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Heather Wokusch discusses the need for an immediate increase in political activism in America to stave off wider war and reverse the damage caused by Bush Administration’s policies.

In Volume 1 of her new book, “The Progressives’ Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now, ” Heather Wokusch presents everything you need to know about the Bush Administration’s record on: US Weapons of Mass Destruction, Women’s Issues, Education and Mainstream Media. She shows us how the Bush Administration has been stripping the budget to pay for arms proliferation and projects like the ones that fall under what Bill Frist called, “a new Manhattan Project” for the development of biological weapons. In Volume 2 Heather Wokusch talks about Elections and Voting, the Environment, and Foreign Policy.

David Amdur of Hartford’s AFSC, the American Friends Service Committee, describes the effort underway in Connecticut and other states to fill buses to head to Washington, D.C. for a Jan. 27, 2006 demonstration to call attention to the Peace Mandate that has just been given to Democrats.

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Producer/Host Dori Smith: Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment. I’m Dori Smith. President Bush has asked new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to increase the size of the Military and as many as fifty thousand more US troops may be en route to Iraq. Meanwhile, the US has moved another war ship into coastal waters off Iran in the Persian Gulf.

As peace activists in America press on with demands for a US troop withdrawal from Iraq will the new Democratic Congress listen? What kinds of things can be done to promote social and political change in America? Journalist and activist Heather Wokusch joins us this time to provide inspiration and insight for activists working to take on the Bush Administration on these and other questions.

Heather has developed an educational web page for progressive political activists and her new book series, “The Progressives’ Handbook” was published just in time for the holidays and time off to read. Her web site is heatherwokusch.com Or, you can find the book by logging on to http://www.progressiveshandbook.com/handbook/index.php progressiveshandbook.com. The books feature everything you need to know about the Bush Administration’s record. In volume one Heather Wokusch focuses on US weapons of mass destruction, women’s issues, education and mainstream press. She shows how the Bush Administration has been stripping the budget for everything from Social Security to education andenvironmental clean up in order to fund vast military budgets. Her books are designed to be used as a reference manual for activists who wish to write letters to Congress, letters to the Editor, or engage in public education and other types of direct action.

I asked Heather Wokusch to turn to a section in Volume 1 where she discusses outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. Listeners will recall Frist’s support for the war in Iraq or his impassioned pleas about Terry Shaivo. But Heather Wokusch reminds us that he also called for a new Manhattan Project, this time to develop biological weapons.

Heather Wokusch: We have invested; I mean tens of billions, billions of dollars, in only creating biological weapons just within the past couple of years under Bush. And it isn’t only this specific program that Frist was referring to it’s across the board. We’re bringing back horrible diseases that we thought had become extinct and we are bringing them back just to see if we can kill them afterwards. It’s a very crazy thing. And also there’s so much of a lack of oversight that’s taking place with this Wild West mentality of all of this money going around for biological weapons.

All of the US weapons of mass destruction programs, in and of themselves, the very programs, are putting us at risk. To get back to your question regarding Bill Frist we also need to look at; we have very different approaches to what exactly is national security. There is a certain mind set that would say that we need to have bigger and better weapons so that they can’t use theirs on us first. This would appear to be the kind of mind set of the Bush Administration, this ‘lone cowboys in a dangerous world and you need the biggest gun’ kind of thing. So indeed one would imagine that Frist actually on some level did believe that more biological weapons research and more biological weapons were necessary. Clearly, he’s not alone in that regard.

Clearly we also need to look at the fact that a lot of people are making a lot of money from this and they are also making campaign donations. The whole idea of weapons of mass destruction and US weapons of mass destruction to a very large extent has become ingrained in our society yet it’s this dirty secret that we don’t talk about. Such as when in November 2004 when US forces used White Phosphorus munitions in Fallujah we didn’t talk about this, it’s an incendiary agent, it burns victims to the bone. But it took an Italian TV station to do a report on it. And even then it was really not very much discussed in the US media and so the whole process not only of creating these weapons but also of using the weapons is very much taboo.

Dori Smith: You have listed a few things that you think the American people expect versus what the US will do. One of those is use WMDs in a first strike. Just talk about the kind of concept that Americans have about what their leaders will do versus the reality of what you have discovered about what their foreign policy entails.

Heather Wokusch: One interesting metaphor was presented by George Lakoff and he said that the Bush Administration tends to work under the guide lines if you will of what he termed to be a “strict father family.” This is the idea that the world is a very dangerous place, life is very hard, there’s evil, there are winners, there are losers, there’s absolute right, there’s absolute wrong. And within that framework you need to have a very strict authoritarian to protect the family, to support the family, and to teach children right from wrong through punishment and discipline. So as an aside given this frame work its no wonder that Bush would call himself the “decider”. You know he’s the ultimate moral authority. And so this is one frame work and through that you can filter many things. For example, foreign policy; if he is the ultimate decider then the US certainly doesn’t need to be involved in anything resembling international agreements on weapons control or things like that.

In fact, Donald Rumsfeld’s 2005 National Defense Strategy said, and I will quote: ‘Our strength as a Nation State will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism.’

So in essence this framework of Rumsfeld’s and Bush’s links judicial processes with terrorism and it sees judicial processes as weakening the US Nation State. I mean I think that really speaks volumes in terms of how the Bush Administration has chosen to pursue foreign policy. You’re either with us or against us and that’s it.

Now, to return to your question, how do the American People view this well pretty much across the board the American People are far more interested in elements of diplomacy and trying to somehow resolve things without force.

I must say, however, that following 9/11 that clearly was not the case and so I really believe right now that our country is in a very critical position because we need to realize for example that, I mean decades ago, it was Rumsfeld and it was Dick Cheney, who fear mongered to the American People about the Soviet Military capability and as a result the US was on a path of paranoia and weapons build up. Well OK the same thing happened with the same two men and others with 9/11. And so the American People fell for it once again this fear mongering based on lies.

For me the salient and disturbing question at this point is well what next? Is it possible to convince the American People once again to enter war? For example, attacking Iran or something of that nature? And given that we need to look at our Democratic leaders. Hillary Clinton and Barach Obama for example have very clearly stated that the option is on the table to attack Iran.

So I believe that we really have very important questions to resolve: Exactly what should the balance of power and diplomacy and weapons use and all of these questions–be within the Democrats. And I believe that this really hasn’t been effectively addressed yet.

Dori Smith: Heather Wokusch we’ve seen a lot of dramatic news recently about the Middle East. Just to run through we’ve seen news conveyed to us through a visit to Saudi Arabia by Vice President Dick Cheney that if the US does pull troops out of Iraq the Saudis are prepared to come to the aid of the Sunni, Iraqis, and they’ve said too that they would be aiding in terms of economic support, perhaps even more than that, they of course are a Sunni country. Let’s just talk about your views on where things stand now. Characterize the war and potential for a wider war.

Heather Wokusch: Well I really believe that we are at a critical crossroads right now if for no other reason that Bush has his lame duck years and he always said that he was going to make quote ‘peace in the Middle East”. He has always had Iran as a goal as far as, you know, invading. And so I would imagine that he will do what he can to actually move forward an invasion of Iran. Now, what power he actually has is up for grabs but we need to look at elements within the Bush Administration who clearly are as much of you know macho vigilant-est as he is.

The rise of the Neocons, we could say for example, the Neocons coming back. It’s very interesting what is going on in Israel right now also. Ehud Olmert recently admitted publicly that Israel in fact does have nuclear weapons. Now this was shocking that he said that for one reason. This would mean that by law the US is not allowed to give Israel any more funding. And they get something like three billion dollars a year. So clearly one imagines that the US is not going to withdraw funding. But what this would indicate is that it was a big either gaff or plan to let people know that Israel is thinking about potentially using these nuclear weapons.

Israel has a kind of storage facility for US weapons. It’s on Israeli soil and there are something like a hundred million dollars of weapons stored there. Now in this summer’s attack on Lebanon Israel used those US weapons. And what was just announced recently was that the State’s is going to replace these weapons that Israel used against Lebanon and, in fact, double the amount of weapons. Now, one would need to question why is that happening and why is that happening now? –On literally the same day that Olmert comes out and says, ‘Oh yes in fact we do have nuclear weapons.’

Clearly this does give one pause that perhaps the US in conjunction with Israel will try to bomb some of these facilities that they say Iran has. Of course the million dollar question is what would a Hillary Clinton do then? What would Barach Obama do then? What would Rudy Giuliani or certainly John McCain do then? I must say that I’m not optimistic that they would fight against what they would say is a logical conclusion to this war. And I really do fear that because that would be the tinder box that makes everything blow and I really do hope that the American People can do something to prevent this.

Dori Smith: Heather Wokusch who are we fighting this war for? I know the US is talking about sending more troops into Iraq in order to secure the country but the question remains secure Iraq for whom? For the refugees that are now displaced and living in places like Jordan? For the Iraqi People left behind who are dying on a daily basis? Who is this for anymore?

Heather Wokusch: I guess the question is who is the ‘We’ that you talk about fighting the war? If it’s the soldiers on the ground well they probably just wanted a pay check and so they’re over there and waiting to come home, dying literally to come home. If it is the Generals and the individuals in the Bush Administration who actually sent them there well then they have their strategic power balances that they are looking forward to and clearly there is a corporate element to that. I think what is quite telling is that the Baker Report (Iraq Study Group Report) said nothing about these permanent bases that are being built. I mean they’re pouring the concrete as we speak and this is not on the table, this is not being discussed. So I would say that there are a number of different elements that ‘We’ are fighting this war for but I would say that the American People, by and large, do not agree with this ‘We.’ And the question is if this could actually extend even farther to other countries then this would be just so damaging for not only the region but also for our own country as well.

Dori Smith: When we talk about Tehran, especially right now just after Mahmoud Ahmandinejad has just attended a conference that denies the holocaust, we have to mention religion. There are a lot of people who see what’s going on in the Middle East as a kind of global confrontation between ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. This was how the President posed it to begin with in 2003 when he talked about the war as sort of a crusade. But we’re also talking about a time in history when the dollar is falling against the Euro, when international affairs are not being discussed at length in America, but certainly the fact remains that Russia and China are increasing their military might and increasing their global power. So the sixty four thousand dollar question is what are they going to do with it and when and to what extent are these new geopolitical situations driving the policy? And then finally, what does all that mean to the American citizen who volunteered to go to Iraq perhaps back in 2003 thinking that they were doing so to keep their country safe from another 9/11.

Heather Wokusch: Well yes indeed I mean those are very good questions. The interesting thing, clearly for many, is that on the one hand you’ve got Bush who is on his own, quote, crusade, and then you also have Ahmandinejad, and so both of these gentlemen are coming from a position, at least that they say, that they are highly religious and this is the reason that we need to get into war. So it is very disturbing on that kind of level.

What’s also interesting when you think of countries such as China, for example, I think that they are following the play book of Lau Tzu and just letting these other enemies just kind of destroy each other and then they can rise and take over. We also are going to see next year, one would imagine, many of these Asian countries that have very large assets within the United States, financial assets, they have already begun exploring, very seriously, how to divest of their US assets, how to dump the dollars, how to get more involved in the Euro, for example. And this combined with the expected crash, if you will, of the US housing market, is going to have very serious and damaging impact on the US economy in the next couple of years. This is something that also will effect the normal person on the ground and in a very negative way and this is also something that will most likely be blamed on the Democrats come 2008.

Regarding Russia; Vladimir Putin is playing a lot of games with the EU and he clearly is also eyeing the situation in the Middle East because oil is of such interest to Russia and this as we have said proxy war going on between Saudi and Iran and the US. One imagines that Putin has much up his sleeve that he is not sharing.

Dori Smith: Just describe what you mean when you talk about a proxy war.

Heather Wokusch: You’ve got the Saudis who have come out and said that they are going to be supporting the Sunnis if the US withdraws from Iraq and you have US forces, the Iraq Study Group suggests that they should be actively based with the Shiites, and so you’ve got the Saudis involved, you’ve got Iran also involved because clearly they have interests in the region, you’ve got the US with their permanent bases there, and one would imagine that these three countries would not be involved if it were North Korea, for example, or a country that did not have very critical natural resources. But the bottom line is whoever controls Iraq’s oil is going to have a strangle hold over OPEC and that ultimately is the goal here. And this also is the goal for other large countries such as China which has been buying up all of the oil resources in Africa that it can get and individuals such as Putin as well. So it’s a battleground for the oil primarily that is being played out from a number of different countries and a number of different angles.

Dori Smith: What aspects of our foreign policy and our military policy can we address as a society and make a difference in what might happen next?

Heather Wokusch: One of the most critical points, and maybe its simple but I mention this in the book; when Washington says ‘OK, country X, I guess nowadays this would be Iran, country X is the evil doers and what have you and we need to go attack them’, I think it’s critical just to say can you identify that country on a map? Do you know anything about the people? Do you know anything about the culture? –To do what we can on a very personal level to put a human face on that country. Once you can actually identify with a country and at least one person within the country then you are going to take it personally if the bombs start dropping on that country. And now that we have had so many service members return either maimed or psychologically wounded or in fact dead, then clearly we also can now identify that our own service members who go there are suffering and in unnecessary harms way. So that‘s another way that we can take it personally.

We of course contact our Congress members about what is going on. Unfortunately, in the next 110th Congress some of the Democrats who are going to be in charge of the committees are not exactly other than war mongers. This is something that is of concern. I’m thinking primarily of Tom Lantos, the Democrat from California. He’s going to chair the House International Relations Committee. He was the gentlemen as you recall who in the first Gulf War under Bush Sr. he was the one who pushed through this whole Nurse Nayirah scandal thing that this Kuwaiti young woman who hypothetically had been a nurse in Kuwait and she testified in Congress saying the Iraqi soldiers had taken the babies out of the incubators and thrown them on the ground. Later it turned out the whole thing was a lie. It was put forth by a PR company. Well who made that possible it was Tom Lantos and now he’s going to be the head of the House International Relations Committee and so this is of concern one might say.

Dori Smith: During the confirmation hearings of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense he said attacking Iran was a bad idea. Do you think he will be held accountable for making that statement or do you expect that it will be forgotten as policy marches on?

Heather Wokusch: I would guess that the critical issue is who actually would attack Iran? If, for example, Israel does it and then Iran threatens Israel well then that’s a whole different case and it wouldn’t apply on some level to what he had stated in Congress. So I would imagine that if the situation were that he could claim that he had been somehow pushed into this then anything is possible. But regarding accountability for example he was in no way held accountable for his previous actions with the Iran Contra scandal and politicizing intelligence.

In 1991 when he was going through confirmation hearings you had some very serious questions and this time, my goodness, it was just a cakewalk. I mean clearly people did not hold him accountable for what he had done before so what might happen in the future is anyone’s guess.

Dori Smith: The portrayal of this new Congress that’s coming in with Nancy Pelosi at the helm is that they are going to bring a way out of Iraq. And yet even before they have officially begun to take on their business we see the media talking about a troop increase; and as we know Nancy Pelosi very pro-Israel.

Heather Wokusch: Yes and I think its quite interesting to read their Six for 06 priorities, these are the priorities for all Americans, not just the privileged few, and it is their six goals. Now under “real security” as they call it, at home and overseas, there are some very interesting sentences, one of which is they will, and I quote, ‘double the size of special forces to destroy Osama bin Laden and terrorist networks like Al Qaeda.’

How progressive is this? And besides what exactly is Al Qaeda and has this worked in the past? It just seems to be rehashing these approaches that clearly have not worked in the past. It is of concern, clearly.

Dori Smith: We’re talking with Heather Wokusch. She is author of ‘The Progressives’ Handbook.’ These volumes contain everything you would like to have at the tip of your tongue when you are speaking with that relative who doesn’t agree with you or when you are taking on that professor who is touting the benefits of the Bush doctrine, or when you have just met someone and they strike you as a very reasonable person and you would like to just sit them down and take them by the hand and walk them through the realities of US foreign policy. Here in the Progressive Handbook you find all of those details, for one thing; ways of putting your arguments; an organizational method for being a progressive and putting out information in a way that you can be inspirational and believable. Heather Wokusch just talk about that portrayal of your book, tell us more about your reasons for writing it and how you put it together and what your hope is for what the books will achieve.

Heather Wokusch: First I would like to thank you very much for your kind words. I appreciate that very much. What I primarily wanted to do was to just in one place put together a cohesive coherent listing of the impacts of the Bush Administration on various areas. Now I realize some people are very interested in the environment, for example, but not so interested in education. So I separated ten major areas into their own chapters and that way you can just read the sections that you are interested in.

If we look at the environment chapter it goes through all of the changes that have happened in the area of water, in the area of air, in the area of our national parks, what have you. And when you see these facts, these stories you could say put side by side by side. Then it becomes even more apparent that in fact these roll backs are not individual. It’s part of a larger pattern. In my opinion the most important part of the books actually is at the end of each chapter it lists ten action ideas that you can take every day because I don’t want people to read these and then just get depressed. I really do firmly believe that in each of these areas there are concrete actions that each of us can take every day that will not only empower us simply by taking the action but will also in fact make a really positive difference and clearly within these next two years we need all of the positive action that we can get. So my hope is that the books for one, inform people and also inspire people who perhaps might be feeling a little overwhelmed or apathetic at all of the changes under Bush, and then two, that motivate people to take back some of the power personally and with that we can take back the country.

Dori Smith: Heather Wokusch is author of The Progressives’ Handbook, everything you need to know about the Bush Administration’s record in order to make a difference now. Her web site is heatherwokusch.com. Or you can find the books by logging on to progressiveshandbook.com. We will be hearing a lot more from Heather Wokusch in the coming weeks as we talk about what Americans can do to bring US forces home from Iraq and avert wider war.

And in the spirit of Heather’s book we would like to provide one thing listeners can do if they want to get more active in bringing peace: On January 27th peace activists say they will take the mandate for peace to Washington D.C. as newly elected Democrats are arriving. The event is sponsored by the national office of United for Peace and Justice. Local offices of AFSC, the American Friends Service Committee, are helping to organize busses. David Amdur is in the Hartford office of AFSC.

David Amdur: It’s really important to hold Congress people, our Senators, accountable for the war and send a very strong message that they have to bring the troops home now and they have to defund the war. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the war in Iraq. That money could be used here at home. It’s really saying to the new Congress, you were elected on an anti-war vote, you need to bring our troops home and you need to stop funding the war.

I think there have been statements by the new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reed, by Senator Hillary Clinton, who it is also widely assumed is going to be a Presidential candidate. If they are saying yes, we would agree to a time limited increase of US troops we really have to say “NO”. The best thing to resolve the conflict in Iraq is for US troops to come home and for there to be genuine support of Iraqi initiatives to end the conflict.

If people do want to get information about going to Washington they can go to www.afsc.org and on the home page is a link that will show you how you can get tickets for the bus and participate in the activities.

For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced in the studios of WHUS Radio for the People, at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 PM Talknation.org and talknationradio.org for transcripts and discussions.

Our music is by Fritz Heede.

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