Obama And The Empire
By William Blum
05/08/08 "ICH" -- - The New Yorker magazine in its July 14 issue
ran a cover cartoon that achieved instant fame. It showed Barack
Obama wearing Muslim garb in the Oval Office with a portrait of
Osama bin Laden on the wall. Obama is delivering a fist bump to
his wife, Michelle, who has an Afro hairdo and an assault rifle
slung over her shoulder. An American flag lies burning in the
fireplace. The magazine says it's all satire, a parody of the
crazy right-wing fears, rumors, and scare tactics about Obama's
past and ideology.
The cartoon makes fun of the idea that Barack and Michelle Obama
are some kind of mixture of Black Panther, Islamist jihadist,
and Marxist revolutionary. But how much more educational for the
American public and the world it would be to make fun of the
idea that Obama is even some kind of progressive.
I'm more concerned here with foreign policy than domestic issues
because it's in this area that the US government can do, and
indeed does do, the most harm to the world, to put it mildly.
And in this area what do we find? We find Obama threatening,
several times, to attack Iran if they don't do what the United
States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once
to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not
tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the
nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large
increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan;
wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st
state; totally ignoring Hamas, an elected ruling party in the
occupied territory; decrying the Berlin Wall in his recent talk
in that city, about the safest thing a politician can do, but
with no mention of the Israeli Wall while in Israel, nor the
numerous American-built walls in Baghdad while in Iraq;
referring to the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez as
"authoritarian", but never referring similarly to the government
of George W. Bush, certainly more deserving of the label;
talking with the usual disinformation and hostility about Cuba,
albeit with a token reform re visits and remittances. But would
he dare mention the outrageous case of the imprisoned Cuban
Five[1] in his frequent references to fighting terrorism?
While an Illinois state senator in January 2004, Obama declared
that it was time "to end the embargo with Cuba" because it had
"utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro." But speaking
as a presidential candidate to a Cuban-American audience in
Miami in August 2007, he said he would not "take off the
embargo" as president because it is "an important inducement for
change."[2] He thus went from a good policy for the wrong reason
to the wrong policy for the wrong reason. Does Mr. Obama care
any more than Mr. Bush that the United Nations General Assembly
has voted -- virtually unanimously -- 16 years in a row against
the embargo?
In summary, it would be difficult to name a single ODE
(Officially Designated Enemy) that Obama has not been critical
of, or to name one that he has supported. Can this be mere
coincidence?
The fact that Obama says he's willing to "talk" to some of the
"enemies" more than the Bush administration has done sounds
good, but one doesn't have to be too cynical to believe that it
will not amount to more than a public relations gimmick. It's
only change of policy that counts. Why doesn't he simply and
clearly state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first
attacked the US or Israel or anyone else?
As to Iraq, if you're sick to the core of your being about the
horrors US policy brings down upon the heads of the people of
that unhappy land, then you must support withdrawal –-
immediate, total, all troops, combat and non-combat, all the
Blackwater-type killer contractors, not moved to Kuwait or Qatar
to be on call. All bases out. No permanent bases. No permanent
war. No timetables. No approval by the US military necessary. No
reductions in forces. Just OUT. ALL. Just like what the people
of Iraq want. Nothing less will give them the opportunity to try
to put an end to the civil war and violence instigated by the
American invasion and occupation and to recreate their failed
state.
George W. Bush, 2006: "We're going to stay in Iraq to get the
job done as long as the government wants us there."[3]
George W. Bush, 2007: "It's their government's choice. If they
were to say, leave, we would leave."[4]
Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, 2008: "said
his government was 'impatiently waiting' for the complete
withdrawal of U.S. troops."[5]
Barack Obama, 2008: We can "redeploy combat brigades from Iraq
at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in
16 months."[6]
Obama's terms of withdrawal equals no withdrawal. Literally. Has
he ever said that the war is categorically illegal and immoral?
A war crime? Or that anti-American terrorism in the world is the
direct result of oppressive US policies? Instead he calls for a
troop increase and "the first truly 21st century military ... We
must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the
world."[7] Why of course, that's what the people of the United
States and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of
the people in this sad world desperately desire and need --
greater American killing power! Obama is not so much concerned
with ending America's endless warfare as he is with "succeeding"
in them, by whatever perverted definition of that word.
And has he ever dared to raise the obvious question: Why would
Iran, even if nuclear armed, be a threat to attack the US or
Israel? Any more than Iraq was such a threat. Which was zero.
Instead, he has said things like "Iran continues to be a major
threat" and repeats the tiresome lie that the Iranian president
called for the destruction of Israel.[8]
Obama, one observer has noted, "opposes the present US policy in
Iraq not on the basis of any principled opposition to
neo-colonialism or aggressive war, but rather on the grounds
that the Iraq war is a mistaken deployment of power that fails
to advance the global strategic interests of American
imperialism."[9]
He and his supporters have made much of the speech he delivered
in the Illinois state legislature in 2002 against the upcoming
US invasion of Iraq. But two years later, when he was running
for the US Senate, he declared: "There's not that much
difference between my position and George Bush's position at
this stage."[10] Since taking office in January 2005, he has
voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have
put forward. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as
Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush
Administration's false justifications for going to war in Iraq.
In doing so, he lacked the courage of 12 of his Democratic Party
Senate colleagues who voted against her confirmation.
If you're one of those who would like to believe that Obama has
to present moderate foreign policy views to be elected, but once
he's in the White House we can forget that he lied to us
repeatedly and the true, progressive man of peace and
international law and human rights will emerge ... keep in mind
that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile
strikes against Iran[11], and winning that election apparently
did not put him in touch with his inner peacenik.
When, in 2005, the other Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, stuck
his neck out and compared American torture at Guantanamo to
"Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot
or others -- that had no concern for human beings", and was
angrily denounced by the right wing, Obama stood up in the
Senate and ... defended him? No, he joined the critics, thrice
calling Durbin's remark a "mistake".[12]
One of Obama's chief foreign policy advisers is Zbigniew
Brzezinski, a man instrumental in provoking Soviet intervention
in Afghanistan in 1979, which was followed by massive US
military supplies to the opposition and widespread war. This
gave rise to a generation of Islamic jihadists, the Taliban,
Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and more than two decades of
anti-American terrorism. Asked later if he had any regrets about
this policy, Brzezinski replied: "Regret what? That secret
operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing
the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?
The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote
to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity
of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war."[13]
Another prominent Obama adviser -- from a list entirely and
depressingly establishment-imperial -- is Madeleine Albright,
who should always wear gloves because her hands are caked with
blood from her roles in the bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia in
the 1990s.
In a primary campaign talk in March, Obama said that "he would
return the country to the more 'traditional' foreign policy
efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F.
Kennedy and Ronald Reagan."[14] Use your imagination. Bloody
serial interventionists, all.
Why have well-known conservatives like George Will, David
Brooks, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough, and others spoken so
favorably about Obama's candidacy?[15] Whatever else, they know
he's not a threat to their most cherished views and values.
Given all this, can we expect a more enlightened, less bloody,
more progressive and humane foreign policy from Mr. Barack Obama?
Forget the alleged eloquence and charm; forget the warm
feel-good stuff; forget the interminable clichés and platitudes
about hope, change, unity, and America's indispensable role as
world leader; forget all the religiobabble; forget John McCain
and George W. Bush ... All that counts is putting an end to the
horror -- the bombings, the invasions, the killings, the
destruction, the overthrows, the occupations, the torture, the
American Empire.
Al Gore and John Kerry both took the progressive vote for
granted. Neither had ever been particularly progressive themself.
Each harbored a measure of disdain for the left. Both paid a
heavy price for the neglect. I and millions like me voted for
Ralph Nader, or some other third-party candidate, or stayed
home. Obama is doing the same as Gore and Kerry. Progressives
should let him know that his positions are not acceptable,
keeping up the anti-war pressure on him and the Democratic Party
at every opportunity. For whatever good it just might do.
I'm afraid that if Barack Obama becomes president he's going to
break a lot of young hearts. And some older ones as well.
Writer Norman Solomon has written: "These days, an appreciable
number of Obama supporters are starting to use words like
"disillusionment." But that's a consequence of projecting their
political outlooks onto the candidate in the first place. The
best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have
illusions in the first place."
NOTES
[1] William Blum, "Cuban Political Prisoners ... in the United
States" -- http://members.aol.com/bblum6/polpris.htm
[2] Washington Post, February 25, 2008; p.A4
[3] New York Times. December 1, 2006, p.1
[4] White House press conference, May 24, 2007
[5] Washington Post, July 9, 2008
[6] Obama's website: www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/
[7] Speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 23,
2007
[8] Haaretz.com (leading Israeli newspaper), May 16, 2007
[9] Bill Van Auken, Global Research, July 18, 2008 --
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
[10] Chicago Tribune, July 27, 2004
[11] Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2004
[12] Congressional Record, June 21, 2005, p.S6897
[13] For the full Brzezinski interview see
http://members.aol.com/bblum6/brz.htm
[14] Associated Press, March 28, 2008
[15] See, for example, Peter Wehner, "Why Republicans Like
Obama", Washington Post, February 3, 2008, p.B7
illiam Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the
World's Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir,
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire,
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased,
at www.killinghope.org
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