[Peace-discuss] Does he have to do this to get elected, too?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Obama has also recently referred to the popularly-elected president of 
Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, as a "demagogue."  Maybe he's just envious. He earlier 
referred to Chavez as an "oil tyrant."  Can you imagine a country using its 
control of oil for political purposes?! --CGE]

	May 27, 2008
	From AIPAC to the Cuban Exiles
	Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?
	By GREG KAFOURY

This week, Senator Barak Obama traveled to Florida and spoke to Jewish and 
Cuban-American audiences. In those speeches, he embraced the right-wing policy 
positions of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the 
hard-line program of the most reactionary elements of the Cuban exile community.

Senator Obama was for many years considered pro-Palestinian, but a year ago when 
he spoke sympathetically about the suffering of Palestinian people, he quickly 
backed off his statements under pressure from the Israeli lobby. His surrender 
to AIPAC this week is particularly troubling because it comes at a time when 
more and more Americans - including Jewish Americans - are awakening to the fact 
that the Israeli lobby is a threat to both America and Israel, because its 
unwavering support for the expansion of colonial settlements and its resistance 
to serious peace negotiations serve to block the two-state solution which could 
otherwise be within reach.

Last year, George Soros wrote in the New York Review of Books that the power of 
the Israeli lobby should be challenged by the creation of a new Jewish lobby in 
America, one committed to peace and justice. Just such a group was recently 
formed in Washington, D.C., calling itself "J Street." Former President Jimmy 
Carter has warned that the occupation of Palestine is creating an Israeli apartheid.

On May 7, Carter appeared on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" and explained the need to 
negotiate with Hamas, negotiations that are opposed by the Israeli lobby and by 
the U.S. administration. He noted that Hamas prevailed in an 
internationally-supervised Palestinian election that had been sponsored by 
America and Israel. Carter pointed out that a recent Ha’aretz poll found that 
64% of Israelis favor negotiations with Hamas. Yet Senator Obama has now fallen 
in line with AIPAC, ruling out negotiations with Hamas, and adopting the 
language of the Bush administration in calling Hamas a "terrorist organization."

Occupation invites resistance. To demand an end to resistance as the price of 
discussing the occupation is to invite endless casualties. As Ralph Nader has 
pointed out, the American media makes much of the primitive rockets fired at 
Israel by Palestinians, while minimizing the use of heavy weaponry and 
helicopter gun ships by the Israelis in Gaza, one of the most densely populated 
areas on earth. Over the last year, Palestinian civilian casualties outnumber 
Israeli civilian casualties nearly 400 to 1.

In his speech to the Cuban exiles, Senator Obama said he was willing to meet 
Raul Castro, but declared that members of the exile community would have to have 
"a seat at the table." This is the sort of precondition which Obama had 
previously ruled out, and the likelihood of Castro sitting down with exiles is 
beyond remote. Obama said that the release of political prisoners would have to 
be on the agenda, yet the exiles' notion of who is a political prisoner consists 
largely of those who not only resisted the regime, but who took money from the 
American government, and coordinated their efforts with those who supported the 
overthrow of the regime. (See " Cuba: U.S. Diplomat is Accused of Delivering 
Cash to Opposition," N.Y. Times, 5/24/08.)

While Obama spoke in favor of allowing Cuban-Americans to more frequently visit 
their families in Cuba and to send money to them, these reforms are widely 
popular in the exile community. Most tellingly, Obama failed to oppose the Bush 
Administration's ban on ordinary Americans traveling to Cuba on educational 
tours, tours that until 2004 allowed thousands of Americans to visit Cuba, and 
to come to their own conclusions about the Cuban Revolution.

Worse yet, the same Senator Obama who only a year ago supported ending the 
embargo declared that the embargo would continue until Cuba knuckled under to 
American demands.

In 1959, Cubans overthrew a dictator who was in partnership with the Mafia and 
who allowed Cuban workers and natural resources to be exploited by giant 
American corporations. In response to their nationalizing American assets, the 
Cubans faced nearly fifty years of U.S. sponsored invasion, embargo, sabotage, 
terrorism, and attempts to assassinate their leaders.

Yet Obama spoke not a word of how the restrictions of political liberty in Cuba 
are linked to Cuba's struggle to maintain independence in the face of relentless 
attempts by a succession of U.S. administrations to use their great power to 
bring Cuba to heel.

Senator Obama spoke not a word of the accomplishments of the Cuban Revolution, 
the world-class health system, the high quality education, rural development, 
cutting edge research on infectious diseases, and the provision of thousands of 
Cuban doctors to the most disease-ridden, God-forsaken corners of the earth.

Senator Obama essentially gave the same kind of speech on Cuba that we have 
heard from American Presidents for the last fifty years. Where is the "change" 
that we have been waiting for, that we have been promised so repeatedly?

We have been down this road before. In 2004, progressives lined up behind 
Senator Kerry, and progressive organizations made no demands upon him. The 
anti-war movement folded its tents. After this early and unconditional surrender 
on the part of the American left, Senator Kerry moved sharply to the right .The 
Democratic Convention was militaristic in form and corporate in policy. The 
candidate who had called himself "anti-war" wound up running against Bush's war 
policy from the right, calling for tens of thousands more troops, and 
criticizing Bush for having pulled back from Falluja simply because of the 
massive civilian carnage. Yet for all of this appeasement of the right, Kerry 
lost the election. Shortly thereafter, Bush leveled Falluja, and four years 
later American forces have been bombing major cities in Iraq.

Greg Kafoury is a trial lawyer and political activist in Portland, Oregon. He 
can be reached at kafoury at kafourymcdougal.com.

http://www.counterpunch.org/