http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=VAN20070124&articleId=4578

Bush’s State of the Union speech highlights crisis of US ruling elite

President George W. Bush’s sixth State of the Union address was delivered Wednesday in an atmosphere of crisis and demoralization gripping not only his own Republican administration, but the entire American political establishment.

The media made much of Bush having for the first time to address a Democratic-led Congress, but the prevailing mood was not so much political confrontation as general bewilderment and apprehension, with the two parties confronting a military and political debacle in Iraq in which they are both fully implicated.

A president who, as multiple polls released this week have underscored, is the most despised occupant of the White House since Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate crisis........

..........The “new way forward” spelled out by Bush in his speech less than two weeks ago has provoked mounting fears that the military escalation in Iraq, combined with threats against Iran and Syria, will only deepen the disaster. Yet the reaction of Congress resembles the paralysis of passengers facing an impending train wreck: They know what is coming but can do nothing to avert it.

Fear of the consequences of Bush’s escalation is combined with even greater dread over the implications of US imperialism being dealt a decisive defeat in Iraq.

The general perplexity and desperation were reflected in the elements of unreality and absurdity in Bush’s speech. The “commander in chief” failed to even mention the war in Iraq—which everyone knew was the overriding issue facing the nation—until he was more than three-fifths through his remarks.

The most salient feature of the present “state of the union” is the unprecedented decision of a US president to escalate a war that was overwhelmingly rejected by the people in elections held just three months earlier. Yet this brazenly anti-democratic defiance of public opinion was never addressed............

.........In fact, the “business” that night, as throughout the year, was upholding the interests of the banks and corporations that control both major parties, and Bush’s proposals all reflected this focus. They amounted to a series of coded messages to the major profit-making sectors—the energy conglomerates, the healthcare monopolies, agribusiness and Wall Street—that Bush would push new initiatives to boost their profits..........

...........Led by Pelosi, Democrats rose repeatedly in standing ovations for the so-called war on terror and those who are waging it. They stood and applauded for Bush when he declared that Washington’s mission was to “help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity.” This despite the fact that US policy has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and turned their country into a nightmare of death and destruction, while American imperialism continues to base its regional power on a Zionist regime that oppresses the Palestinians and on Arab despots who suppress their own people.

The perplexity of the Democrats found its consummate expression when they were brought to their feet with the following passage from Bush:

“We went into this largely united—in our assumptions, and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq—and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field—and those on the way.”

Here Bush’s speechwriters earned their pay. The passage made clear that the Democrats in Congress were Bush’s partners in crime, voting the White House a blank check to wage a war of aggression against Iraq. It also spelled out that Democrats and Republicans alike reflected the consensus position within America’s ruling elite that military force must be used to assert the interests of US capitalism worldwide, most decisively by seizing control of world energy supplies.

Failure of this strategy has, from the standpoint of the political establishment, vast and catastrophic consequences for US imperialist interests worldwide. That is why, under the cynical slogan of “support our troops,” the Democrats will continue to fund the war............

.........The State of the Union address and the Democratic response have underscored the impossibility of waging a genuine struggle to end the war in Iraq outside of the fight to mobilize working people independently of and in opposition to both the Democratic and Republican parties, and the corporate ruling elite whose interests they serve.................