THE TRUE STATE OF THE UNION

June 2003

 

[NOTE:  This very short version concentrates on foreign policy.  To see more on domestic policy, go to one of the longer versions.]

 by Dr. Robert M. Bowman

 

          I wrote my first State of the Union Address in 1992 as an alternative to the one given by the first President Bush. Copies of this updated 2003 State of the Union Address are going to all the presidential candidates of both major parties.  They are welcome to use these ideas as their own.  (Please email comments to bob@rmbowman.com.)

           I now ask you to suspend reality and pretend (just pretend, remember) that I am speaking to you as President of the United States and giving my State of the Union Address.

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          Mister Speaker, Madam President, distinguished Members of the Congress, honored guests, and my fellow Americans:   I've been told that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to be president.  Nevertheless, I am one.  I'm also a career military officer, the father of seven children, and the grandfather of twenty-one.  I've been a corporate engineer and executive, a song-and-dance man, a stuffy college professor, an itinerant preacher, a fighter pilot, a radio talk show host, and a husband to the same wonderful woman for 47 years.  One thing I have never ever been is a politician -- and I don't intend to start now.  I came to Washington to restore power to the people.  Once that's done, I'll go back to being a part-time rocket scientist, a part-time bishop, and a full-time troublemaker.

           I have been your president for but a short time, and I still have much to learn.  I hesitate to act in haste, and yet the times cry out for change.  I will therefore speak plainly and with candor.

           My talk tonight will have three main parts.  In the first I will attempt to describe the current state of our Union and how we got to where we are today.  In the second, I will propose concrete steps toward resurrecting the American dream.  And in the third, I will discuss our new relationship to a changing world.

 

CURRENT STATE OF THE UNION

 We're Number One:

                    I'm here tonight to declare to you that the United States is number one in the industrialized world: number one in our use of the world's resources, number one in the production of pollution, number one in the gap between the rich and the poor, number one in deaths by gunfire, number one in teen pregnancy, number one in poverty among the elderly, number one in citizens without health coverage, number one in child poverty, number one in homeless veterans, and number one in citizens behind bars.  And all that was true before "W" came in and made things even worse.  In the two and a half years of his failed presidency, George II turned a $236 billion per year surplus into a $400 billion deficit.  In his first two years he did away with 1.7 million American jobs, saw 1.4 million added to the uninsured, and had more than a million more Americans falling into poverty each year, reversing three decade-long trends.  The number of African-American children in abject poverty increased by 50%.  These children live in families with total incomes, including welfare, of less than $7,000 per year.  A fourth of our preschoolers live in poverty.  Leave no child behind, indeed!  He saw bankruptcies soar 23% to the highest level in history and stocks (including all our private retirement funds) lose over $6 trillion in value.  His policies resulted in the first rise in serious crime in a decade.  He slashed education funding by $90 million, while giving huge tax cuts to the corporations and wealthiest 1% of us.  As a result, we are again (as we were under his father) the world's #1 debtor nation, #1 in the creation of new billionaires, #1 in school dropouts, #1 in poverty, homelessness, hunger, divorce, suicide, and (oh yes) #1 in military force, nuclear weapons, and military spending -- almost as much as all the other nations in the world combined.  This also makes us the number one object of fear and hatred and therefore the number one target of terrorists (along with our friends in Israel).  We also lead the world in the number of hours worked per family, since it now takes two wage-earners and three jobs to provide the income earned with one 40 hour per week job in the 1950s -- this despite soaring productivity.  If it wasn't for corporate control of our government and the resulting trickle-down economics, ordinary workers could support their families with one job … working two days a week!  If worker pay had kept pace with executive pay, the average worker would now be making a million dollars a year!! and the minimum wage would be $143 an hour!

           What do you call a country whose principal exports are wood pulp and scrap metal, whose principal imports are manufactured goods, and whose fastest-growing industry is building and operating private prisons?  A third world country.  That is the state of the union we have inherited.

           In our drive to protect the far-flung financial interests of our multinational corporations, we have abandoned our principles and fought wars of aggression against small countries.  We have overthrown popularly-elected leaders and installed puppet dictators who sell out their own people to our global robber barons.  We have squandered the good will purchased by the blood of our youth in the defense of democracy in World Wars I and II.  In our unilateralist arrogance, we have abandoned the ideals championed by our forebears who founded the United Nations.  We have violated the legal framework established by our greatest generation at Nuremberg.  In our phony war against the terrorists our policies have created, we have overturned the Constitutional protections given us by our founding fathers in the Bill of Rights.  In our drive toward a corporate New World Order, we have sold out our workers, our families, our environment, our children's futures, and the American dream.  This too is the state of the union we have inherited.

 

What Has Led Us To This State?

           We are also probably the most blessed nation on earth.  We have a bounteous and beautiful land, a skillful and creative work force, and an inspired Constitution.  We have had the opportunity to create a land without want.  What went wrong?  Why are our workers paid such a tiny percentage of their true worth?  Why are we the only major nation without a national health program?  Why are our high school graduates two years behind their counterparts in other countries?  Why are we hated by so many around the world?  Why do we have hundreds of thousands of troops patrolling foreign lands and supporting foreign dictators?  What is going on here?

           The answer is that we have lost our republic.  Legislators no longer represent the people who elect them, but the corporations who finance them.  They answer not to their constituents, but to the lobbyists who line their pockets and fill their campaign coffers.  In return, government officials have undone decades of hard-fought victories against the robber barons of the nineteenth century.

           For years now, through both major political parties, the world's billionaires have directed U.S. policy for their own personal profit.  This has included agreements (NAFTA and the WTO) falsely portrayed as supporting free trade, but in reality promoting free investment, overturning U.S. laws, and putting American workers in competition with those in the Third World.  It has also resulted in a series of wars, from Iraq to Bosnia to Kosovo to Afghanistan to Iraq again -- wars which are never in the interest of those fighting them, or of the families left behind … wars which only serve the insatiable greed of the global investor class.

          Corporate power over our political system, over the media, and over most aspects of our lives is the greatest danger we face today.  Curtailing this power and restoring it to ‘We the People’ is our greatest challenge.  Until this is done, nothing else of great value is possible, especially real ‘reform.’  Those of us who dedicate our lives to peace, economic justice, and environmental preservation can make little progress in our struggles so long as ultimate power is in the hands of those who profit from war, poverty, and pollution.  We must reassert the sovereignty of ‘We the People’ over the billionaires and their hireling bureaucrats in the Corporate New World Order.

           Well, I didn't get here tonight by taking corporate millions.  I didn't get here by selling myself to the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and all the other global robber barons.  To be quite honest, I'm not sure how I got here!  But here I am, and as long as I am president, this government will serve the needs of the people, not the greeds of the wealthy elite.

 

RESURRECTING THE AMERICAN DREAM

           Turning things around won't be easy.  What our Constitution empowers me to change, I shall.  But for much of what needs doing, I will need the cooperation of Congress, and I ask for it tonight.

 Media Reform:

           The first thing we need to do is to sever the connection between money and political power.  This means electoral reform and media reform.  The latter can be done now.  I am ordering the Federal Communications Commission to reinstate equal time rules for both radio and television and to reimplement the ban on multiple ownership.  A free press is incompatible with corporate domination of the media.

 Electoral Reform:

           Electoral reform requires the participation of Congress and the States.  The most important reform is the adoption of Instant Runoff Voting at all levels.  I ask the States to adopt IRV for all statewide elections, including that for President of the United States.  The second is Proportional Representation.  I ask the States to consider PR for electing their Congressional delegations.  I also ask them to follow the lead of Florida and eliminate burdensome petition requirements for qualifying third party and independent candidates for the ballot.  Finally, I ask Congress to enact true campaign finance reform, banning the use of corporate, union, or other organizational funds completely, and funding campaigns with public money.  Corporations are not people, and money is not speech.  Whatever it takes, we must once and for all sever the connection between big money and political power.

 American Rights:

           Once that is done, everything becomes possible.  In this richest of nations, we can and we will guarantee every American access to a good education, a decent job at a living wage, health care (including long-term care) through a doctor-run single-payer national health program, and the undiluted protections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Fear of terrorism is not going to make this country a police state!  For the details of my domestic programs, please see our web site.

 The Defense Budget:

             The Secretary of Defense, The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I have defined four missions for our armed forces: (1) deterring anyone from attacking the United States with weapons of mass destruction, (2) defending our shores and borders from foreign invasion, (3) assisting the UN Military Committee in defeating aggression, maintaining freedom of the seas and airlanes, and performing peacekeeping functions, and (4) engaging in humanitarian and relief efforts at home and abroad.

             We have determined that, for the foreseeable future, these four missions can be accomplished with about a third of our current forces and for about a fourth of the cost.  This will, after a few years of transition, result in a peace dividend of $300 Billion per year. Our goal is to transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy without a single person joining the ranks of the jobless.  Until new contracts come out for renewable energy, non-polluting transportation, and the rebuilding of our infrastructure, there are to be no layoffs.  If we can pay farmers not to grow crops, we can pay engineers and machinists not to build weapons.

 

OUR NEW ROLE IN A CHANGING WORLD

             In half a century, the United States has gone from savior of the civilized world to the most feared and hated nation on earth.  This in turn has made our citizens, at home and abroad, the prime target of thousands of desperate, fanatical terrorists.  With our belligerence, our arrogance, our name-calling, our overwhelming military superiority, our unilateralism, and our troops stationed in 150 different countries, we have driven other nations to develop nuclear weapons to deter us from attacking them.  We have then used their weapons developments to justify our further belligerence in a never-ending cycle toward disaster.  The end result of all this is that despite spending more than a billion dollars a day on military power, the American people are less secure than at any time since the end of the Civil War.  Tens of billions of dollars for "Star Wars" weapons, thousands of nuclear weapons, hundreds of thousands of troops, and the expenditure of twelve trillion dollars since World War II have brought our people only more insecurity, massive debt, and the loss of many of the cherished rights enshrined in our Constitution.

             It's time for the cycle to end.  It's time to end the belligerence, bring home our troops, and rejoin the family of nations.  And that's exactly what we're going to do.  Now let's get to some specifics.

 Nuclear Weapons and Materials:

             My predecessor rejected a Russian offer to destroy nuclear warheads removed from use in arms control agreements.  I have contacted the Russians.  Their offer is still on the table, and I am accepting it.  I am immediately reprogramming funds from cancelled weapons programs to restore and then double the Nunn-Lugar funds for carrying out and monitoring disarmament in the former Soviet Union.  Fissionable plutonium and enriched uranium from the world's nuclear warheads will be mixed with Depleted Uranium (DU), glassified, and disposed of.  All DU munitions in our possession will be destroyed.  We have already done immeasurable damage to the world’s children and to the men and women in our armed forces with these radioactive weapons.  It must stop.  And it just did.

 Land Mines:

             I will sign the treaty banning anti-personnel land-mines and submit it to the Senate for ratification.  All U.S. stocks of land mines will be destroyed, and we will cooperate with and assist other nations in the cleaning up of land mines we have deployed, including those in the Korean DMZ.  The inhumane maiming of innocent civilians, including children, has gone on far too long.  Our use of land mines must end – and it just did.

 ABM and other Treaties:

             We will also sign a series of other treaties which have languished all too long without U.S. support.  Among them will be the Kyoto Accords, The Law of the Sea Treaty, The International Criminal Court, and the Treaty on the Rights of the Child.  During the last administration, one of our most valuable treaties was lost -- the ABM Treaty. Since the U.S. withdrawal from that treaty was a unilateral presidential action taken without the advice and consent of the Senate, I am disavowing that action.  I hereby declare to our Russian treaty partners and to the rest of the world that I am ordering the cancellation of all programs in violation of the letter and spirit of the ABM Treaty.  This administration will spend no money and take no action which would be in violation of the ABM Treaty were it still in force.  I call on President Putin to do likewise.

             We are also returning to a strict adherence to the Test Ban Treaty and the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  I am canceling the development of new low-yield nuclear weapons as well as the Stockpile Stewardship program.  Our treaty obligations require us to move quickly toward a world free of nuclear weapons.  We intend to do just that.

 Weapons in Space:

             I commend Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio for his Space Preservation Act and accompanying treaty banning all weapons in space.  We will sign this treaty and submit it for ratification.

 Korea:

             As a military officer and fighter pilot, I was stationed in Korea twice, and developed a fond love of the Korean people, especially the children.  In return for scrapping their nuclear and missile programs, the North Koreans now want a promise that we won't attack them without provocation.  I'm willing to make that promise.  I'm asking President Carter to once again go to North Korea to defuse the situation.  We must try to bring North Korea back into the family of nations.  As soon as this crisis is resolved, I will order our 40,000 troops home from South Korea.  We will do all we can to help the Korean people find a path to reunification, but it is something for them to decide, not for us to impose.

 Iraq:

             Undoing the damage done by our illegal, unconstitutional, immoral war of aggression against Iraq will be one of our biggest challenges.  We will help the Iraqis rebuild their country, their infrastructure, and their society.  We will attempt to recover treasures looted from their museums.  We will try to rebuild our credibility and our reputation as a nation.  We, of course, will not be able to restore the hundreds of lives lost on both sides of this tragic war.  One thing is for sure.  There will be no more preemptive attacks on my watch.  I am directing the Secretary of Defense to start bringing all our troops home, starting with those in Saudi Arabia.

 Terrorism:

             Terrorism is both a short-term problem and a long-term problem.  In the short term we must protect the American people from the terrorists we have already created.  This means enhancing port security, beefing up cockpit doors, strengthening the border patrol, introducing computerized tracking of aliens, funding local communities for first response activities, shoring up the Coast Guard, and improving communications between intelligence agencies.  These we will do.  It also means developing new ways of detecting and neutralizing weapons of mass destruction.  The Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, is doing important work in these areas and will be given my full support.  At the moment, this is probably the most important part of the Department of Defense.

             In the long term, we must stop making more terrorists.  That means stopping policies and actions which make people fear and hate us.  It means listening to the legitimate grievances of peoples we have wronged, and then changing our ways.  Only one thing has ever ended a campaign of terror -- separating the terrorists from the larger community which supports them.  This is done by ending the feelings of desperation, hopelessness, and powerlessness afflicting the people.  It is done by listening to them and then actually making their lives better.  It is not done by revenge and retaliation, which only create more terrorists.  If retaliation worked, the Israelis would be the world's most secure people.  In the end, we can have revenge or we can have security.  We cannot have both.

             The way I read the Constitution, my job is not to make the American people feel good.  (That's a job for a queen, not a president.)  My job is to make the American people secure.  To do that, we must change our government's ways so that we are no longer feared and hated.  So that's exactly what we will do.

             We have at times had a government with bad policies.  But we are a good people.  What we have long needed is a government which reflects the values and goodness of the American people.  We intend to give you that kind of government.

 School of the Americas:

             Our values and goodness are not reflected by a government which uses your money to train death squads in the techniques of torture, intimidation, and assassination.  The School of the Americas (by whatever name they choose to call it) has been responsible for unspeakable atrocities wherever its graduates have gone.  It must and will be closed.  As Commander-in-Chief, I am ordering that the students presently attending the School be shown the movies "Romero" and "Panama Deception" and then sent home.  It's the right thing to do.

 Cuba:

             Our values and goodness are not reflected by a government which gives Most Favored Nation status to the butchers of Tienanmen Square and places an illegal secondary embargo on the impoverished people of Cuba.  The embargo of Cuba must end!  And it just did.  It's the right thing to do.

 Central Intelligence Agency:

             We desperately need good advance information on the activities of Al Qaeda and those who wish to do us harm.  But our values and goodness are not reflected by, and our security is not enhanced by, an organization which promotes instability, insurrection, tyranny, torture, terrorism, murder, and war around the world in our name and with our money.  If the CIA won't stick to gathering intelligence, I will abolish it.  It's the right thing to do.

 Arms Sales:

             According to Oscar Arias, every jet fighter sold by an industrialized nation to a developing country costs the schooling of three million children.  The cost of a submarine denies safe drinking water to 60 million people.  In the 1997 fiscal year, the United States exported $8.3 billion in weapons to non-democratic countries.  Our values and goodness are not reflected by a government which promotes and subsidizes arms sales around the world to dictators who use our weapons to control their own impoverished people.  Archbishop Oscar Romero pleaded with us to stop sending weapons to the right-wing government of El Salvador.  His pleas went unheeded.  The arms trade is wrong.  It must stop.  And it just did.  It's the right thing to do.

 The Role of Our Military Forces:

             Earlier I outlined four missions for the Department of Defense.  These missions are notable for what they do not include.  They do not include protecting the worldwide financial interests of multinational corporations.  And we won't.  If the global robber barons insist on using force to subjugate third-world peoples, at least they can use their own ill-gotten money and hire their own mercenaries.  Why should American taxpayers provide their own sons and daughters and then get stuck with the bill?

             Our values and goodness are not reflected by a government which sends its youth around the world to kill the sons and daughters of working people in other countries.  Our values and goodness are not reflected by sending our children to the Middle East to kill Arabs so the oil companies can profit from selling the oil under their sand, making us the target of terrorists.

             Ask my wife about war.  Her father fought in World War II.  He commanded the engineering battalion that built the first bridge across the Rhine.  He was gone for almost 3 years.  Her two brothers were Marines.  The oldest was at the Chosin reservoir in Korea when the Chinese flooded across the border into the war.  And of course she had to take care of our seven children by herself while I flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam.  She wasn't aware of the specific times that I came very close to not coming back.  But she lived with the possibility every day.  One of our sons was in the Army, and one of our grandsons in the Marines.  I'd say she's given enough.  We have another twenty grandchildren.  If you ask her, she'll say, "Enough is enough.  You're not getting them too."

             And I agree.  This country owes a huge debt of gratitude to our combat veterans.  We also owe them medical care for life, and I intend to see that they get it.  We owe it to them not to squander the liberties they purchased with their blood.  We owe it to them to resurrect the American dream.  But the best thing our government can do for its combat veterans is to quit making more of them.  No more Iraqs.  No more Kosovos.  No more El Salvadors.  These are not isolated incidents of stupidity.  They are part of a long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial interests of the wealthy few.  It is a new colonialism.  It endangers our national security.  It must stop … and it just did.  It's the right thing to do.

             As president, I will use the men and women in our Armed Forces to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Folgers, Chiquita Banana, and Exxon.  With nearly sixty years having passed since World War II, and with the Cold War long since over, there is no reason why we should still be occupying Germany and Japan.  We will continue to provide peacekeepers when requested by the United Nations.  The rest of our global military presence will end within two years.  This is not isolationism.  It is common sense.  It is in the interest of our people.  And it is obeying our Constitution for a change.  Every president in recent memory has violated our founding documents with foreign military ventures.  At my inauguration, I swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.  Lip service isn't enough.  We must treat the Constitution as if it mattered.  I intend to do just that.  It's the right thing to do.

             Instead of a worldwide military presence, we are going to have a humanitarian presence.  Along with the other wealthy nations of the world, we shall initiate a new Marshall Plan, providing funds to rebuild the Middle East as we rebuilt Europe after World War II.  We will also take the lead in complete debt forgiveness for the poorest countries, starting with those in Africa.  If we are once again to be a great nation, we must first be a good nation.

             We must build an America at peace with the world and with its own people … an America that seeks not to be king of the hill nor subservient to the World Trade Organization, but to be a responsible sovereign member of the family of nations … an America that is free of the threat of terrorism because it is no longer feared and hated … an America that leads the world -- not just with military might, but with its vision, its compassion, its democracy, its productivity, its freedom, its standard of living, its treatment of its own people, and its goodness.  That's the kind of America our people deserve.  And -- working together and with God's help --that's the kind of America we will become.

             It is customary at the end of these talks to say, "God bless America."  He already has.  Now we must do our part.  Thank you, and good night.

  

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