[Peace-discuss] Obama admits to war views

[John W.]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 11:07 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

The Jeremiah Wright controversy has exposed once again Obama's support for
> US war policy in the Middle East.  That support has been clear from the time
> of his campaign for the US Senate, although he has covered it with attacks
> on the war tactics (but not the overall strategy) of the Bush
> administration.
>
> "Obama denounced [Wright's suggestion] that the United States was attacked
> because it engaged in terrorism on other people..." [NYT]. "When I say I
> find these comments appalling, I mean it," [Obama] declared. "It contradicts
> everything that I'm about and who I am" [G&M].
>
> "Obama cited Wright's contention ... that U.S. actions overseas were
> partly to blame for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ... Wright's statements
> 'offend me, they rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced
> and that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally today,' Obama said
> in a news conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina" [Bloomberg].
>
> Of course what Obama supports -- aggressive war in the Middle East in
> "Afpak," Iran and Palestine as well as in Iraq -- is worse that terrorism
> and includes it, as the Nuremberg tribunal pointed out at the beginning of
> the post-WWII world. The tribunal, spelled out in the UN Charter, declared
> that initiation of a war of aggression is "the supreme international crime
> differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
> accumulated evil of the whole."
>
> But Obama rejects Wright's quite accurate characterization of US policy.
> --CGE


*sigh*  You ain't never gonna get it, Carl, but Obama has no choice
politically.  Wright's style as well as his substance are too inflammatory
for the average (white) American voter, who still buys into most of the
mythologies that sustain our declining empire.

I keep thinking that Obama is a better man than he is seen to be in the
political campaign snakepit.  I keep thinking of Earl Warren, who when he
was appointed was thought to be a conservative Supreme Court justice, and
then surprised just about everyone with his "liberalism" (there's that word
again).  The Warren Court turned out to be the most expansive, in terms of
individual rights, in American history.  A high water mark.

I entertain the hope that Obama will surprise even you, Carl, and turn out
to be another Lincoln or FDR, a statesman rather than a venal political
huckster.  At least he's about 50,000 times better than the alternatives.
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