[Peace-discuss] Obama lies about the Sixties

[C. G. Estabrook]

"The population has been very carefully excluded from the political arena, and 
the general culture, the general dominant culture. That's not by accident. An 
enormous amount of work went into this. Elites were terrified by the sixties, 
this outburst of popular participation in democracy and so on. And there's a 
huge counter campaign to drive it back. It shows up in all kinds of ways. From 
what's called neo-liberalism -- opening up the financial system to freeing 
financial flows which is well understood as a weapon against allowing 
governments to make choices, a weapon against democracy. From that, to the huge 
explosion of the lobbyists in Washington, to the right wing think tanks. 
Everything you can think of, across the board, has been an effort to drive that 
danger of democracy back into the hole where it belongs." --Noam Chomsky, 21 
October 2004

"...some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not 
merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the 
symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself -- by burning 
flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps 
most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, 
something that remains a national shame to this day.  Most Americans never 
bought into these simplistic world-views -- these caricatures of left and right. 
Most Americans understood that dissent does not make one unpatriotic, and that 
there is nothing smart or sophisticated about a cynical disregard for America's 
traditions and institutions. And yet the anger and turmoil of that period never 
entirely drained away. All too often our politics still seems trapped in these 
old, threadbare arguments -- a fact most evident during our recent debates about 
the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by 
some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move 
forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal." --Barack Obama, 30 June 2008

Since both parties are well to the right of where the US populace is, Obama 
advances his neoliberal cause (not who his economic advisers are) by aiding the 
"effort to drive that danger of democracy back into the hole where it belongs."

Obama is indulging in a simple bit of right-wing lying when he says that the 
"most tragic" thing "the counter-culture of the Sixties" did was "failing to 
honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national 
shame to this day."  As anyone who was there knows, the anti-war movement 
promoted associations with active-duty soldiers, because it was their revolt 
that forced the US to withdraw ground troops from Vietnam and end the draft.

--CGE