[Peace-discuss] Fw: Is This Barack Obama's 2nd Term? Is it Bill Clinton's 3rd? Or Is It Ronald Reagan's 9th?

[David Johnson]

Subject: Is This Barack Obama's 2nd Term? Is it Bill Clinton's 3rd? Or Is It Ronald Reagan's 9th?


Is This Barack Obama's 2nd Term? Is it Bill Clinton's 3rd? Or Is It Ronald Reagan's 9th?
Wed, 04/10/2013 - 15:53 — Bruce A. Dixon
 
By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

They say that elections do matter, and that there are real differences between Republican and Democratic presidents. But backing up the view to 30 years, that difference looks a lot more like continuity, both at home and in America's global empire. 

Is This Barack Obama's 2nd Term or Bill Clinton's 3rd Term, or Ronald Regan's 9th?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The answer is yes to all three. Ronald Reagan hasn't darkened the White House door in decades. But his policy objectives have been what every president, Democrat and Republican have pursued relentlessly ever since. Barack Obama is only the latest and most successful of Reagan's disciples.

Like the present era, the Reagan presidency marked a series of decisive rightward turns for US empire at home and abroad. 

Reagan's invasion of Grenada, along with his bloody contra wars in Central America and southern Africa signaled the renewal of on and off the books of US military interventions when and wherever the logic of empire suggested, and regardless of namby-pamby concerns of human rights, domestic or international law. But if being a Republican means you can be a naked imperialist at home as well as abroad, being a Democrat like Barack Obama means making sufficiently ambiguous noises war and empire to enable corporate media and your own campaign to manufacture a false narrative of actual and substantive difference between Democrats and Republicans. 

The first president Bush invaded Panama, and landed US troops in Somalia, a supposed “humanitarian” intervention. Bill Clinton massively increased the shipment of US military hardware and training to more than 50 of Africa's 54 nations, fueling the conflict in Congo which has taken 7 million lives to date. That's continuity of purpose and of policy.

In Barack Obama's case all he had to say was that he wasn't necessarily against wars, just against what he called “stupid wars.” Corporate media and “liberal” shills morphed that lone statement into a false narrative that Barack Obama opposed the war in Iraq, making him an instantly viable presidential candidate at a time when the American people overwhelmingly opposed that war. Once in office, Barack Obama strove mightily to abrogate the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq which would have allowed US forces to remain there indefinitely. But when the Iraqi puppet government, faced with a near revolt on the part of what remained of Iraqi civil society, dared not do his bidding, insisting that uniformed US troops (but not the American and multinational mercenaries we pay to remain there) stick to the withdrawal timetable agreed upon under Bush, liberal shills and corporate media hailed the withdrawal from Iraq as Obama's “victory.” 

Barack Obama doubled down on the invasion and occupation of large areas of Afghanistan, and increased the size of the army and marines, which in fact he pledged to do during his presidential campaign. Presidential candidate Obama promised to end secret imprisonment and torture. The best one can say about President Obama on this score is that he seems to prefer murderous and indiscriminate drone attacks, in many cases, over the Bush policy of international kidnapping secret imprisonment and torture. The Obama administration's reliance on drones combined with US penetration of the African continent, means that a Democratic, ostensibly “antiwar” president has been able to openly deploy US troops to every part of that continent in support of its drive to control the oil, water, and other resources there.

The objectives President Obama's Africa policies fulfill today were put down on paper by the Bush administration, pursued by Bill Clinton before that, and still earlier pursued by Ronald Reagan, when it funded murderous contra armies of UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambque. It was UNITA and RENAMO's campaigns, assisted by the apartheid regimes of Israel and South Africa that pioneered the genocidal use of child soldiers. Today, cruise missile liberals hail the Obama administration's use of pit bull puppet regimes like Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, all of which shot their way into power with child soldiers, to invade Somalia and Congo, sometimes ostensibly to go after other bad actors on the grounds that they are using child soldiers.

If either George Bush, or if Ronald Reagan had openly deployed US troops to Africa on anything like the scale President Obama has, black America would be up in arms. They wanted to. They couldn't. It seems that now, by giving us a black president, the empire can get just about whatever it wants.

It works the same way at home. Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush would have liked to tamper with social security, but dared not. All Reagan could do was tell welfare queen jokes, and despite Reagan's open disdain of organized labor, NAFTA was a distant wet dream of corporations and billionaires. The first president Bush proposed NAFTA but could never get it through Congress. It took a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who marshaled a minority of Democrats in Congress to vote with Republicans both to pass NAFTA and to eliminate welfare. It was Bill Clinton who publicly embraced Republican myths about balancing the US budget, while allowing liberals to imagine he would deliver a “peace dividend.” The second president Bush openly trumpeted right wing lies about the solvency of social security and the (lies which Barack Obama happily repeats to this day) and tried more than once to privatize it. Again, that's continuity across administrations and parties.

True to form, Obama picked the ball up where his predecessors left it and has run relentlessly righward ever since. Barack Obama uses the language of the elites when he calls social security, Medicaid and Medicare and other federal benefits “entitlements” and asserts that their growth must be trimmed. He championed the formation of a deficit reduction commission chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, both advocates of privatizing social security and drastic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and federal benefits and tried to fast-track their recommendation through Congress. Fortunately that recommendation never came. 

Just last week, Obama offered as his opening position in negotiations with Republicans, the chaining of social security and all other federal benefits to the consumer price index --- a monstrous betrayal that will reduce social security benefits by as much as $100 monthly by a decade from now. It wasn't anything he had been cornered into by Republicans. It was the point from which Barack Obama decided to start. That's continuity. Only a Republican president, like Richard Nixon, could go to China in the 1970s. Only a black Democrat can break his promises to labor on championing a card check law, refute his commitments to a just and fair media with network neutrality, and do nothing to roll back the prison state which has engulfed black and brown youth. Only a black Democrat could deport more Latinos than all the last three Republicans together, in his first term alone.

In the game of advancing the interests of the American people, it seems, Democrats and Republicans are not mutual opponents. They are a tag team, each one pushing the ball further and further down the field in the wrong direction. It's still winter in America, and the dead hand of Ronald Reagan still guides this nation, decades after his exit from the White House. Welcome to the 9th term of Ronald Reagan, in the person of Democrat Barack Hussein Obama.

One could also argue, since we are in the grips of the greatest depression, although we don't call them that any more, since the 1930s, and Obama's economic policies bear more in common to Herbert Hoover than to Franklin Roosevelt, that we're living through Herbert Hoover's third term as well. But we'll save that for another day.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and lives and works near Marietta GA. He is a state committee member of the GA Green Partyand can be reached via this site's contact page, or at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

Comments 
Obama/Reagan/
ProfessorEmeritusPB - 04/10/2013 - 21:32 
How about all of the era's you mentioned tied to the age preceeding WWII Returning?
I think it is much more like the regime of the leaders of Germany in the 1920's - 1940's. I sense a sycopathic, sociopathic, mentality which has created a surreal landscape of America, one in which mirrors Alice in Wonderland and 1984, where evil is done and with glee, and gusto, spewing lies and words which give the impression that we have elected on both sides of the asile cowards, liars, mass murdering hypocrits, and serial killers all odf which ideas such as TPP, Bail-In, NAFTA, The Patriot Act, The Military Commission's Act of 2006, 2009, the NDAA and now mounting to  thousands of EO's, and worst of all, we elected a series of Bilderberg, Club of Rome, Tri-Lateral Commission, Depopulationist Tea Party and Democratic Party are nothing more than One Party, with two names, which when mixed in a bowl would be one thing, fascism at best, Nazism at worst.
A Place where people and children are exposed to seeing politicians placing targets on the backs of educators, where the lawmakers teach people to hate the gifted, the highly intelligent, the brave, the elderly, the sick, the vulnerable, and the words, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Which in essnse means, "What soever you do unto these the least of thy brethren, you do also unto me." Which further more bluntly said is, "What soever you do unto these the least of thy Brethren, I shall likewise do unto YOU, For All  Eternity!"
If there is reincarnation, this is it. The words of ther Tea Party mimic those of German leaders in the 1920's through 1940's, and the actions of of the other side of the asile displays all the greed, envy and hatred of both sides and their origins before WW II.

  a.. "Our people are trying to break the bond set by God. That is human conceit rising against God. In this connection we must warn the Führer, that the adoration frequently bestowed on him is only due to God. Some years ago the Führer objected to having his picture placed on Protestant altars. Today his thoughts are used as a basis not only for political decisions but also for morality and law. He himself is surrounded with the dignity of a priest and even of an intermediary between God and man... We ask that liberty be given to our people to go their way in the future under the sign of the Cross of Christ, in order that our grandsons may not curse their elders on the ground that their elders left them a state on earth that closed to them the Kingdom of God. 
    a.. Statement on behalf of the Confessional Church, signed by nine other pastors, as quoted in TIME magazine (27 July 1936)
  a.. The oppression is growing, and anyone who has had to submit to the Tempter's machine-gun fire during this last week thinks differently from what he did even three weeks ago. 
    a.. Last sermon before being imprisoned by the Nazi regime of Germany (27 June 1937), as quoted in Religion in the Reich (1939) by Michael Power, p. 142
  b.. We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep silent at man's behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man. 
  c.. Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a Protestant pastor and social activist. 
    a.. Last sermon before being imprisoned by the Nazi regime of Germany (27 June 1937), as quoted in Religion in the Reich (1939) by Michael Power, p. 142. 
    b.. "In Germany they first came for the Communists,
    and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
    Then they came for the Jews,
    and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
    Then they came for the trade unionists,
    and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
    Then they came for the Catholics,
    and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
    Then they came for me -
    and by that time no one was left to speak up." 
    c.. Am I wrong to say, PRAY FOR A NEW PASSOVER?
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I feel we are finally
miles scott vonlogan - 04/11/2013 - 00:01 
I feel we are finally entering in what called a global Mexican Stand off.  The masses on all sides have no fear of death because what they are experiencing is not life except. Our Fearless Leader has his head stuck  down a Glorified Rabbit Hole.

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Well, Obomber did say he
beverly - 04/10/2013 - 20:59 
Well, Obomber did say he admired Reagan's cleanup of the excesses of the 60s/70s.  When black folks heard that during the first campaign, they should have run like hell.   The average black person got the excrement end of the stick during Ronnie Raygun's regime.  Today, the black masses are even worse off under Ronnie's loving disciple Obomber than they were under him.  These dire straits are not just of an economic and social nature but also psychological as people have lost their minds over Obomber and are under his spell to the point where he could tell them all to go to FEMA camps and let the banks take their money and 75% or more would do so no questions asked.  No wonder the empire is already grooming more Obomber clones such as Corey Booker (and any "rising Latino politico" since they'll be the lead minority group shortly and the black folks will be of no consequence for the empire on the Dem or Repub side).  The globalists can loot and pillage far more easily with a nonwhite front for the empire who will silence dissent and eradicate all common sense from the minds of the sheeple.

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Hope and change my a$$
roth - 04/10/2013 - 18:39 
Excellent article! 
People wanted change from Bush so they gave it to them, or so them thought:  Reagan in "black-face".
Like Brzezinski said in his 1970s book Between Two Ages this is the technetronic era - total mind control over the people through the mass media and powerful personalities' such as Obama. Placate the liberals and impoverished classes by giving them a token representative of  what appears to be their "own people".  Works wonders.

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The results of too many Lame Ducks
Richtown - 04/10/2013 - 17:57 
Great piece Bruce !
It recently occurred to me that our troubled Democracy has suffered through several decades of unrestrained leadership via the Presidential Term Limit invoked 65 years ago. If we look back we see a litany of questionable policies enacted during the second Lame Duck terms of almost all our presidents since Dwight Eisenhower. You cover many of these questionable actions during administrations over the past thirty years in your piece but this extends back to the Nixon Administration with the Water Gate debacle that occurred during his 2nd term and our little publicized initial involvement in Viet Nam as the Eisenhower administration sent military advisors in the waning days of his administration.
In addition to the afore mentioned troubling economic policies promoted during the Reagan administration, his second Lame Duck term included Iran Contra and the collapse of the Savings and Loan Industry.
Clinton's second term contribution to this, among others, was the deregulation of the banking system removing vital safe guards in place since the Great Depression. This action alone was instrumental in causing a major collapse of our economic system a mere eight years later.
George Bush junior completed his second term with Quantitative Easing firmly in place using the assets of the Federal Government via the privately owned Federal Reserve to bail out a string of corrupt privately owned Wall Street Investment Banks that escaped any and all oversight from the government agencies charged with that responsibility.
Obama is now in his Lame Duck term and the questionable actions of past administrations during this period appear to be coming together under this administration. Average Americans face the real possibility of losing access to New Deal Social Reforms that improved the standard of living for countless generations over the past eighty years. We should at least have a discussion on the continuation of this term limit policy that fly's in the face of voters who should be the only ones allowed to make this decision in a Democracy !

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The "White" House
keith1818 - 04/10/2013 - 17:22 
All Mrs. B. H. Obomba is doing is sucking up to the White bullies so he too can be a war criminal.  It is sickening to watch (all) politicians play the same disgusting game.  They never deviate from their pursuit of money and celebrity.
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