[Peace-discuss] Why Obama is scarier than W.

[Morton K. Brussel]

It is just conceivable that during the Obama administration, Bin Laden  
will be found and/or possibly killed, so Obama will be able to claim  
that all the other deaths  and the destruction caused will have been  
worth it. A dreadful prospect. ---mkb

On Feb 10, 2009, at 12:17 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [I think Rall may be right. But the principal objection to the war in
> Afghanistan is not that there's "no prospect of victory."  It's that  
> it's an
> international crime, an aggressive war for geopolitical control,  
> that Obama
> justifies with an even more ridiculous excuse than Bush used for  
> aggression
> against Iraq. And it's true that "Obama isn't our FDR" -- but he's  
> not our
> Mikhail Gorbachev, either: he's our Boris Yeltsin, who gave the  
> public's assets
> to the rich, with the urging of the Clinton administration. --CGE]
>
> 	ESSAY- Dour prez: Why Obama is scarier than W.
> 	By TED RALL
> 	Published January 29, 2009 in issue 0804 of the Hook
>
> Dave Eggers preceded his memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering  
> Genius" with
> a section titled "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of this Book,"  
> a brilliant
> attempt to disarm the reader and preempt criticism. Among the  
> warnings,
> referring to chapter four: "The book thereafter is kind of  
> uneven." (Disclosure:
> Eggers edited my work at two magazines in the '90s.)
>
> Barack Obama shares Eggers' talent for managing expectations.
>
> "There will be false starts, there will be setbacks, there will be  
> frustrations
> and disappointments," Obama said upon his arrival in Washington. "I  
> will make
> some mistakes."
>
> In other words, don't expect much.
>
> The soaring optimistic rhetoric of the campaign ("yes we can") is no  
> more,
> replaced by the sober, string-synced cello strains of Yo Yo Ma. Also  
> gone is
> Obama's million-dollar smile. The Dour One is demanding patience.
>
> And he's getting it, for now: "Most respondents [to the New York  
> Times/CBS News
> poll taken January 19th] said they thought it would take Mr. Obama  
> two years or
> more to deliver on campaign promises to improve the economy, expand  
> health care
> coverage and end the war in Iraq."
>
> Setting the bar low seems to be working. Seventy-nine percent of  
> Americans say
> they're optimistic about the next four years under Obama.
>
> Sad, pathetic Americans! Like a dog that's been beaten eight long  
> years, they're
> so psyched about the fact that their new master doesn't drool and  
> speaks
> coherent English that they'll follow him anywhere. The media is in  
> love with The
> One and so, therefore, is the public. No one questions him.
>
> Frightening but true: Barack Obama is even more dangerous to liberal  
> ideals than
> George W. Bush. Obama, who didn't appoint a single liberal to a  
> senior position,
> has neutered the left. "Protesters, a fixture of every inauguration  
> since
> President Nixon's in 1973, were few and scattered on Tuesday as  
> Barack Obama
> assumed the presidency," reported the Times.
>
> The antiwar types have thrown away their signs. The sight of the  
> first black
> president has the fair weather pacifists goo-goo-ga-gaing over a man  
> who plans
> to transfer U.S. occupation troops and the carnage they bring from  
> Iraq to
> Afghanistan.
>
> No demonstrators in the streets. No reporters asking tough  
> questions. A
> political honeymoon based on nothing. Didn't we learn anything from  
> 9/11, when
> 90 percent of Americans, and the media, and Congress, issued George  
> W. Bush a
> similar blank check?
>
> People think things will be better four years from now, but there's  
> little
> reason for hope. America faces radical problems. Radical problems  
> require
> radical solutions. Unfortunately, Obama's proposals, and the  
> moderates and
> conservatives with whom he has filled his cabinet, are woefully  
> inadequate to
> the challenges at hand.
>
> Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman calculates that there's  
> at least a
> $2.1 trillion hole in the economy -- an "output gap" between  
> production capacity
> and consumers' ability to buy goods. Filling that hole would require  
> direct
> investment (like Obama's public works proposal) of at least $1.5  
> trillion.
>
> But Obama's plan only contains $355 billion, of which only $136  
> billion would be
> spent within the next two years. It's better than nothing, but not  
> by much.
> Obama wants to plug a gushing artery with a Band-Aid one- tenth the  
> size of the
> wound.
>
> It's churlish to predict that Obama's approach won't work. But even  
> Obama admits
> it won't. He promises to create 4 million new jobs by 2011. But  
> we're currently
> losing 4 million jobs every five months.
>
> If Obama delivers, 25 million Americans will have lost their jobs by  
> 2011. (The
> math differential is due to the fact that population growth  
> increases the
> workforce by 2.8 million jobs annually.) With unemployment figures  
> like that, no
> one will doubt that we're in a real Depression: breadlines,  
> suicides, the whole bit.
>
> Obama's order to close Guantánamo and the CIA's secret "black site"  
> torture
> prisons within a year is heartening. But as with his other  
> initiatives, it
> doesn't go far enough. The detainees should have been freed, paid a  
> generous
> compensation package, and received a formal apology by the U.S.  
> government on
> Day One of his Administration. Gitmo should have been shuttered  
> immediately. All
> the torture criminals from Bush to the U.S. Navy guards should have  
> been thrown
> in prison and put on trial.
>
> Instead, Obama's goons (they're his now) will keep torturing the  
> detainees for
> at least another year. Some detainees may still be subjected to  
> kangaroo courts.
> And Obama's executive orders contain weasel words that let him take  
> back
> America's renewed commitment to Constitutional rights with the snap  
> of a finger.
> The orders, reports the Times, "could also allow Mr. Obama to  
> reinstate the
> CIA's detention and interrogation operations in the future, by  
> presidential
> order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama bin Laden  
> or another
> top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured."
>
> Meanwhile, the Bush Administration creeps who personally ordered the  
> murder and
> torture of innocents kidnapped by the military, including young  
> children, will
> not face prosecution.
>
> During the campaign, Obama promised there would be "no more illegal  
> wiretapping
> of American citizens." He has since changed his mind. Obama will  
> keep the
> USA-Patriot Act. Habeas corpus, eliminated by the Military  
> Commissions Act,
> won't come back.
>
> The biggest reason hope doesn't stand a chance is Afghanistan, where  
> Obama plans
> to send the soldiers he wants to pull out of Iraq. The international  
> community,
> which understands that the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had no  
> more to do
> with 9/11 than the war against Iraq, will not take kindly to this  
> escalation.
>
> Moreover, the war against Afghanistan is even less winnable than  
> Iraq. At a time
> when we can least afford foreign adventurism, Obama plans to pour  
> billions of
> dollars and thousands of lives into an Afghan charnel house with no  
> prospect of
> victory.
>
> Bush faced energetic opposition. Obama, on the other hand, is adored  
> by the very
> people who should be shouting at him the loudest. Conservatives lost  
> their
> credibility by supporting Bush, leaving Republican voices out in the  
> cold.
>
> Give the man a chance? Not me. I've sized up him, his advisors and  
> their plans,
> and already found them sorely wanting. It won't take long, as  
> Obama's failures
> prove the foolishness of Americans' blind trust in him.
>
> Obama isn't our FDR. He's our Mikhail Gorbachev: likeable,  
> intelligent,
> well-meaning, and ultimately doomed by his insistence on being  
> reasonable during
> unreasonable times.
>
> ~
>
> Ted Rall's most recent book is Wake Up, You're Liberal! How We Can  
> Take America
> Back from the Right (Soft Skull Press).
>
> 	###
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