Obama Is A Hawk
Imperialist Watch
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In The
Great Tradition Obama Is A Hawk In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger reaches back into the history of the Democratic Party and describes the tradition of war-making and expansionism that Barack Obama has now left little doubt he will honour. |
By John Pilger
14/06/08 "ICH" -- -In 1941,
the editor Edward Dowling wrote: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the
United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a
democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." What
has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor have
passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W Bush finally
steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest of humanity will
diminish.
The foregone nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to
one breathless commentator, "marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US
history", is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly
exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential
campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as
bullshit on a grand scale. Race, gender, appearance, body language, rictal
spouses and offspring, even bursts of tragic grandeur, are all subsumed by
marketing and "image-making", now magnified by "virtual" technology. Thanks
to an undemocratic electoral college system (or, in Bush's case, tampered voting
machines) only those who both control and obey the system can win. This has been
the case since the truly historic and exciting victory of Harry Truman, the
liberal Democrat said to be a humble man of the people, who went on to show how
tough he was by obliterating two cities with the atomic
bomb.
Understanding Obama as a likely president of the United States is
not possible without understanding the demands of an essentially unchanged
system of power: in effect a great media game. For example, since I compared
Obama with Robert Kennedy in these pages, he has made two important statements,
the implications of which have not been allowed to intrude on the celebrations.
The first was at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(Aipac), the Zionist lobby, which, as Ian Williams has pointed out, "will get
you accused of anti-Semitism if you quote its own website about its power".
Obama had already offered his genuflection, but on 4 June went further. He
promised to support an "undivided Jerusalem" as Israel's capital. Not a single
government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem,
including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN resolution designating
Jerusalem an international city.
His second statement, largely ignored,
was made in Miami on 23 May. Speaking to the expatriate Cuban community – which
over the years has faithfully produced terrorists, assassins and drug runners
for US administrations – Obama promised to continue a 47-year crippling embargo
on Cuba that has been declared illegal by the UN year after year.
Again,
Obama went further than Bush. He said the United States had "lost Latin
America". He described the democratically elected governments in Venezuela,
Bolivia and Nicaragua as a "vacuum" to be filled. He raised the nonsense of
Iranian influence in Latin America, and he endorsed Colombia's "right to strike
terrorists who seek safe-havens across its borders". Translated, this means the
"right" of a regime, whose president and leading politicians are linked to death
squads, to invade its neighbours on behalf of Washington. He also endorsed the
so-called Merida Initiative, which Amnesty International and others have
condemned as the US bringing the "Colombian solution" to Mexico. He did not stop
there. "We must press further south as well," he said. Not even Bush has said
that.
It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the
world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious
presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist.
He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the war-making of presidents
Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates. Obama's difference
may be that he feels an even greater need to show how tough he is. However much
the colour of his skin draws out both racists and supporters, it is otherwise
irrelevant to the great power game. The "truly exciting and historic moment in
US history" will only occur when the game itself is challenged.
www.johnpilger.com