Kerry Worse Than Bush?

Veteran trouble-maker John Pilger looks at the USA's 500-year history of conquest, de-bunking the idea that Democrats are not just as militant and empiricist as Republicans, and warns that - in the long run - the re-election of Bush may be the lesser of two evils.

"With Nato back in train under President Kerry, and the French and Germans compliant, American ambitions will proceed without the Napoleonic hindrances of the Bush gang."

This is exactly the kind of reporting that always lands Pilger in the mud with both sides of politics. He may be proven right in the long run, but do we want to hear this right now?

Personally, I have to say that I would be heavily inclined to vote Nader in the USA elections (if I were a US citizen, that is) but I would probably grit my teeth and vote Kerry, if only because the US public needs to send a strong message that what Bush has done will not be tolerated again.

Even if Kerry & Co do prove to be as militant as Bush, they will at least need to be more circumspect in their methods.

And I cling to the hope that Kerry at the moment might just playing clever politics by refusing to move to far to the left in the pre-election debate. I sincerely hope that, once in power, he will start talking about pulling US troops out of Iraq - something which would be political suicide right now.

Having said that, a year of blogging against Bush makes it very clear that the USA faces endemic social and political problems (problems which are being exported to other democracies like Britain and Australia) and that a Kerry victory is not the end of the road for those who seek peaceful, representative and trust-worthy government. As Pilger rightly states:

"The real debate is neither Bush nor Kerry, but the system they exemplify; it is the decline of true democracy and the rise of the American "national security state" in Britain and other countries claiming to be democracies, in which people are sent to prison and the key thrown away and whose leaders commit capital crimes in faraway places, unhindered, and then, like the ruthless Blair, invite the thug they install to address the Labour Party conference. The real debate is the subjugation of national economies to a system which divides humanity as never before and sustains the deaths, every day, of 24,000 hungry people. The real debate is the subversion of political language and of debate itself and perhaps, in the end, our self-respect."

This is a debate that urgently needs to take place. But it won't take place till after November 2nd. And if Bush is still in power, it will not take place at all, except in the dark cellars where people like John Pilger will be forced to hide.