U.S. Regime Change in November?

by Anthony Gregory

Democrats just love talking about how we need regime change in this country. What they’re implying is that Bush needs to lose the election and Kerry needs to win. And then, thinks the average liberal, America will return to normalcy.  

Few people detest the current administration more than I do, except maybe the people who actually lost family members to his wars, or the presumed “enemy combatants” who are locked away in some US dungeon somewhere. And, given the choice between Bush and Kerry – let’s say a gun was to my head and I had to choose one of the two to rule – I would probably pick Kerry. If the gunman allowed me to flip a coin, so as to absolve myself from responsibility for the choice, I would gladly hand over the decision to the fate of the coin.  

But what liberals imply when they say we need regime change is a comparison between the Bush administration in the United States and the Saddam administration in Iraq . They’re cleverly using the Republicans’ own language against them, pointing out that America doesn’t have “democracy” or “freedom” or whatever, much as Saddam’s Iraq didn’t, and if regime change is good for Iraq , it’s good for America .  

Are these liberals listening to themselves? Did regime change accomplish anything good in Iraq ?  

Iraq went from an impoverished, oppressed, secular socialist nation, in which a dictatorial former US ally ruled his subjects through terror and pacified his enemies with murder, to an impoverished, oppressed, war-torn nation, in which a current US puppet satellite state rules its subjects and pacifies its enemies through martial law.  

The torture, the killings, the beatings, the subjugation, the disarming – all that’s really different is that tens of thousands of newer corpses are abound, much of the infrastructure is devastated, and the electricity isn’t working anymore. For some people it’s a tad better, perhaps, and for many people it’s worse.  

Is this the regime change that liberals sarcastically hint we could use a little of in the good ol’ US-of-A ?  

Now, it’s very possible that Kerry will take America down the path of empire and tyranny a few miles an hour slower than Bush’s planned velocity. But I expect regime change with Kerry at the reins to be much like US-led regime change throughout the world – we will see one power-hungry, bloodthirsty, collectivist megalomaniac fool replace another; some cronies of the state will come out ahead while others will lose some of their influence; and overall the common person will feel just as terrorized and enslaved by the state as ever.  

Of course, there have been cases where one president came to power in the United States and he scaled back the power and oppressiveness of the state, as left behind by his immediate predecessor. Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, and Warren Harding are not the worst enemies of liberty the country has seen, although they all made mistakes. US regime change has, in some instances, produced somewhat positive results.  

More to the point, there have been many presidents whose electoral victories have caused so much damage and suffering that it would be hard to think how their opponents wouldn’t have been preferable.  

But America has not had a meaningful choice between two significantly different alternatives in many, many, many years. And when it did, only a fool would have pretended to know for sure who would be better. In 1932, FDR sounded like a libertarian compared to Hoover . By 1935, FDR was nearly indistinguishable from Mussolini.  

John Kerry in particular strikes me just like the type of power-hungry phony clown the US government has put into power all over in the Middle East . He’s not as bad a man as Saddam Hussein, I would guess, but Iraqis have so far gotten nothing but suffering from the multiple regime changes instigated in their backyards by the US empire. I expect a Kerry administration to engage in all the same kind of destruction and cruelty (both accidental and intentional) that has characterized the Bush administration, perhaps with some slightly new priorities. Bush might invade Iran , and then send troops to Syria , and might even eventually threaten war with long-time US ally Saudi Arabia . Kerry, on the other hand, might send troops to Syria , and then invade Iran , pressuring Saudi Arabia from day one. Different people might die, in different locations and in a different chronology, if the US sees regime change in November.  

But this obsession with American regime change just shows how much blind faith some people have in electoral politics, and indeed how they’ve bought into the idea that regime change can likely do much good. If the Democrats understood how terrible the results have been in US-led regime change throughout the world, they would likely not apply such nomenclature to their aspirations in American electoral politics. Maybe they do understand. Either way, the fact that they do use such language, which brings to mind a long legacy of bloody failure in Iraq and elsewhere, just goes to show that they can no more be trusted with the police state powers of the US Executive than can the current monsters ruling America.