[Peace-discuss] More absurdities from our chief magistrate

[C. G. Estabrook]

"And how is the antiwar movement here dealing with that? Answer, what antiwar 
movement?  We certainly can’t watch what it’s doing, because the answer is 
nothing. And we can’t hear what it’s saying, because there too the answer is 
nothing.  Where are the mobilizations, actions, civil disobedience? Antiwar 
coalitions like United for Peace and Justice and Win Without War (with MoveOn 
also belatedly adopting this craven posture) don’t say clearly 'US troops out 
now!' They whine about the 'absence of a clear mission' (Win Without War), plead 
futilely for 'an exit strategy' (UFPJ). One letter from the UFPJ coalition 
(which includes Code Pink) to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in May 
laconically began a sentence with the astounding words, 'To defeat the Taliban 
and stabilize  the country, the U.S. must enable the Afghan people...' These 
pathetic attempts not to lose 'credibility' and thus attain political purchase 
have met with utter failure, as the recent vote on a supplemental appropriation 
proved. A realistic estimate is that among the Democrats in Congress there are 
fewer than forty solid antiwar votes."


http://www.counterpunch.org/

"Watch what we do, not what we say,” was the famous advice Nixon’s first 
Attorney General, John Mitchell, gave the press at the onset of the Nixon 
presidency in 1969.  It’s  a handy piece of advice in the Age of Obama too, as 
we  roll towards the end of his first six months in office.  There’s the added 
difficulty that Obama likes to say two different things in the same speech, 
usually prefaced by his trade-mark “Let me be clear.”

“And let me be clear,” he told the Russians in Moscow, even as he presses 
forward with the Clinton/Bush policy of NATO expansion, ringing Russia with 
missile bases, “NATO seeks collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.”

You think “saying” and “doing” are far apart on that one? Try this gem, also 
delivered in Moscow: “Now let me be clear, America will not seek to impose any 
system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which 
party or individual should run a country... America will never impose a security 
arrangement on another country.”

The last guy in the White House to be that clear was in fact Nixon, who tossed 
in “perfectly” as a bonus.

Obama has been perfectly clear on so many pledges, such as restoring 
constitutional protections such as habeas corpus, respect for international 
treaties and covenants on torture and the treatment of prisoners, ending 
eavesdropping and, when you take even a quick glance at what he’s done, he’s 
been perfectly awful on so many fronts.

He was at his sermonizing worst in Ghana, telling Africans to shape up, a homily 
aimed at those same folks back home who thrilled to Obama’s strictures on the 
campaign trail, using Father’s Day a year ago to tell black dads -- only black 
dads -- to shape up, an act he just reprised to the NAACP’s 100th convention in 
New York.

“Africa’s future is up to Africans,” he said in Accra. No, it’s not. Africa’s 
future is to a pervasive extent up to the World Bank, the IMF, international 
mining and oil companies, the US Congress (which for example votes cotton 
subsidies to domestic corporate farmers, thus undercutting and laying waste the 
cotton economies of Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali and Chad).

“No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands,” was 
his New York message for America’s black youth. Rip the entrails out of 
America’s manufacturing economy, hock the economy to Goldman Sachs and then tell 
the kids, if you fail, you’ve only yourself to blame.

What does the Administration say about Iran? At the recent G8 meeting in Italy 
Obama talked tough. He said Iran has until September to show it is serious about 
curbing its nuclear weapos program. Remember that the CIA , to the fury of the 
Bush crowd said in 2006 there was no evidence that any such program is underway.

In Italy Obama talked about an international September summit in Pittsburgh. "It 
provides a time frame. If Iran chooses not to walk through that door, then you 
have on record the G-8 to begin with, but I think potentially a lot of other 
countries, that are going to say we need to take further steps."

Watch what we do.

As Afshin Rattanssi wrote on this site on Thursday, it’s too early to tell the 
reason for the midday plane crash on  July 15 in Janat-Abad, northwest of 
Tehran. All 168 people on board were killed in Qazvin province and there is an 
inquiry underway. But, even so, the relatives of the 168 that have died today 
may yet blame the U.S. and Britain for their dead, since sanctions are already 
creating a spare parts crisis in Iran’s aircraft hangers.  Sanctions are what 
destroy countries, whether it be Nicaragua in the 1980s or Iraq in Clinton-time. 
As Rattanssi says:

“In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s U.N. sanctions on Iraq killed hundreds of 
thousands of children as discovered by its own agency, UNICEF. We now have a man 
in the White House who trumpets the use of sanctions over the war-war bluster of 
George W. Bush. President Bush’s continual threats about the use of military 
force on Iran did nothing but entrench the Iranian people’s support for the 
theocratic government. If much-mooted September is the date for President 
Obama’s new sanctions, they look set to kill many more civilians than any 
threats by his former rival and now secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Hillary 
and her husband seem never to have been concerned about the lethal impact of 
sanctions on developing nations.”

In her election campaign Hillary was always eager to emphasize her willingness 
to nuke Iran and fry 70 million. Watch what I could do. To ABC’s George 
Stephanopoulos a few weeks ago she hinted obscurely at a First Strike scenario. 
Here she is in full spate last week in the new Washington hq of the Council on 
Foreign Relations:

     “We know that refusing to deal with the Islamic Republic has not succeeded 
in altering the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon, reducing Iranian support 
for terror, or improving Iran's treatment of its own citizens... Iran does not 
have a right to nuclear, military capacity, and we're determined to prevent 
that.  But it does have a right to civil nuclear power if it reestablishes the 
confidence of the international community that it will use its programs 
exclusively for peaceful purposes. Iran become a constructive actor in the 
region if it stops threatening its neighbors and supporting terrorism.  It can 
assume a responsible position in the international community if it fulfills its 
obligations on human rights.  The choice is clear.  We remain ready to engage 
with Iran, but the time for action is now.  The opportunity will not remain open 
indefinitely.”

And then later, in answer to a hawkish question:

     “I think part of the attractiveness of engagement -- direct engagement is 
not only to make our own judgments but also to demonstrate to others that we've 
done so and to make clear what kind of reaction we've gotten, which I think lays 
the groundwork for concerted actions and certainly in just the last six months 
in our efforts in talking with other partners, I've noticed a turn in attitude 
by some, a recognition that it's not just the United States that should be 
concerned about what Iran is doing, but that there are implications for others 
who are much closer than we are to Iran.”

Now you could say that this was just HRC trying to put herself back on the map 
as a major player in the Obama administration, seeking to quell the snickers 
that she’s just one more sidelined Secretary of State who can’t even stop the 
White House from blocking her from hiring Sid Blumenthal. There were slabs of 
the speech that as wacky as Obama’s shameless fictions about the freedom Africa 
and black kids in the US to shape their own destinies – unless, that is, you go 
with Lenin’s bleak remark that "Freedom is the recognition of necessity," later 
translated into song as "Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose." 
  Try this pearl from our Secretary of State:

“I believe NATO is the greatest alliance in history, but it was built for the 
Cold War.  The new NATO is a democratic community of nearly a billion people, 
stretching from the Baltics in the east to Alaska in the west.  We're working to 
update its strategic concepts so that it is as effective in this century as it 
was in the last.”

What the Obama administration most definitely will do is find as many reasons to 
be “unpersuaded” about the peaceful intent of Iran’s nuclear program as  was the 
Bush administration about evidence that Saddam had got rid of its WMDs. It’s the 
same game, maybe with the same ending.  At the very least they’ll intensify 
sanctions, ensuring that many will die, starting with the very young and the 
very old.

Meanwhile the troops and weapons flow towards Afghanistan, with vast, 
Vietnam-style “sweep” operations under way.

And how is the antiwar movement here dealing with that? Answer, what antiwar 
movement?  We certainly can’t watch what it’s doing, because the answer is 
nothing. And we can’t hear what it’s saying, because there too the answer is 
nothing.

Where are the mobilizations, actions, civil disobedience? Antiwar coalitions 
like United for Peace and Justice and Win Without War (with MoveOn also 
belatedly adopting this craven posture) don’t say clearly “US troops out now!” 
They whine about the “absence of a clear mission” (Win Without War), plead 
futilely for “an exit strategy” (UFPJ). One letter from the UFPJ coalition 
(which includes Code Pink) to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in May 
laconically began a sentence with the astounding words, “To defeat the Taliban 
and stabilize  the country, the U.S. must enable the Afghan people…” These 
pathetic attempts not to lose “credibility” and thus attain political purchase 
have met with utter failure, as the recent vote on a supplemental appropriation 
proved. A realistic estimate is that among the Democrats in Congress there are 
fewer than forty solid antiwar votes.

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