly run wild." He has already been forced to backtrack on his aggressive unilateralism in hopes of "winning" the war on terror and solving the quagmire in Iraq. He will try to ensure a legacy for himself and unite the country, many pundits wrote in the op-ed pages.
Unfortunately, those in the first camp were right. It seems now, that every hint coming from the White House points to a radical right-wing agenda, not a moderate one. As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote, "Having crushed the resistance in Fallujah, President Bush is now trying to do the same at the State Department and the CIA." What an alarming reality.
Colin Powell, the lone moderate of the administration, will no longer be part of the Bush team. His resignation was expected; known to butt-heads with Cheney and other members of the administration over Iraq, a BBC journalist even recently quoted him as referring to the neo-conservative members of the Administration as "fucking crazies." The curiosity of who would replace Powell lasted briefly when the President nominated Condoleezza Rice, a woman who is by no means a moderate in any sense of the word. Besides having demonstrated her incompetence as the National Security Adviser, she is also the woman who warned the American people that we couldn't wait for a "smoking gun" to invade Iraq because, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud [over an American city]."
Even more troublesome are the changes at the CIA. The new head of the organization, Porter Goss, was announced some time ago after the resignation of George Tenet. Although known to be very conservative and a friend of the administration, many believed that Mr. Goss would lead the agency in a responsible and non-partisan way. Again, unfortunately, the opposite has proved to be the case. Newspapers across the country have been reporting that Mr. Goss has been ordered to purge the agency of dissent and have been reprinting a recent memo he sent out to CIA employees. The memo states that it is the job of CIA employees not to provide objective intelligence and to avoid political pressures, but instead to "support the Administration and its policies in our work." It continues, "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."
After all the concern about intelligence agents being pressured to conform their analyses to the Administration's beliefs during the run-up to the Iraq war, such a memo is truly disturbing. If the agency needs anything, it is honest analysis, not politicized data. Perhaps we were all na??ve to think otherwise; this is the administration whose attorney general proclaimed before Congress that those who question or challenge the Patriot Act are actually aiding and abetting terrorists, and whose president argued, "You're either with us or the terrorists."
Some were optimistic about Ashcroft's abrupt resignation and Bush's appointment of a Hispanic, Alberto Gonzales, to take his place. Yet, John Ashcroft's replacement is only more digestible to the American populace because he has remained behind the scenes. Mr. Gonzales has never sang gospel songs at press conferences or, famously in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, focused instead on purchasing an $800 scarf to cover the bare breast of the statue of "justice" in the Department's building.
It was Gonzales, however, who decided that the Geneva Convention did not apply to those in Guantanamo Bay. It was this man who wrote that the president, through some sort of legal perversion, is actually able to order the torture of prisoners, leading to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. He even was a partner in the law firm that represented Enron. Already on his agenda is the passage of Patriot Act II, which disturbingly contains provisions to strip American citizens of their citizenship. Who knows what else Mr. Gonzales has planned for us.
What does this mean for the world and for Americans at home? With Powell absent from the State Department and with the hawkish Rice in his place, the American government will likely continue to embrace the divisive policies of Ariel Sharon and jeopardize any chances of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also makes it more likely that the U.S. will give Israel a green light to bomb Iran's nuclear reactors as it did to Iraq in 1981. The Administration will continue to oppose the ICC and the Kyoto Treaty and show a general disregard to the concerns of its traditional allies.
With all opposition being removed from the CIA in a Stalin-like purge, we face a situation in which the agency will produce "intelligence" to support whatever moves the president wishes to make, whether it be against Syria, North Korea, or another nation. At home we will find a picture that is equally bleak; a more regressive and divisive tax system, more coddling to corporate interests, and most worrisome, the continued erosion of civil liberties.
Anti-Americanism and the transatlantic rift will not diminish anytime soon. Already Bush has been greeted by large-scale demonstrations during his trip to Chile, forcing the Chilean government to cancel a banquet planned for the President. Worse, since the numbers spoke for themselves in the recent elections, it is likely that people and nations around the world won't just hate Bush and his cronies; they will hate us too.
Philip Martin is a junior majoring in political science. He is currently studying abroad in Madrid.
