[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Obama is a truly Democratic expansionist

[Bill Totten]

Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US
presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating bullshit
on a grand scale

by John Pilger

New Statesman (June 12 2008)


In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: "The two greatest obstacles to
democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among
the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among
the rich, lest we get it". What has changed? The terror of the rich is
greater than ever, and the poor have passed on their delusion to those
who believe that when George W Bush finally steps down next January, his
numerous threats to the rest of humanity will diminish.

The nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless
commentator, "marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US history",
is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly
exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US
presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can
only be described as bullshit on a grand scale. Race, gender,
appearance, body language, rictal spouses and offspring, even bursts of
tragic grandeur, are all subsumed by marketing and "image-making", now
magnified by "virtual" technology. Thanks to an undemocratic electoral
college system (or, in Bush's case, tampered voting machines) only those
who both control and obey the system can win. This has been the case
since the truly historic and exciting victory of Harry Truman, the
liberal Democrat said to be a humble man of the people, who went on to
show how tough he was by obliterating two cities with the atomic bomb.

Understanding Obama as a likely president of the United States is not
possible without understanding the demands of an essentially unchanged
system of power: in effect a great media game. For example, since I
compared Obama with Robert Kennedy in these pages, he has made two
important statements, the implications of which have not been allowed to
intrude on the celebrations. The first was at the conference of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the Zionist lobby,
which, as Ian Williams has pointed out, "will get you accused of
anti-Semitism if you quote its own website about its power". Obama had
already offered his genuflection, but on 4 June went further. He
promised to support an "undivided Jerusalem" as Israel's capital. Not a
single government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all of
Jerusalem, including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN resolution
designating Jerusalem an international city.

His second statement, largely ignored, was made in Miami on 23 May.
Speaking to the expatriate Cuban community - which over the years has
faithfully produced terrorists, assassins and drug runners for US
administrations - Obama promised to continue a 47-year crippling embargo
on Cuba that has been declared illegal by the UN year after year.

Again, Obama went further than Bush. He said the United States had "lost
Latin America". He described the democratically elected governments in
Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as a "vacuum" to be filled. He raised
the nonsense of Iranian influence in Latin America, and he endorsed
Colombia's "right to strike terrorists who seek safe-havens across its
borders". Translated, this means the "right" of a regime, whose
president and leading politicians are linked to death squads, to invade
its neighbours on behalf of Washington. He also endorsed the so-called
Merida Initiative, which Amnesty International and others have condemned
as the US bringing the "Colombian solution" to Mexico. He did not stop
there. "We must press further south as well", he said. Not even Bush has
said that.

It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the
world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all
serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and
an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the
war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton
demonstrates. Obama's difference may be that he feels an even greater
need to show how tough he is. However much the colour of his skin draws
out both racists and supporters, it is otherwise irrelevant to the great
power game. The "truly exciting and historic moment in US history" will
only occur when the game itself is challenged.

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2008/06/pilger-obama-truly-bush


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