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Credit Senator Barack Obama and his staff for
running an enormously successful primary campaign. Shrugging off a
disappointing defeat in New Hampshire, he has, by late February, beaten
former frontrunner Hillary Clinton in 11 straight primary and caucus elections
and is poised to capture his party’s nomination for president.
Within a short time, Obama has accomplished
more than anyone would have guessed, but he has done so by trafficking
in wishes, dreams, and myths. He has punctured the myth of the
Clintons’ invincibility; he has exploited the myth of the Democratic
Party; he has spun the myth of the antiwar hero; above all, he has
fashioned the myth of the transformational candidate, the catalyst of
progress and reform.
Across the country, the desire, the need, for
change is powerfully felt. A sense of urgency is palpable. More than
anyone, Obama appeals to that yearning, especially among youthful
voters. His amorphous rhetoric, strong on promise but weak on program,
speaks to the frustrated, fearful, even desperate mood of the times.
Nonetheless, the candidate and his platform
do not withstand careful examination. Should he win the nomination and
ultimately the presidency, he will inevitably disappoint—even
betray—the hopes he has raised, the hopes that have thus far lifted him
to prominence.
Consider what Obama makes as his defining
issue: the war in Iraq. Obama presents himself as the antiwar
candidate, and it is his opposition to the Iraq War that has won him
popular support.
A cover story in The Nation magazine, for
instance, cites the war as the issue “where Obama compares most
favorably to Clinton. … Hillary Clinton voted for and supported the
most disastrous American foreign policy decision since Vietnam, and
Barack Obama (at a time when it was deeply courageous to do so) spoke out
against it” (Feb. 18, 2008).
One week later, a Nation editorial supporting
Obama for president praised him for his “humane and wise approach to
foreign policy, opposing the Iraq war while Clinton voted for it” (Feb.
25, 2008).
Despite the claims of the candidate and his
supporters, the idea of Obama as the antiwar candidate is not quite
what it appears to be. His opposition to the Iraq war is strictly
tactical, not strategic or principled. He agrees with Bush, McCain, and
Clinton that it is the legitimate business of the United States to
interfere in that country and to create a government there favorable to
the interests of the United States—favorable, that is, to the interests
of U.S. oil companies.
Ultimately, Obama opposes the war in Iraq,
not because it is wrong, but because it is not successful. Like all
major party politicians, Obama’s speeches are crafted to be misleading
and to allow the candidate to shift with the prevailing winds. Obama
speaks about withdrawing from Iraq immediately, but he opposes
immediate withdrawal of American troops.
The difference is far more than semantic. In
fact, Obama only proposes reducing combat troops at the rate of a
brigade a month, for more than a year and a half—unless al-Qaeda
remains strong in Iraq. If so, U.S. troops will stay put.
Since the “terrorist threat” is unlikely to
up and disappear anytime soon, Obama’s promise of a phased withdrawal
of American combat forces, though inadequate, is only verbal, a lure
for voters disenchanted with and opposed to the war. A President Obama
would need to implement policies that contradict the promises of
candidate Obama.
Further, since Obama (and Hillary Clinton)
call for an enlarged military by some 90,000 soldiers, it is not
unlikely that this “antiwar” candidate would actually continue and
increase the number of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq, or Afghanistan.
Part of this “deeply courageous” antiwar candidate’s platform is a
commitment to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where a successful
surge—by the Taliban—is actually taking place.
Obama has cleverly crafted a policy that
appears to be for peace but actually will guarantee a U.S. military and
combat presence in Iraq and the Middle East for years to come. This is
the policy that The Nation calls “courageous,” “humane,” and “wise.”
It’s a sign, rather, of how little the two major parties have to offer.
In fact, Obama lacks the courage and clarity
of even a Ron Paul, the most reactionary Republican candidate. Debating
with his GOP rivals, Paul would try in vain to point out America’s
disastrous, imperial role in the world. He would ask the other
candidates to consider how they would feel if another country treated
the United States as the U.S. treats other countries. Imagine being
bombed, invaded, and occupied, Paul would say.
Of course, Ron Paul was practically laughed
off the podium for his foolishness. After all, the willingness, and
even eagerness, to attack other countries with little thought of the
consequences, much less the feelings, of the victims is a prerequisite
for becoming the president of the United States. It’s what politicians
and pundits call “a test of character.”
Barack Obama has already passed this test. On
Aug. 1, 2007, Obama delivered a speech in which he called for “a
redeployment of troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan with or
without the permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.” Obama
claimed, “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist
targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
Moreover, Obama continued, “Beyond Pakistan,
there is a core of terrorists—probably in the tens of thousands—who
have made their choice to attack America. So the second step in my
strategy will be to build our capacity and our partnerships to track
down, capture, or kill terrorists around the world, and to deny them
the world’s most dangerous weapons. … I will ensure that our military
becomes more stealth[y], agile, and lethal in its ability to capture or
kill terrorists.”
ABC News concluded at the time that Obama “is
proposing a geopolitical posture that is more aggressive than that of
President Bush.”
This threat to extend war to a sovereign
nation—a U.S. ally at that—and to other nations as well, was no
misstatement or slip of the tongue. The speech was written with the
assistance of “foreign policy experts,” including former key officials
from the Clinton administration. Senator Obama’s chief foreign policy
advisor, Samantha Power of Harvard University, reaffirmed these
statements in a Feb. 25 interview on “Democracy Now!”
Through this speech, Obama signaled to the
ruling class of the United States that, for all the antiwar rhetoric,
he will make war as readily as a President Clinton or Bush, that he is
ready and fit to become the commander-in-chief of the world’s only
superpower.
Of course, neither Obama nor his experts gave
much thought to the likely results of armed intervention into an allied
nation. Should the U.S. send its troops, planes, and bombs, the people
of Pakistan, and of the region in general, would respond with outrage.
An attack by the U.S. military would increase anger and hatred against
the United States and would swell the ranks of terrorists. This would
be the thoroughly predictable result in Pakistan if a President Obama
applied the Bush Doctrine.
It is entirely fitting that Obama gave this
speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in
Washington, D.C. Wilson narrowly won a presidential election in 1916 by
pledging to keep America neutral in a war fought to determine which
European country would dominate the rest. In addition, his speeches on
behalf of workers and farmers condemning “economic serfdom” misled a
considerable number of American socialists to support his bid for the
presidency, though the Socialist Party itself had received almost one
million votes only four years earlier.
Before long, as, in fact, most socialists at
the time had expected, the “antiwar” candidate became the pro-war
president, and Wilson sent soldiers into the imperialist slaughter he
had previously denounced. President Wilson also created the Espionage
Act, which was used to arrest and imprison Socialist Party leader and
outspoken antiwar voice, Eugene V. Debs.
The history of the Democratic Party is a
litany of promises betrayed. Since the First World War, the Democrats,
no less than the Republicans, have been the party of war. It was
Democrats who dropped atomic bombs on Japan and presided over the Bay
of Pigs attack on Cuba; it was Democrats who escalated the war in
Vietnam and supported wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Democrats are not and have never been the
“party of the common people,” or the “party of reform.” They are a
party of the corporate elite. They are more similar to the Republicans
than they are different.
While the Democrats and Republicans are open
to anyone to join, neither party is controlled by its membership—though
both parties can pass reform legislation when powerful mass-action
protest movements compel them to do so. Most importantly, both the
Democrats and Republicans are capitalist parties that represent the
interests of the ruling rich who control them.
Senator Barack Obama appeals to the hopes
that flourish when people forget, deny, or do not yet know that the
speeches and statements of the candidates, no matter how promising or
inspiring they appear, mean far less than the interests of the party
and social class that they truly serve.
The way forward—the way to peace, prosperity,
and progress—does not rest on the shoulders of any Democrat. A society
without war, racism, and poverty can only be built by massive social
movements—by the power of millions acting against, not with, the
corporate elites and against, not with, the status quo.
When men and women who count for so little
today join together to fight for their own interests to count for
something, then real change will occur; then America will finally
create the kind of change “we can believe in.”
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