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Some uncomfortable truths regarding Obama
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| Some uncomfortable truths regarding Obama
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| its-just-a-ride |
Its a bit long but worth the read...
From Kennedy to Obama: Liberalism's last fling
John Pilger, The New Statesman
29 May 2008
Writing in the New Statesman, John Pilger refers back to his travels with Robert Kennedy to describe the false hopes offered by those, like Barack Obama, who exploit the appeal of liberalism then present a very different reality.
In this season of 1968 nostalgia, one anniversary illuminates today. It is the rise and fall of Robert Kennedy, who would have been elected president of the United States had he not been assassinated in June 1968. Having travelled with Kennedy up to the moment of his shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 5 June, I heard The Speech many times. He would “return government to the people” and bestow “dignity and justice” on the oppressed. “As Bernard Shaw once said,” he would say, “‘Most men look at things as they are and wonder why. I dream of things that never were and ask: Why not?’” That was the signal to run back to the bus. It was fun until a hail of bullets passed over our shoulders.
Kennedy’s campaign is a model for Barack Obama. Like Obama, he was a senator with no achievements to his name. Like Obama, he raised the expectations of young people and minorities. Like Obama, he promised to end an unpopular war, not because he opposed the war’s conquest of other people’s land and resources, but because it was “unwinnable”.
Should Obama beat John McCain to the White House in November, it will be liberalism’s last fling. In the United States and Britain, liberalism as a war-making, divisive ideology is once again being used to destroy liberalism as a reality. A great many people understand this, as the hatred of Blair and new Labour attest, but many are disoriented and eager for “leadership” and basic social democracy. In the US, where unrelenting propaganda about American democratic uniqueness disguises a corporate system based on extremes of wealth and privilege, liberalism as expressed through the Democratic Party has played a crucial, compliant role.
In 1968, Robert Kennedy sought to rescue the party and his own ambitions from the threat of real change that came from an alliance of the civil rights campaign and the anti-war movement then commanding the streets of the main cities, and which Martin Luther King had drawn together until he was assassinated in April that year. Kennedy had supported the war in Vietnam and continued to support it in private, but this was skilfully suppressed as he competed against the maverick Eugene McCarthy, whose surprise win in the New Hampshire primary on an anti-war ticket had forced President Lyndon Johnson to abandon the idea of another term. Using the memory of his martyred brother, Kennedy assiduously exploited the electoral power of delusion among people hungry for politics that represented them, not the rich.
“These people love you,” I said to him as we left Calexico, California, where the immigrant population lived in abject poverty and people came like a great wave and swept him out of his car, his hands fastened to their lips.
“Yes, yes, sure they love me,” he replied. “I love them!” I asked him how exactly he would lift them out of poverty: just what was his political philosophy?
“Philosophy? Well, it’s based on a faith in this country and I believe that many Americans have lost this faith and I want to give it back to them, because we are the last and the best hope of the world, as Thomas Jefferson said.”
“That’s what you say in your speech. Surely the question is: How?”
“How?... by charting a new direction for America.”
The vacuities are familiar. Obama is his echo. Like Kennedy, Obama may well “chart a new direction for America” in specious, media-honed language, but in reality he will secure, like every president, the best damned democracy money can buy.
As their contest for the White House draws closer, watch how, regardless of the inevitable personal smears, Obama and McCain draw nearer to each other. They already concur on America’s divine right to control all before it. “We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good,” said Obama. “We must lead by building a 21st-century military... to advance the security of all people [emphasis added].” McCain agrees. Obama says in pursuing “terrorists” he would attack Pakistan. McCain wouldn’t quarrel. Both candidates have paid ritual obeisance to the regime in Tel Aviv, unquestioning support for which defines all presidential ambition. In opposing a UN Security Council resolution implying criticism of Israel’s starvation of the people of Gaza, Obama was ahead of both McCain and Hillary Clinton. In January, pressured by the Israel lobby, he massaged a statement that “nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people” to now read: “Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel [emphasis added].” Such is his concern for the victims of the longest, illegal military occupation of modern times. Like all the candidates, Obama has furthered Israeli/Bush fictions about Iran, whose regime, he says absurdly, “is a threat to all of us”.
On the war in Iraq, Obama the dove and McCain the hawk are almost united. McCain now says he wants US troops to leave in five years (instead of “100 years”, his earlier option). Obama has now “reserved the right” to change his pledge to get troops out next year. “I will listen to our commanders on the ground,” he now says, echoing Bush. His adviser on Iraq, Colin Kahl, says the US should maintain up to 80,000 troops in Iraq until 2010. Like McCain, Obama has voted repeatedly in the Senate to support Bush’s demands for funding of the occupation of Iraq; and he has called for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. His senior advisers embrace McCain’s proposal for an aggressive “league of democracies”, led by the United States, to circumvent the United Nations. Like McCain, he would extend the crippling embargo on Cuba.
Amusingly, both have denounced their “preachers” for speaking out. Whereas McCain’s man of God praised Hitler, in the fashion of lunatic white holy-rollers, Obama’s man, Jeremiah Wright, spoke an embarrassing truth. He said that the attacks of 11 September 2001 had taken place as a consequence of the violence of US power across the world. The media demanded that Obama disown Wright and swear an oath of loyalty to the Bush lie that “terrorists attacked America because they hate our freedoms”. So he did. The conflict in the Middle East, said Obama, was rooted not “primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel”, but in “the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam”. Journalists applauded. Islamophobia is a liberal speciality.
The American media love both Obama and McCain. Reminiscent of mating calls by Guardian writers to Blair more than a decade ago, Jann Wenner, founder of the liberal Rolling Stone, wrote: “There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline... Like Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama challenges America to rise up, to do what so many of us long to do: to summon ‘the better angels of our nature’.” At the liberal New Republic, Charles Lane confessed: “I know it shouldn’t be happening, but it is. I’m falling for John McCain.” His colleague Michael Lewis had gone further. His feelings for McCain, he wrote, were like “the war that must occur inside a 14-year-old boy who discovers he is more sexually attracted to boys than to girls”.
The objects of these uncontrollable passions are as one in their support for America’s true deity, its corporate oligarchs. Despite claiming that his campaign wealth comes from small individual donors, Obama is backed by the biggest Wall Street firms: Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, J P Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, as well as the huge hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. “Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors,” wrote the investigator Pam Martens, “consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages.” A report by United for a Fair Economy, a non-profit group, estimates the total loss to poor Americans of colour who took out sub-prime loans as being between $164bn and $213bn: the greatest loss of wealth ever recorded for people of colour in the United States. “Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign,” said Obama in January, “they won’t run my White House and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president.” According to files held by the Centre for Responsive Politics, the top five contributors to the Obama campaign are registered corporate lobbyists.
What is Obama’s attraction to big business? Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy’s. By offering a “new”, young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party – with the bonus of being a member of the black elite – he can blunt and divert real opposition. That was Colin Powell’s role as Bush’s secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent.
America’s war on Iran has already begun. In December, Bush secretly authorised support for two guerrilla armies inside Iran, one of which, the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, is described by the state department as terrorist. The US is also engaged in attacks or subversion against Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bolivia and Venezuela. A new military command, Africom, is being set up to fight proxy wars for control of Africa’s oil and other riches. With US missiles soon to be stationed provocatively on Russia’s borders, the Cold War is back. None of these piracies and dangers has raised a whisper in the presidential campaign, not least from its great liberal hope.
Moreover, none of the candidates represents so-called mainstream America. In poll after poll, voters make clear that they want the normal decencies of jobs, proper housing and health care. They want their troops out of Iraq and the Israelis to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbours. This is a remarkable testimony, given the daily brainwashing of ordinary Americans in almost everything they watch and read.
On this side of the Atlantic, a deeply cynical electorate watches British liberalism’s equivalent last fling. Most of the “philosophy” of new Labour was borrowed wholesale from the US. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were interchangeable. Both were hostile to traditionalists in their parties who might question the corporate-speak of their class-based economic policies and their relish for colonial conquests. Now the British find themselves spectators to the rise of new Tory, distinguishable from Blair’s new Labour only in the personality of its leader, a former corporate public relations man who presents himself as Tonier than thou. We all deserve better. |
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| jrb2395 |
wow that was a giant waste of time.
Obama should not be expected to have rolled out an entire presidental policy this far out from the election just like anybody for president this early in the cycle.
Kennedy was still running in the primary when he was assinated. Anybody with a brain would realize that he was going to have concrete policy in place before he was assinated.
Lastly how could this guy completely forget that Kennedy was not just a Senator from New York but also Attorney General for his brother and LBJ. He had tons more exprience running for president then Reagan, Clinton, or W Bush. The Cuban missile crisis alone gave him way more exprience then almsot any body that has run for president except for H Bush since 1960. |
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| JTProcess |
Quote: Originally posted by jrb2395
wow that was a giant waste of time.
Obama should not be expected to have rolled out an entire presidental policy this far out from the election just like anybody for president this early in the cycle.
Kennedy was still running in the primary when he was assinated. Anybody with a brain would realize that he was going to have concrete policy in place before he was assinated.
Lastly how could this guy completely forget that Kennedy was not just a Senator from New York but also Attorney General for his brother and LBJ. He had tons more exprience running for president then Reagan, Clinton, or W Bush. The Cuban missile crisis alone gave him way more exprience then almsot any body that has run for president except for H Bush since 1960. |
nice to see someone else here who uses logic and rational thought. |
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| BarkonCue |
Interesting article.
I wish my life was as "devoid of accomplishments" as young Robert Kennedy's or Sen. Obama's. :rolleyes: |
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| its-just-a-ride |
I like Obama and Dems do seem to offer the hope of being less harmful to America and the world compared to Republicans but he urgently needs more substance to prove exactly how he is going to do what he's promising.
Its quite often the leaders around the world that are initially regarded as weak that commit outrageous acts of aggression to prove how tough they are. Obama has already given strong indications that his Middle East policy will not be that much different to the current one... he is drifting closer to the right and it should be pointed out. |
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| Reverend Tyler |
Anybody who says Obama needs more substance doesnt know how to search a website.
He has much more detailed plans than anything McCain has proposed. |
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| Rush Has AIDS |
Quote: Originally posted by Reverend Tyler
Anybody who says Obama needs more substance doesnt know how to search a website.
He has much more detailed plans than anything McCain has proposed. |
Playing Devil's Advocate here Rev.
Is Obama aware of everything that is written on his own website? Did he write or approve all of the policies he is offering, or were they just put there?
That goes for every candidate. I'm just sayin'... |
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| jrb2395 |
Quote: Originally posted by Rush Has AIDS
Playing Devil's Advocate here Rev.
Is Obama aware of everything that is written on his own website? Did he write or approve all of the policies he is offering, or were they just put there?
That goes for every candidate. I'm just sayin'... |
I can gurantee you that the president does not know all the policy information that is released to the public.
The fact of the matter is that most of this policy is developed by somebody other then the candidate. He basically just sets the direction and focuses on issues that are personally important to him.
That is another reason this whole article is BS. Your not going to get a comprehensive platform from any candidate until very late in the election cycle and really the only way candidates can distinguish themselves from the other guy is to say I am for change or I am for what the guy before me was doing.
W Bush ran on the I am for change by bringing decency and respect back to the white house and the US the first time he ran and won the election. He had almost no foreign policy plan and what he ran on he broke. He had very little economic plan above and beyond tax break with the surplus that wasn't real. He had no child left behind that is a complete and utter disaster.
Clinton ran on economic change before him with little or no foreign policy plan laid out. wanted univerisal health care that was DOA in Congress and very little else. His economic plan worked like a charm but it was at least two if not three years until he had some sort of foreign policy plan that made sense. Most of his domestic policies were in response to what the congress dictated and almost all were compromises with the republicans
All this calling by people for Obama to have a comprehensive policy is unrealistic and if you look at the last 4 presidents none of them came into office with more then a handful of ideas of which about half were failures. |
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| alter-ego69 |
The one issue that will bury Obama is oil. Today McCain came out and proposed lifting the ban on offshore drilling.
Governor Crist of Florida has also changed his mind on offshore drilling.
The latest Rasmussen poll shows 67% of Americans want drilling now.
Obama, being a good liberal, ridiculed McCain and claimed drilling for our own oil is a failed energy policy. He threw out the same tired talking points....the oil won't be available for 10 years...it won't be enough to lower the price....the only way to lower the price is to tax the crap out of the oil companies....yada, yada, yada.
Energy is the issue Americans are concerned with the most and Obama is on the wrong side of this issue. |
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| zimmie |
| we have nothing to take the place of oil in the foreseeable future. Obama has offered no idea to either lower the price of oil or offered any plans to explore for any more. His policy is to continue to be dependent upon foreign oil throughout his Presidency. This ten year window to wait excuse for not drilling for oil is something that was said by liberals 10 years ago......now it's ten years later.... |
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| jrb2395 |
Quote: Originally posted by zimmie
we have nothing to take the place of oil in the foreseeable future. Obama has offered no idea to either lower the price of oil or offered any plans to explore for any more. His policy is to continue to be dependent upon foreign oil throughout his Presidency. This ten year window to wait excuse for not drilling for oil is something that was said by liberals 10 years ago......now it's ten years later.... |
Actually Obama's answer to the oil problem is to cut consumption by increasing the efficiency of the machines that use fuel and to search for alternative fuels.
I support offshore drilling but do not think that it will help with current prices and may not help at all unless oil fields can be found and pumped that are as big as the oil fields in Saudi Arabia.
The only thing that is going to help lower oil prices long term is a reduction in the demand for oil.
Oil does not have the demand to get $140 dollars a barrel as it is now but most anaylst think that oil prices should be anywhere from $50 to $90 a barrel and demand is going to keep it there or higher until we run out of oil in the ground. |
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| its-just-a-ride |
Based on what he has said so far, Obama will not be doing anything radical to make the oil companies hurt - which is what he needs to do. He will only be carrying out moderate actions.
Green energy... ethanol seems to be something he's talking about but thats not too impressive since it takes over needed fields for foodcrops (not to mention its more of a Bush idea).
Hopefully, he will offer more detailed radical proposals that can be discussed as the race continues. |
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