[Peace-discuss] Obama course change? Not likely.

[C. G. Estabrook]

Obama's acolytes in the media assure us that, any moment now, he will "change 
course" in America's brutal and mendacious invasion and occupation of the 
Mideast.  I hope so, but I don't think so.  The following seems to me a far more 
probable prognosis for administration policy re Afghanistan:

"Obama has let events overtake him, exactly as he allowed the health policy 
debate to spin out of his control in the summer and early fall. He'll shoot for 
some sort of lethal semi-compromise on reinforcements, thus feeding the right 
and angering his liberal supporters. A year from now he’ll be paying the penalty 
in the mid-term elections, just as Clinton did."

Those who are crying up Obama -- in the teeth of the evidence for the 
continuity, indeed the intensification, of our murderous actions in the Mideast 
-- seem to have fallen (or jumped) into a trap, described as follows:

"There is a trap which is deeply rooted in the intellectual culture, and we have 
to avoid it. The trap is the doctrine that I sometimes call the doctrine of 
change of course. It's a doctrine that's invoked every two or three years in the 
United States. The content of the doctrine is, 'Yes, in the past, we did some 
wrong things because of our innocence or out of inadvertence, but now that's all 
over, so we can't not waste any more time on this boring, stale stuff, which 
incidentally we suppressed and denied while it was happening, but must now be 
effaced from history as we march forward to a glorious future'...

"The doctrine is entirely understandable on the part of those who are engaged in 
criminal enterprises, which means just about any power system, any system of 
concentrated power past and present, and of course, it includes its acolytes: 
one of the major commitments of respected intellectuals right throughout history 
is to be the acolytes of the systems of power...

"The doctrine is dishonest, cowardly, but has advantages. It does protect us 
from the danger of understanding what's happening before our eyes, and, 
therefore, it induces the kind of conformism that is useful to systems of power 
and domination...

"What has happened before can be expected to persist for elementary reasons: 
policies and actions are rooted in institutions -- there's some variation, but 
limited -- and the institutions are stable. Therefore, it's only reasonable to 
expect the policies and actions to persist, adapted to circumstances. If you 
want to understand anything about the world that is to come, and have any 
influence on the way it evolves, it's more than useful to keep this in mind..."

--CGE