[Peace-discuss] Could Anyone be "Worse" Than Bush?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Amid a travelogue, Alex Cockburn offers what seem to him (and to me) obvious
reflections on the chief magistracy established by the constitution of 1787.  I
think many of us who have watched Barack Obama since his appearance in the
Illinois legislature would agree with Cockburn: "Never for one moment has Obama
ever struck me as someone anchored, or even loosely moored to  the left, or even
displaying the slightest appetite for radical notions, aside from a few taglines
tossed from the campaign bus. In economics and foreign policy he has swaddled
himself with right-wing orthodoxy to a degree that transgresses on the
grotesque." Excerpts from Cockburn's argument follow. --CGE]

	www.counterpunch.org
	Weekend Edition  July 5 / 6, 2008
	Could Anyone be "Worse" Than Bush?
	By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

These days, it’s an almost irresistible temptation to believe that when the
present incumbent finally rides his mountain bike off into the sunset next
January the world will be a better place merely by the fact of his absence. Amid
the sinister twilight of the Bush years, such hopes are understandable. Looking
at the blazing bodies of their comrades, used as torches to brighten up his
banquets, the early Christians must certainly have rejoiced when Nero passed,
little knowing that not so far over the horizon loomed Domitian and other
emperors eager to add uplifting chapters to the Book of Martyrs.

Is it conceivable that Obama or McCain could be as bad or worse than Bush?

[... Consider Bush's speech in the Knesset,] a slab of rhetoric so exuberant in
its homage to Israel that the New York Times had to reprimand him editorially
for bad taste. In its immediate aftermath I had an opportunity to ask a member
of the Syrian cabinet, Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, whether she thought the
installation of a new U.S. president next January would diminish the forebodings
which she had just been outlining  with great passion, from the continuing human
catastrophe in Iraq, to the horrors of Israel’s siege of Gaza, to the U.S.’s
obvious intent to provoke another terrible civil war in Lebanon. (For the
record, Dr Shaaban does not think a war with Iran was likely.)  She didn’t
hesitate to answer me by saying she envisaged no change, if a candidate such as
Barack Obama settles into the Oval Office next January.

The continuous policy of the United States is to divide and rule, she exclaimed,
has been and will be for the foreseeable future, to fan schism and internecine
bloodletting in the region,  to set Arab against Arab, whether it be the
communities of Lebanon or the Shia and Sunni in Iraq.

Just before  Dr Shabaan was giving this answer, one of the New York Times’s
extensive stable of neo-conservative columnists, David Brooks, was fretting that
a statement Obama had made after Bush’s Knesset speech did indeed constitute
“appeasement”, indicating he had drifted off into “Noam Chomskyland”. Obama’s
sin had been to say that “it’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to build a
new Lebanese consensus,” focusing on electoral reform, an end to a corrupt
patronage system and the promotion of an equitable economy.

So anguished was Brooks by these dread prospects that he phoned Obama who
promptly furnished answers resoundingly mollifying the columnist’s suspicions.
According to Brooks, Obama said that “in some ways he’d be tougher than the Bush
administration”, doing more, to take one specific example, to arm the Lebanese
military. (This schedules a bloodbath in Lebanon in Year One or Two of the Obama
administration.) Obama’s bottom line to Brooks was straight-up Caesarism: “The
[U.S.] generals are light-years ahead of the civilians. They are trying to get
the job done rather than look tough.”

Let our prayers be for incompetent emperors who talk tough but screw up.

[...]

Having defined himself as the candidate of change and inspirational hope,
Obama’s been busy making it clear that when it comes to serious issues like the
American Empire, change is parsed as running the planet with greater efficiency.
A real candidate of change would announce that by the end of his first term
America would have withdraw from at least half the roughly 1,000 overseas bases
it occupies, quitting the rest at the end of eight years.

Wishful thinkers comfort themselves with the thought that deep in the
undergrowth, biding his time, is the “real” Obama, a progressive, even radical
fellow...

There have plenty of articles recently, some in this site, with headlines such
“Obama’s Lunge to the Right”. I find these odd. Never for one moment has Obama
ever struck me as someone anchored, or even loosely moored to  the left, or even
displaying the slightest appetite for radical notions, aside from a few taglines
tossed from the campaign bus. In economics and foreign policy he has swaddled
himself with right-wing orthodoxy to a degree that transgresses on the grotesque.
He released the list of his “senior working group on national security” the
other day. Not since Jimmy Carter entered the White House and promptly chose
Cyrus Vance as his secretary of state and Zbigniew Brzezinski as his national
security adviser has there been so dreary a news release.

     --Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
     --Senator David Boren, former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee
     on Intelligence
     --Secretary of State Warren Christopher
     --Greg Craig, former director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning
     --Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig
     --Representative Lee Hamilton, former Chairman of the House Foreign
     Affairs Committee
     --Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder
     --Dr. Tony Lake, former National Security Advisor
     --Senator Sam Nunn, former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
     --Secretary of Defense William Perry
     --Dr. Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State
     --Representative Tim Roemer, 9/11 Commissioner
     --Jim Steinberg, former Deputy National Security Advisor

Here’s a crew ripe marinated in orthodoxy, running the gamut of inspirational
rhetoric from Madam Albright’s “We think the price is worth it” (killing half a
million Iraqi kids through sanctions in Clintontime) to Dr Rice, now of the
Brookings Institution and formerly in charge of the African desk at the State
Department in the Clinton years. A souvenir of Rice in 2002 or 2003? Here are a
couple of pearls:

     Ms Rice: “I think he has proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding
them, and I don't think many informed people doubted that. ...The Iraqis have
threatened to unleash a rein of suicide bombers on US and allied targets around
the world. And I think that's one of the real risks, as well as the use of
chemical and biological weapons, that we face. (NPR, February 6, 2003)

     Ms. RICE: “ It's clear that Iraq poses a major threat. It's clear that its
weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that's the
path we're on. I think the question becomes whether we can keep the diplomatic
balls in the air and not drop any, even as we move forward, as we must, on the
military side." December 20, 2002 NPR

Where’s the “real” Barack Obama in all this? There isn’t one. It’s like looking
for the “real” Cressida in Shakespeare’s play, whereas in fact there are only
successive Cressidas, as she refashions herself amid new circumstances...

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