[Marxism] Obama, Clinton, Wright

[Eli Stephens]

People say the strangest things.

In "Clinton continues racist camaign against Obama, Wright," John Nichols ends 
with this:

"Clinton is Fox offended.

Clinton is Fox outraged."

Left unmentioned in the article is Obama's comments, who called Wright's latest 
speeches "outrageous" and "destructive." So we'll match one "outrage" with 
another, and I'll say that "destructive" tops "offended." But according to 
Nichols, it's Clinton who needs to be chastised.

On the other hand, in "Black people become the enemy again: Obama's 'race 
neutral' strategy unravels," Glen Ford praises Clinton for having "the sense to
prepare a statement that sounded sensitive to Black anger." Her statement was 
better than Obama's (and it was a "statement," as opposed to a response to a 
question at a press conference), but not qualitatively. Clinton said, for 
example, "We must also embrace this opportunity to take steps - in our 
communities, in our law enforcement agencies, and in our government - to make 
sure this does not happen again." Compare that to Obama's "The most important 
thing for people who are concerned about that shooting is to figure out how do 
we come together and assure those kinds of tragedies don't happen again." She 
did, unlike Obama, note that "we await the conclusion of a Department of Justice 
civil rights investigation," but, no more than Obama, did she actually denounce 
the verdict, nor did she call for the DoJ to prosecute, only saying that she'll 
"await" their investigation (IS there such an investigation? I haven't heard of 
one).

Over at CommonDreams yesterday 
(http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/30/8623/), Stephen Zunes, whom I 
respect greatly, had an article entitled "The Clinton Smear Campaign Against 
Obama," which was an excellent take-down of the despicable character of some 
aspects of the Clinton campaign. But in the course of that article, he wrote:

"A sizable number of Democrats decided some time ago that they would not vote 
for Hillary Clinton — even if she got the party’s nomination — because of her 
dangerous views regarding presidential power: specifically, her belief — 
illustrated in her October 2002 vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq — that the 
president of the United States should be able to invade a country on the far 
side of the world that is no threat to us at the time and circumstances of his 
own choosing."

But, as I wrote to him, Barack Obama has not ONCE, neither before the invasion 
nor after, voiced a principled objection against the invasion based on that 
principal, which he CLEARLY endorses as much as Clinton. His objections, 
restated on more than one occasion, are completely of the sort that it was a 
"dumb idea," the "wrong war at the wrong time," wouldn't be beneficial to U.S. 
interests, and so on. He has NEVER said the United States did not have the RIGHT 
to carry out that invasion. And indeed, his willingness to intervene again in 
Iran ("no options are off the table") based on identical kinds of issues 
(alleged and once again non-existent WMD) illustrate that perfectly.

Furthermore, Clinton's willingness to believe that Iraq had WMD, which Obama 
uses against her like a club, is perfectly duplicated by Obama's similar 
willingness, expressed not that long ago, to believe the same about Iran. See 
the "Update" section of this post:
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html#5057340285524805554 to remind 
yourself what he had to say, and also to see my thoughts on why Clinton and 
Obama's positions on Iran and Israel are for all intents and purposes identical.


The fact is, on all sides, people continually want to exaggerate the differences 
between Obama and Clinton. They are, in actual fact, nearly non-existent.


_________________________________________________________________
Make i'm yours.  Create a custom banner to support your cause.
http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Contribute/Default.aspx?source=TXT_TAGHM_MSN_Make_IM_Yours