I have to say that Bill does certainly know how to waffle. However, I appreciated the detail, honesty and frankness of his account. He has certainly had an interesting life. I liked the way he brushed over the Monica Lewinsky issue; he simply said that he’d done something inappropriate that he was incredibly ashamed of.

What I’d like to pick up on is the partisan nature of American politics. On pages 862-863, Bill states:

“When the New Right Republicans had taken power in Congress in 1995, I had blocked their most extreme designs and had made further progress in economic, social, and environmental justice the price of our co-operation. I understood why the people who equated political, economic, and social conservatism with God’s will hated me. I wanted an America of shared benefits, shared responsibilities, and equal participation in a democratic community. The New Right Republicans wanted an America in which wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of the “right” people, who maintained majority support by demonizing a rolling succession of minorities whose demands for inclusion threatened their hold on power. They also hated me because I was so apostate, a white southern Protestant who could appeal to the very people they had always taken for granted.”

That sums it all up really, doesn’t it? While the Democrats are more concerned about improving the lives of the working and middle classes, and asking the upper classes to pay a bit more in taxes, the Republicans want the upper classes to pay less and the lower and middle classes to pay more in taxes. Republicans aren’t interested in human rights and the environment. They weren’t interested in working with Bill; they just wanted to bring him down because he was such a good President.

I realise that I have only read one side of the story; Bill and Hillary’s. So I will see if I can get hold of a book published by a Republican, perhaps Newt Gringrich, and see what I think thereafter.

For now, however, I would say that I’d rather be a Democrat than a Republican. Does that make me a Democrat?

I’ll look into how the UK Conservatives and Labour parties compare with the US Democrats and Republicans in a later post.

For all the criticism levelled at the National Health Service, we are very lucky to have it. You don’t need to worry about health insurance, and the poorest of the poor can have medical treatment and won’t be denied it simply because they can’t afford it, which is what happens in the USA.

Even for the middle classes, it can be a very expensive business, and like the family featured in the NY Times article, some even have to file for bankruptcy as they can’t afford to repay the medical costs as well as their mortgage, living costs etc.

The USA is meant to be the ultimate in democracy. Ha, don’t make me laugh. It is a money-hungry, corporate-minded nation that is generous to the rich and hard on the middle and working classes, as well as the poor. So much for the great US constitution!

George W Bush and the USA

Private Eye has picked up on the tendency of the current President of the United States’s use of God as his justification for his actions, such as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Take this picture as an example (albeit satirical). Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), a documentary on the 2003 Israeli-Palestinian summit, contains footage of Nabil Shaath, Palestinian foreign minister to Yasser Arafat, who claims that Bush told delegates:

“God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did. And then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And I did.”

I agree with Zoe Williams from The Guardian, who suggests that while it doesn’t make sense for God to actually tell Bush to go invade Afghanistan, we cannot dismiss the claims entirely. While I’m not necessarily a Christian, I do feel that – on the basis that our lives would be worth nothing if we just died and faded away to dust, without an after-life to commend what we achieved during our lives – there must be some sort of overseer out there. Anyway, the point is that: we just don’t know.

Nonetheless, why would God rely on Bush to do something like this? Why would Bush say something so profound in its implications, so far-fetched, that doesn’t make sense? Perhaps he is trying to justify his actions, and because there is no justification for the losses of thousands of lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the military, he is blaming God for it.

Martin Kettle summed up the situation in the USA with regard to their divinity and attitude towards foreign policy in an article published in The Guardian back in November 2004 related to the US presidential elections:

Bush’s apparent acceptance of the view that he may be doing God’s work in the White House … is shared by millions of American conservative evangelical protestants, many of whom believe … that the very existence of the United States is proof of a divine purpose. In that context, the idea that America should reject ties with necessarily less blessed nations becomes existential, an exceptionalism of another order altogether.

Most Americans don’t think in these terms, of course. Yet sufficiently large numbers of them do for their conviction to be massively important, especially when they are so determined and have such powerful armed forces. If you believe that God has a higher purpose for your work, then you bring a special fervour to everything that you do, whether it is re-electing the president, challenging his opponent’s credentials, stopping his voters from voting, challenging their votes or – if by some cruel fate the opponent wins the election – preventing him from governing.

I do have respect for people’s own beliefs, but come on … !

Terrorists

From one extreme to another, terrorists are another example of people using religion as an excuse. A recent example would be that of Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the 7 July bombers, who said in a video released on 2 September 2005, in which he justified his actions as being a protest against the American-Anglo aggressions against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine:

I ask you to make du’a [a supplication] to Allah Almighty to accept the work from me and my brothers and enter us into gardens of paradise.

That reference to his religious beliefs is yet another example of how people are justifying unjustifiable acts by referring to an entity that is difficult to identify either physically or mentally. I’m sure that’s not what God intended when he (according to the Bible) created Earth in 7 days and created Adam and Eve.

New York Region > 2008 Contender: For the Moment, Mrs. Clinton Looks Like the Candidate to Beat” xhref=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/nyregion/04hillary.html” mce_href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/nyregion/04hillary.html” target=”_blank”>2008 Contender: For the Moment, Mrs. Clinton Looks Like the Candidate to Beat

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I’m more of a Democrat than Republican, and that I am somewhat of a fan of Hillary Clinton since reading her memoirs. She would make a formiddable President, and it’s about time the USA showed itself to be the ideal democracy and land of opportunity of freedom by elected a female President. Put it this way, Hillary’s a lot nicer to look at than bloody Bush!

I have to say that I’m disappointed in the US electorate – the 51% who voted for Bush. It seems that everyone in the world, apart from the Americans themselves, is aware how bad Bush is for the Americans and the credibility of the USA. For the previous four years, he hasn’t achieved anything except sending Americans to die in Iraq, and allowing the budget deficit to spiral out of control. He has cut benefits for the working class and shown very narrow-minded attitudes towards issues such as same sex marriages and abortions. Now he’s been elected for another four years.

In his victory speech, Bush set out a conservative social and economic agenda for his second four-year term, singling out tax reform, social security and education as priorities. I wonder if he’ll be able to stick to that. Or will he just wage war against other terrorist-ridden countries until the USA goes bankrupt and thousands upon thousands of American soldiers have been killed? We’ll see.

There is one good thing about Kerry not being elected – he won’t be able to run for a second term in 2008, paving the way for Hillary Clinton to become the first female presidential candidate of the USA. Simply because she is so popular, I think she would get elected easily. So roll on 2008.

I’ll be keeping an eye on what’s happening with Bush – the Americans have had their say, there’s nothing we can do about it, except watch and pray.

You will have probably gleaned from my previous post on 22 September 2004, that I am more of a Democrat than Republican. In fact, having read Hillary Rodham Clinton’s memoirs, I positively hate the Republicans. This view has been reinforced thanks to Michael Moore’s two books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s My Country?.

Consequently, and this will be of no surprise to many of you, I do not like George W Bush. Yes, he is a Republican. It’s not his Republicanism that makes me repel Bush, it’s just the fact that he has been a crap President for the past 4 years. Under Bill Clinton, the USA was doing very well in many areas, including diplomacy (with the IRA ceasefire and the Israeli-Palestine ceasefire), economy (he achieved the lowest budget deficit for years), civil rights for women and children, health welfare rights, the environment etc. I’m not so naive as to suggest that Clinton was the best President ever: I’m fully aware that he had a dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, and there were many things that he approved that were against common sense, but when compared to Bush, he was a first-rate President.

For the past four years as President, what has Bush done? He has undone much of the work that Clinton did, including cutting education and health welfare budgets, advocated that homosexuality is wrong and that women shouldn’t be allowed to abort if they become pregnant, contrary to civil rights, pulled the USA out of the Kyoto Treaty and ignoring environmental safeguards, and above all, waged two wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, at the cost of over 2,000 American soldiers’ lives. And he currently has 46% of the vote in the current election polls for the Presidential race? WHY?!

I admit that John Kerry isn’t much of a challenger. Compared to Clinton, he is weak and doesn’t appear to have much charm or wit, but he is a Democrat, and for that reason, I hope he becomes President. He has spouted some common sense policies, and I think he’s the right man to lead the USA away from the Bush years to become a more diplomatic and sensible nation.

KERRY FOR PRESIDENT!

I’ve decided to write some comments on this blog about Living History and the things that Mrs Clinton has come up with. These are mainly concerned with the way she perceives the USA and Americans, the Republicans and terrorism.

A typical American?
You can tell that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a typical American – thinks that the USA is the centre of the world and that the Americans alone were responsible for winning the Second World War.

“The United States had saved the world from fascism” [page 1]

Err, what about the Brits, Canadians and French? And don’t forget the war against Japan as well; Brits, Indians and Australians fought a brutal war against the Japanese, including my grandfather, Clifford Wilks.

Partisan Politicking
Mrs Clinton discusses the appointment of Kenneth Starr as independent counsel to carry out the Whitewater investigations [an investigation into the Clinton's dealings in Whitewater, an investment they made with a dodgy character while Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, who they thought they could trust], a Republican insider who had never been a prosecutor.

“Partisan politicking was nothing new in Washington; it came with the territory. But it was the politics of personal destruction – visceral, mean-spirited campaigns to ruin the lives of public figures – that I found disheartening and bad for the country.” [page 245]

Starr’s Whitewater investigation, in Mrs Clinton’s opinion, was about undermining the successes of Bill Clinton’s progressive agenda. It cost American taxpayers over $70 million and took 9 years (from 1993 until the final report was produced in 2002), and eventually cleared the Clintons of any wrongdoing. It also incorporated many other investigations that had nothing whatsoever to do with Whitewater, namely the Paula Jones scandal [Paula Jones claimed that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her] and the infamous Monica Lewinsky debacle.

In November 1995, the Republican majority in Congress effectively shut down Bill Clinton’s government. They did this by refusing to grant the government any more monies, forcing the President to shut it down, and preventing 800,000 federal workers state-wide from working and getting paid to work. Mrs Clinton said:

“A program like Meals on Wheels was not funded, putting at risk about six hundred thousand of the elderly who depended on it. The Federal Housing Administration couldn’t process thousands of home sales. The Department of Veterans Affairs stopped paying widows and other beneficiaries their due proceeds from veterans’ life insurance policies. The national monuments on the Mall closed their doors. Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon turned away visitors.” [page 319]

Frankly, I’m appalled that Congress has the power to hold the government to ransom in this manner for political reasons, putting millions of Americans’ wellbeing in jeopardy, not least the federal employees who had to stay at home without pay, and had families to feed and bills to pay. Of course, don’t forget that Congress had a Republican majority, so the Republicans were to blame for this, under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, a Republic Speaker of the House.

Osama bin Laden
I was astonished to learn that Osama bin Laden was a well known terrorist figure as early as August 1998, and probably even earlier. Mrs Clinton talks about the bombing of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on 7 August 1998, which injured over 5,000 people and killed 264.

“It was increasingly evident to the intelligence community that a diabolical Saudi exile named Osama bin Laden was organizing and bankrolling much of the terrorism in the Muslim world, and his attacks were getting bigger and bolder.” [page 464]

I also learnt that even though Bill Clinton and his Administration were convinced that terrorism had to be brought under control, they were having a difficult time convincing Congress to direct government resources towards anti-terrorist measures.

“Perhaps that was because so much energy in the news media, Congress and the FBI was directed to an investigation of the President’s private life.” [page 465]

What one can imply from this is that the Americans KNEW about Osama bin Laden several years before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 2001, and because American politics was focused on Bill Clinton’s dealings with Monica Lewinsky (which had nothing to do with his ability to carry out his Presidential duties) rather than eliminating a terrorist who was to gain notority because of September 11 three years later. Nice to see that the Republicans know how to prioritise issues, isn’t it? It’s quite ironic that it was Republican George W Bush who was to then lead the war against Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan.

Conclusion
I am not at all impressed by the American political system. It seems that it has transcended from being a democratic representation of the American people to a vicious and pointless war between the Republicans and the Democrats. It is no longer about making life better for Americans, but about scoring points, undermining presidencies, preventing legislation from being passed just because it will give the current President a huge popularity boost and make it difficult for opposing parties to win subsequent congressional and presidential elections. The United States of America doesn’t seem to be a democracy; it’s political system is a farce.

I have to say that I have nothing but respect for Hillary Rodham Clinton. She is truly a formidable woman, and her work throughout the years, and currently as Senator for the state of New York, especially in her strong support of children, women and families’ rights, and she has earned her respect. I also admire her for standing by Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and for resolving to prevent her marriage from falling apart. I take my hat off to you Mrs Clinton, and thanks for such a fascinating read! I’ve got Bill Clinton’s My Life to read next – it will be interesting to see the viewpoint of a President, especially during his tumultous 8 years of power.

* The above quotes are extracted from Hillary Rodham Clinton?s Memoirs, Living History, Copyright ? 2003, 2004 by Hillary Rodham Clinton.