[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Obama's cynical task

[C. G. Estabrook]

That's probably right, but I'm intrigued by the notion that someone  
might have said in the summer of 1932, "As horrible as Hoover and his  
administration is, Roosevelt et al. will certainly be no better,  
probably worse (yes it is possible), certainly in domestic policy:  
after all, the Democrats are condemning Hoover for causing the  
Depression by run-away spending [They were] and demanding a balanced  
budget [They did]."

Of course, when the new administration came into office in 1933, it  
found that policies far different from its platform were necessary.

Could something similar happen in 2012? Mark Twain is supposed to have  
said that history doesn't repeat itself - but it does rhyme...

--CGE

On May 29, 2012, at 2:52 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:

> As horrible as Obama and his administration is, Romney et al. will  
> certainly be no better, probably worse (yes it is possible),  
> certainly in domestic policy. This means that the world of the non  
> 1% is in for very tough times. The country needs a shock treatment  
> to release it from its lethargy, but the leaning left is far too  
> disorganized to manage it.
>
> A new system of government is needed to replace what is evident by  
> now; the present system is corrupt and doesn't work in any  
> democratic, rational representative sense.
>
> --mkb
>
> On May 29, 2012, at 11:26 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> OBAMA'S CYNICAL TASK.
>>
>>      "Obama announces new Vietnam War memorial project. Speaking  
>> from the Vietnam War Memorial, President Barack Obama criticizes  
>> treatment of Vietnam veterans and announces a 13-year memorial  
>> program to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the start of the  
>> war..."
>>
>> Ten years after the US invaded Afghanistan, the anti-war movement  
>> in America looks remarkably similar to what it was in 1972 – ten  
>> years after the US invaded South Vietnam. In each case, more than  
>> two-thirds of the American public oppose the war, but the press and  
>> ‘educated opinion’ – hence the ideological institutions, notably  
>> the universities – support it. Our rulers’ task, in cases 40 years  
>> apart, is therefore to make sure that democracy is ineffective.
>>
>> The American ascendency is in fact more effective at doing that now  
>> than they were then: they learnt something from the earlier  
>> experience. (See, e.g., Michael Crozier et al., The Crisis of  
>> Democracy [1975] – the crisis being that allowing democracy in the  
>> US would interfere with elite plans.) But they also learnt that the  
>> US public will not allow things like the carpet-bombing in Vietnam:  
>> note the secrecy (from the US public of course – they’re not secret  
>> from Afghans, Pakistanis, Somalis, Yemenis et al.) of Obama’s drone  
>> attacks.
>>
>> There are other differences. The wars are very different: Vietnam  
>> was not important to the US except as a demonstration war – an  
>> illustration that countries are not to be allowed to develop  
>> independently, without coordinating their economies with US  
>> control. (And the US established the point by killing four million  
>> Asians, despite those who claim the US lost in Vietnam: its  
>> complete war aims were not achieved, but the important point was  
>> made clear to all – look at the SE Asian economies today.)
>>
>> Afghanistan (“Pipelinistan,” as Pepe Escobar says) is much more  
>> important to the US elite than Vietnam ever was. It’s the keystone  
>> of the region that the US State Department in 1945 said contained  
>> “the world’s greatest material prize” – Mideast oil. Today the US  
>> government is threatening, invading, and occupying countries from  
>> North Africa to the Indian subcontinent, and from Central Asia to  
>> the Horn of Africa – a vast circle with a 2,000-mile radius – the  
>> Greater Middle East. (The US military calls it “Central Command.”)  
>> Control and not just access to those energy resources is what the  
>> US government demands: the US in fact imports very little oil from  
>> the Mideast, but control gives the US government an unparalleled  
>> advantage over its oil-hungry rivals in Europe and Asia. We’re  
>> killing people in the Mideast and North Africa because China needs  
>> oil, and our government wants to control where they get it. Our  
>> government says that we’re conducting these vastly expensive wars  
>> to stop terrorism and protect civilians; but it’s obvious that,  
>> instead, we’re killing civilians and creating terrorists.
>>
>> Finally, the US is a very different country today. In 1972 it was a  
>> wealthy and prosperous society, with a self-confident middle class.  
>> Forty years of Neoliberal counter-attack to “the Sixties” have seen  
>> wages and standards of living stagnate or decline, even before the  
>> crisis of 2007/8 – out of which the rich 1% prospered and the 99%  
>> declined even further.
>>
>> And in these circumstances, the US population is subject to the  
>> greatest propaganda manipulation in history, because of the failure  
>> of US propaganda in the 1970s, when 70% of Americans saw the  
>> Vietnam war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” not “a mistake.”  
>> In his My Struggle (1925/6), “Adolph Hitler suggested that the  
>> Germans lost the First World War because they could not match Anglo- 
>> American propaganda achievements, and he vowed that next time  
>> Germany would be ready. It had a big impact on future  
>> developments” [Noam Chomsky].
>>
>> Barack Obama wrote in 'The Audacity of Hope' that “the greatest  
>> casualty of that [Vietnam] war was the bond of trust between the  
>> American people and their government.” (Paul Street, who quotes the  
>> remark, comments, “as if the deaths of millions of Indochinese and  
>> 58,000 U.S. GIs were secondary and as if popular American  
>> skepticism towards the designs of the U.S. foreign policy  
>> establishment isn’t a sign of democratic health.”) Obama sees his  
>> job accurately as to restore that “trust between the American  
>> people and their government” in regard to his war-making as well as  
>> his exploitative economic policy – although his account of the war  
>> is a lie.
>>
>> The first task of the anti-war movement today is to overcome its co- 
>> option by the Democrats in the elections of 2006 and 2008, and  
>> dispel the propaganda fog of the Obama administration. Obama’s  
>> killing in the Mideast and Africa is more widespread, efficient,  
>> and brutal than Bush’s ever was, but the policy remains what it has  
>> been for more than a generation.  The anti-war movement must make  
>> that clear to the American people – and that it’s being done in our  
>> name.
>>
>> --CGE