Glen Ford's Worldview
Harold Ford: ‘Right' Where He Belongs
"Harold
Ford is a willing tool, and the DLC loves him - like a puppy."
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the corporatist
wing of the Democratic Party originally created by Bill Clinton and Al Gore to
blunt the impact of massive Black voter registration in the 1980s South, has
found its ideal figurehead. Harold Ford, Jr. has apparently been "tapped" (and
I mean that in the full prison-sense of the term) as the DLC's next chairman.
He's their boy.
Before losing his quest for a U.S. Senate seat, last year,
the former U.S. Representative from Memphis was the DLC's most loyal Negro in
Congress: consistently at the bottom of the Congressional Black Caucus
Monitor's twice-yearly scorecard; one of only four CBC members to support
giving George Bush the War Powers he needed to invade Iraq; the darling of the
Social Security privatization crowd - the list of Ford's betrayal's of his
constituents is endless. We at BAR were overjoyed when the November election
results showed Ford's senatorial ambitions in ruins, even as the Democrats
regained control of the upper chamber.
Harold "The Prince" Ford personifies the corporate-induced
rot that is eating away at the Black polity. His ascension to automatic icon-hood,
as a U.S. Senator, would have been the icing on the cake for those forces that
wish/insist African Americans are drifting rightward. Ford didn't drift - he
lunged, often making a fool of himself as he embraced the good ole boy Blue Dog
Democrats and, of course, the Black- and labor-hating DLC. How low would Ford
go? During the last days of his losing senate campaign, Ford arranged photo ops
hugging his prospective new constituents in front a Confederate flag painted on
the cinder block wall of a redneck hangout. ‘Nuf said.
"Ford
took on all the pro-war, anti-Black, anti-labor and, yes, anti-gay
accoutrements of a Tennessee good ole boy."
The DLC, like their Republican corporate comrades, delight
in putting Black faces up front, to disguise their rightwing agendas. Harold
Ford is a willing tool, and they love him - like a puppy. Having long since
discredited himself among progressives, and no longer in a position to
victimize Black Memphis, Ford has found a cozy niche in the bosom of the money
bags to whom he owes his deepest - his only - allegiance. They own him, and
they can have him.
Which is why I find it sad and a bit more than silly that
the National Stonewall Democrats, a gay group, are
expressing "deep
concern" over Harold's rise in the DLC. As part of his senatorial candidate
persona, Ford took on all the pro-war, anti-Black, anti-labor and, yes,
anti-gay accoutrements of a Tennessee good ole boy - just as his DLC masters
wanted. The Stonewall Democrats' problem is with the DLC; Harold Ford is just a
cipher, a front. Rather than appeal to the nonexistent better nature of the
Democrat's racist, corporate wing, the Stonewallers would do better to organize
against the DLC's money-grip on the party's entire apparatus. Or is gay rights
their only agenda?
Provoking a
Shi'ite vs. Shi'ite Civil War
"The
entire thrust of the ‘surge' into Baghdad is to pit what Washington perceives
as ‘good' Shi'ites against the ‘bad' Shi'ites."
On the day before George Bush sent
his legions across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, I wrote that "they had reached
too far" and would only "accelerate the process of their own demise." Verily,
all this has come to pass, as anyone not afflicted with the American Manifest
Destiny mental illness could have foretold. What cannot be predicted, is the
behavior of nuclear-armed blind men who stumble around in a world populated by
mirages and fantasies of their own making.
The Bush men are incapable of
perceiving The Other - mainly non-whites - as full persons. They see themselves
as the motive forces of history, and everyone else as dumb objects to be
dominated, manipulated, bribed, or killed. That's why, superpower or not, they
were doomed to lose in Iraq, where a large majority of the population,
including Shi'ites, now want them dead. However, since the Bush men's destiny
is - in their own minds' eyes - manifest, failure is inconceivable.
Indeed, they cannot recognize failure, though it has hung like a stench around
them since the very beginning of the Iraq adventure.
The Bush men think they have one
more card to play - although in reality, their hand has long been empty. The
entire thrust of the "surge" into Baghdad is to pit what Washington perceives
as "good" Shi'ites, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (whom they
relentless scapegoat and emasculate), against the
"bad" Shi'ites, led by Moqtada al-Sadr. Knowing nothing of the internal
dynamics of Iraqi Shia - or Sunnis, or Kurds (who are also mainly Sunni) - the
Bush men bet they can once more throw the dice in a game with players whom they
neither understand nor respect as human beings.
"Washington
proposes to lay siege to Baghdad's Sadr City, a neighborhood with a population
the size of Houston."
There is, of course, no Iraqi army - just an agglomeration
of (several) Shi-ite and (two) Kurdish militias that choose to advance their
political and military commanders' agendas while in government uniform.
Washington proposes to lay siege to Baghdad's Sadr City, Moqtada al-Sadr's turf
(although not his only base of support - he's the second most popular man in
Shia Iraq). With two to three million people, the Sadr City slum is twice as
populous as Iraq's second city, Basra. The surge of additional U.S. troops is
supposed to somehow both supervise and take part in a forced battle among
coreligionists in a neighborhood with a population the size of Houston.
Should the opposing Shi'ite forces not collaborate in
fratricide, the Americans believe they have at their disposal battalions of
Kurdish troops from the north (Sunnis, remember, but not Arabs), dressed as
Iraqi army units but actually pesh merga militias loyal to two Kurdish
political parties.
Only blind, dumb, insane imperialists of the American kind
could create such a cauldron, and call it a strategy.
My guess is that Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani will intervene, as he did when Moqtada
al-Sadr's Mehdi Army faced annihilation by the Americans in Najaf, in 2004. If
so, it will represent the final humiliation for the U.S., which will have been
deprived of its bloodbath and every vestige of competence. From that point on,
even the Americans will see the red light blinking over the exit door.
BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected]
Margaret Kimberley's weekly
column, Freedom
Rider, did not appear due to the death of her beloved mother.
Ama Ata Aidoo lands a knock-out blow to white neocolonial anti-African revisionism.
The killing of Timothy Thomas in 2001 ignited Cincinnati’s long-simmering tensions over police violence. This struggle continues today, forcing a painful question: When justice is denied, does…
"DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Brittany Friedman. Friedman is assistant professor of sociology at the University of…
From Gaza to Sudan to the streets of America, the oppressors of our time demand mass resistance. Not just protest, but an organized, unrelenting struggle. Black radical politics remind us that only…
