[Peace-discuss] Obama's SOTU

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Obama's State of the Union speech tonight bears comparison to the home- 
grown fascism of Kennedy's SOTU of fifty years ago ("Ask not what your  
country can do for you...")

Sam Husseini summarizes the setting in the House Chamber: "Bottom  
line: the people in that big room - rhetoric aside - are united for  
the 1%; the 99% are largely unrepresented." So Obama can casually say,  
in regard to Iran: "There's no option off table" - an "open threat,  
openly aggressive, [and according to the UN charter the threat by  
itself is] illegal." There's little check on an imperial policy that  
serves only that 1%.

Obama begins with the murder of Bin Laden, which - the rest of the  
world recognizes - multiply violated international law. And he ends  
with a chilling invocation of the military - and the murder of Bin  
Laden! "All that mattered that day was the mission." We've been warned.

But a noted liberal, Michael Moore, opines that the speech had "a  
great, great close!" That was Obama's invocation of the military who  
can arrest you without charge and hold you indefinitely without trial.  
Gov. Mitch Daniels, following suit, begins the Republican response  
with the murder of bin Laden...

Obama's encomium to the military didn't mention that he's empowered  
them by unconstitutionally abolishing habeas corpus, in the NDAA that  
he signed quietly on New Year's Eve. (One blogger notes, "More than a  
little disturbed by notion that the US military should be  
institutional model for the rest of society"; another offers, "Shorter  
Obama: You members of Congress are ALL FIRED! I'm hiring the Generals  
instead.")

The SOTU speech, although obviously a campaign speech, makes it clear  
that we should ignore the presidential election and concentrate on  
campaigns (like Occupy, etc.) to reverse Obama's military and economic  
polices. Elections are what we do instead of politics in America -  
where policy is insulated from politics.

--CGE