By Larry Jones
Many progressive people are excited that Barack Obama is the apparent
Democratic nominee for U.S. president. But let’s take a look behind
his oratorical eloquence, engaging smile, and mantra of “change we can
believe in.”
The vast majority of our readers are against the Iraq war and occupation, but Obama’s stand on the war is not why you are against the war. You want the U.S. to stop trying to dominate vast regions of the world, including the Middle East, for America’s imperial self interest. You reject “America uber alles.” But Obama had made it abundantly clear that he wants to do his part to more effectively continue such domination.
STRONGEST MILITARY ON EARTH
“I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth,” he said in a speech last year to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Remember that in his recent March 18 “race” speech he said that the “perfecting” of America is embedded in the Constitution (failing to mention that many of its authors were slave owners) and then skipped over the real horrors of slavery, the decimation of Native Americans, the theft of what are now the southwest states of the U.S. from Mexico, and all the other crimes of the young country, and then declared that today is where the “perfection begins.”
What does Obama’s “perfection” include? Among other things he desires, “” maintaining the strongest, best-equipped military in the world” (which he wants to enlarge) and never hesitating “to use force – unilaterally if necessary”” when U.S. “vital interests” are “imminently threatened.” That amounts to unilateral preemptive military action, which sounds more like the George Bush regime we”re seeking to drive out than the politics of change we are repeatedly asked to believe. To think that such a stance will go away if Obama become president is pure fantasy.
THE ISRAEL PALESTINE ISSUE
Obama has bent over backwards to convince the Israelis and their avid supporters in the U.S. that he is completely on their side, despite Israel’s bloody crimes against humanity. Obama has made some mild suggestions that the Palestinians should have justice. But that’s impossible so long as Israel continues isolating and attacking Palestinians. Israel’s position is well put by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he said:
“We”ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them [the Palestinians] ” [we”ll] insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years” time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
And that’s what Israel has done, along with building a high wall that separates Palestinians from the lands they have tilled for generations.
The website of Obama for America states that “Barack Obama strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship ” [and] believes that our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel.” But those of us who believe the Palestinians, after sixty years of removal from their homelands, deserve justice free of oppression question whether Israel’s security should be U.S.’s “first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East.”
As Sabeel, an international Christian organization in support of justice for Palestine, has said: “When any nation or group is allowed to flout safeguards of international law, humanitarian law, the Fourth Geneva Convention, along with basic moral standards, the whole of humankind is in grave danger.” Obama would perpetuate that danger.
Furthermore, Obama has made it clear that if Iran ever attacked Israel he would not take even the nuclear option off the table.
OBAMA AND THE LOBBYISTS
You may have been impressed with Obama’s statements that he does not take campaign money from lobbyists or the big money guys. But what you think you”re getting is not reality. When his support is analyzed he appears less to be supported by the grassroots than by the biggest centers of capital around. As Pam Martens of CounterPunch reported this month: “Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in and/or fraudulently made mortgages.”
The seven include Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. And then there are big hedge funds and large law firms who are registered lobbyists. Lobbyists? You thought you heard him say he doesn’t take money from lobbyists. Again appearances don’t equal reality. It works like this, the owners and employees of major lobbying law firms put together millions and millions of dollars for Obama, but he doesn’t take it from the firms” actual lobbyists.
It’s called plausible deniability. Oh, what a charade elections are. You want “change you can believe in?” Look to yourself and the millions just like you.
Larry Jones is a long time political activist and former United Church of Christ minister who lives in Honolulu.