[Peace-discuss] Obama the expansionist

[C. G. Estabrook]

"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..."

	June 13, 2008
	Obama Is a Truly Democratic Expansionist
	by John Pilger

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 bullsh*t 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.

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.


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