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Title: Have No Illusions about Obama
Source:
Antiwar.com
URL Source: http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13564
Published: Oct 8, 2008
Author: Justin Raimondo
Post Date: 2008-10-08 12:23:32 by Rupert_Pupkin
Keywords: Obama, McCain, Wars
Views: 388
Comments: 29
Have No Illusions About Obama by Justin Raimondo I have to admit once being not enamored of, but hopeful about the candidacy of Barack Obama. In "The Year of the Insurgents," I underlined why I thought the conventional wisdom about this election year was dead wrong, and I was right about that. But what I wasn't right about was the extent to which Obama would be willing to deviate from the foreign policy elite's party line when it comes to the pressing issues of the day. We all know where Obama is right – or, as we used to say in the Sixties, "right on." The importance of negotiations, the profound strategic and moral wrongness of the Iraq war, the sheer craziness of a neocon-run foreign policy – these are the basics that have brought many millions to rally 'round Obama's banner. They were also the reasons for my initial enthusiasm for the previously unknown senator from Illinois, aside, that is, from his apparent thoughtfulness and his seemingly inherent presidential mien. As the campaign progressed, however, it soon became all too obvious that a candidate raised up by the "antiwar" wing of the Democratic Party was and is a committed interventionist – and, not only that, but one who is still maintaining some of the hoariest old clichés of interventionist dogma, such as the apparently intrinsic aggressiveness that animates the Russian elite, the supposed centrality of Israel's security to our policy in the Middle East, and the moral imperative of "humanitarian" interventionism, starting in Darfur and ending God knows where. His speech to the AIPAC conference was, perhaps, the low point of his campaign: the pandering, once started, didn't stop. Of course, we had been warned when, early on, he declared an attack on Iran wasn't "off the table," and his reiteration of this stance in front of Israel's amen corner – he would, he averred, do "everything, and I mean everything" to stop Iran from going nuclear – was hardly composed to offer us any solace. Everything? Really? What about dropping nukes on Tehran or other major population centers? I don't want to exaggerate the degree of Obama's slide into a moral abyss, but the man is known to measure his words, yet that time he clearly abandoned his customary caution, and, as they say, let it all hang out. The mask slipped, if only for a moment – and it wasn't pretty, was it? On another vitally important issue, the renewal of the Cold War with Russia – a project dear to the hearts of neocons everywhere – Obama is hardly distinguishable from John McCain. Indeed, as I pointed out in my analysis of the last debate, the two of them seemed to be competing to see who could be more warlike and provocative when it came to the issue of the Caucasus. Particularly disturbing is Obama's complete denial of what happened in Tskhinvali, the Ossetian capital city, when the Georgians went in and slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians. The candidate echoed the War Party's bizarre inversion of the established facts, insisting that Russia had invaded Georgia, instead of Georgia invading Ossetia and Abkhazia. This is no small point: Obama deliberately overlooked the very real human cost of President Mikheil Saakashvili's Napoleonic ambitions in the region, because there can be no doubt he knows better. As McCain gleefully pointed out during the first debate, the Obama campaign initially took a very different position, decrying violence on both sides and calling for a cease-fire. In McCain's view, giving the thousands of Ossetians slaughtered by Saakashvili any acknowledgment at all is inexcusable. Outside of that, however, McCain is right: Obama did indeed change his position, perhaps after due consultation with his advisers. This is strong circumstantial evidence that he did have at least some idea of what really went on in Ossetia, and subsequently chose to ignore it. This is not just an obscure foreign policy point with major moral implications – it is a huge issue, having to do not only with the regional secessionist movements that beleaguer Russia's "near abroad," but also with the much larger question of whether we are going to face off with the Kremlin in a replay of the Cold War years. Absent the existence of international communism as an organized movement centrally directed from Moscow, a new Cold War would seem an impossibility – but don't worry, the War Party is quite capable of pulling it off, as we have seen. Since Putin's rise to power, we have heard the drumbeat loud and clear: Russia is "resurgent," the Kremlin is in a newly "aggressive" mode, and Russian "authoritarianism" is on the march. Well, to be sure, Russia is no libertarian paradise: far from it. Yet, looked at objectively, the Russians have come a very long way since the days of the gulag. Vladimir Putin's many Western critics compare his rule to that of his predecessor, former Communist Party local chieftain Boris Yeltsin, and somehow conclude that Yeltsin's regime was freer. But Yeltsin's Russia was the closest to a genuine kleptocracy that the world has yet seen. Those who looted the Russian economy took everything, including the kitchen sink, stashing a great deal of their stolen cash in Western bank accounts. Today, the exiled oligarchs lash out at Putin's Russia because they're all on the lam – under indictment for truly spectacular acts of larceny that make our own quite considerable financial scandals pale in comparison. How much of this cash is finding its way into the Obama campaign, perhaps indirectly, is hard to say. What isn't hard to say, however, is that Obama has the full support of one of the world's chief Russophobes: George Soros, the man who almost single-handedly funded the network of "pro-democracy" and pro-Bosniak front groups that brought us NATO's war on the former Yugoslavia. As much as Obama denounces the Iraq war, all the factors present in the Iraqi adventure were present in Bill Clinton's Balkan escapade, up to and including the existence of a "pro-U.S." guerrilla group that provided us with "intelligence" later exposed as pure invention. In both cases, the outcome of U.S. intervention was the ascent of a violent and authoritarian group to power. Additionally, in Kosovo, as in Iraq, the triumphant U.S.-supported faction carried out ethno-religious "cleansing" that involved the death and displacement of many thousands. Yet all of this has been conveniently overlooked by the Western media and the "antiwar" liberals who hate George Bush but valorize the Clintons as the "saviors" of the Balkans. These same liberals will follow Obama into battle wherever he chooses to intervene – of that we can be sure. It's the same old partisan politics, and one of the unfortunate facts of life that weighs particularly heavy on us here at Antiwar.com. It's just something we've always had to live with and have learned to endure. In the 1990s, when the Clintons were in power and Milosevic was the Hitler du jour, many conservatives gravitated toward anti-interventionism – and this Web site. During the Bush II era, that changed rather dramatically, with the War Party taking up residence on the Right, and the peaceniks returning to their contemporary stomping grounds on the Left. This reversal of polarities has happened before – indeed, I once wrote a whole book about how the phenomenon has played out in the history of modern American politics – and it's dizzying to contemplate how many more times it will reoccur. Standing above the partisan fray, defying the rather outmoded categories of "Left" and "Right," Antiwar.com will continue to warn its readers of the dangers posed by all political factions to the peace of the world. Yes, we've had a very rough eight years, and it will, indeed, be a welcome relief to confront a new adversary in the White House – and, make no mistake about it, if and when Obama is elected president, he will be an adversary, and a most formidable one. Unlike George W., he'll be an articulate exponent of his brand of interventionism, which promises to be no less dangerous simply because it's less brazen than its predecessor. During the Obama years – if I may be so bold as to project that far into the speculative future – a great portion of the "antiwar" Left will fall away and eagerly sign up for whatever military crusades Obama has in store for us. On the other hand, a growing faction of the Right will remember their Clinton-era "isolationism" (i.e., opposition to wars that have nothing to do with America's real interests) and find their way back to this Web site. In any case, no matter who wins in November, we're more than ready for him, because we start with the understanding that he is our adversary. We have no illusions about the candidates who are running for the White House this year, and none about the two "major" parties whose institutionalization, in law and custom, belies the "democratic" virtues we supposedly embody as a nation. We face the future without any hope of a quick victory. Long-term optimism married to short-term pessimism: that's my own strategic outlook and personal temperament. As a guiding editorial standard for Antiwar.com, it's served us well. America's bid to become a global empire is a project that can end only one of two ways: in utter disaster – financially, as well as militarily and morally – or as a disastrous course averted just in time. We are fighting, day and night, to ensure the latter result. But there are no guarantees. The illusions generated by the Obama campaign will be dissipated soon enough. Until then, however, you know you can turn to this Web site for clear-headed and nonpartisan commentary on what's really going on in the world of foreign affairs – analysis without illusions. NOTES IN THE MARGIN I'm excited – about an ad! It isn't very often that I get excited about advertisements – in fact, it's never happened! – but if you'll look at the top of the front page of Antiwar.com, you'll see what I'm talking about. The American Conservative isn't just another political magazine, and this isn't just another ad. We're building a broad-based anti-interventionist movement here at Antiwar.com – and The American Conservative is a part of it, and an important one. You don't have to be a lefty to be for correcting our crazed foreign policy, and TAC is the proof of it. Every two weeks, they publish some of the best antiwar material being put out, by such authors as Andrew Bacevich, Leon Hadar, Patrick J. Buchanan – oh, and myself. I've been an associate editor of TAC since the beginning, and I'm proud to say that I had a piece in their very first issue. The current issue will be of interest to my readers. Check out my take on the proposal for a "league of democracies" over at The American Conservative. Also, in the same issue, you might want to look at Anthony Gregory's great review of my recently republished book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement. The latter is available to subscribers. You know, you really ought to subscribe: for the first three months, it won't cost you a thing. That's right – you can go here and get a free three-month online subscription to TAC. As an associate editor, I'm proud to be connected to one of the best political magazines around, an invaluable ally of the anti-interventionist cause. Go check it out today! ~ Justin Raimondo
Poster Comment: It's understandable how Raimondo and others may have been duped by Obama a year ago. In the primaries, BHO posed as the anti-war candidate, and that may have given him the edge over Hillary. Now that BHO shows his true colors as a typical Democratic politician (he's a black Ted Kennedy or John Kerry), Raimondo has wisened up to the fact that the "anti-war" emperor has no clothes. What's the excuse of those who still pretend that Obama, who now talks like Wesley Clark, is a real alternative to global interventionism?
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#1. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#0)
He only has one house. That's not fair.
...Both methods yielded similar results, which support the previous findings; that is, of all modern human samples, sub-Saharan Africans again exhibit the closest phenetic similarity to various African Plio-Pleistocene hominins... doncha know he's just sayin'? once elected, he'll be change.
Do You Know What Freedom Really Means? Freedom4um.com
George Washington began the trend for electing highly sucessful militzry figures to be president of the the U.S. ZOG has taken advantage of the trend with McCain, not a hero like Washington, Jackson and others, but a real loser who never advanced beyond Lieutenant Commander--a pathetic candidate he's the prefect straw man for Obama whose political guru David Axelrod is Jewish. Jews have been instrumental in seating black governors in Yow York and Massachusetts. Apparently they believe it's time for Black power in America. I wonder why?
Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.
In his book, Audacity of Hope, Obama made it amply clear where his loyalties lay when he said: "I will stand with the Muslims should the political wind shift in an ugly direction."
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. A. Yes,.....I think it has been worth it. Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, mid-90's. Da Song remains the same. The arrangements, orchestra and singers change. But, too late, Justin, old chap. It's rather sad watching the self conscious angst of an expired passionara, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, or the market, propelling Obama into the WhiteHouse. President Obama. President Barack Hussein Obama. That's gonna ring around the world. Only a war can save McCain's arse now. Or the market gains 3K or something.
Of the two performances, Obama's was the more appalling since he is meant to be the candidate of change and new ideas. He has no detectable commitment to change and no new ideas. Neither does McCain. Yet the post-debate panelists mostly claimed the Town Hall Meeting an absorbing affair, rich in content. We have one more debate, in which McCain will have another chance to reduce Obama's commanding lead, something he failed to do last night, even though it now seems Sarah Palin did slow McCain's slump with her performance last week. McCain and Palin are trying to get traction by slurring Obama for association with Bill Ayers, a leader of the the bomb-throwing antiwar Weathermen in the 60s. Obama was eight when they threw the bombs. It doesn't seem a productive line of attack for McCain and Palin, particularly when many Americans wouldn't mind blowing up Wall St themselves. http://www.counterpunch.org/ Cockburn's latest, another killer.
If so, then this election may be a real contest after all. We get to choose whether Americans should take orders from Tel Aviv or from Riyadh. But I don't think either McCain or Obama have any core loyalties. Both are up for grabs for the highest bidder. McCain, Palin, and Biden are alreaydy owned by AIPAC. AIPAC and the Muzzies are still counterbidding on Obama.
DNC hack Obama will bring "change" in the same way that GOP hack McCain is a "maverick." In three words, not at all.
Q. Do you think the deaths of 500,000 Iraki children due to the West's sanctions have been worth it. A. Yes,.....I think it has been worth it. Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, mid-90's. That hag also told Colin Powell "what's the point of having this huge military if you never get to use it" when Powell expressed reluctance to intervene in Kosovo. Globalist Democrats like Madeleine Albright, Wesley Clark, and Zbigniew Brzezinski are nearly as bad as the GOP neocons.
No, I think it's pretty safe to say that once you don the beanie and make your trip to the Whine-Ass wall, you're Bought & Paid For.
what would be your best guess, Z?
Do You Know What Freedom Really Means? Freedom4um.com
Obummer may not think about it but just perhaps that new shiny briefcase (made in China) AIPAC gave him may have an eye and an ear.
It's a d@mned shame we don't have an American to vote for (except for those who live in states where Chuck Baldwin made it on the ballot). I wouldn't vote for McCain or Obama for any position higher than dog catcher. And if anyone were running against them I wouldn't vote for them for that either.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. Maybe they intend to use Obama to instigate a race war, either by claiming the elections are fixed should he lose or by his being shot by some "skinhead" or an "anarchist" lone gunman.
I'm not sure we even have an America to vote for anymore.
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot
You have a point.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. The primary reason Jews want Black Obama in the White House is to prove to themselves that they have the power do it. They are, in my view, pushing the time table 20 years into the future, when mud people will constitute 50% of the population. Biden may have spilled the beans in the debate with Palen when he replied to her complement about his support for Zionism by responding that Bush has put Israel in great danger by permitting Hezbella(sp?) to remain entrenched on Israel's northern border. Zionist rulers in America may feel a dictatorship must be established in America to ensure the success of an all-out genocidal war against Israel's enemies in the so-called Holy Land. If Obama is not elected nation-wide riots could result in martial law, which would bring back the draft and provide cover for the use of nukes against Israel's Muslim enemies. If Obama wins Mud people will eagerly volunteer, especially gang members, as enforcers for a massive "Big Brother" government dictatorship. The gulags are already in place across America.
Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.
Charles Manson was talking race wars in the 60's. The Turner Diaries discuss the impact of racial wars on an uncivil war in the not so United States, and finally I recall discussing race wars with black guys in my military unit when I was in Vietnam, never thinking it would actually happen, especially 40 years later. First I have to admit that I am disappointed in what looks like our inability to overcome the influences of the shit media upon all of us. However, it doesn't do much good to bitch about the number of idiots conditioned to watch and react to the Talmud-Vision, we have a war on our hands even now. 2nd, I've enjoyed almost 58 years on the Prison Planet so they can only fuck me out of the misery attached to old age ! So be it, and like Randy Weaver says "it's time to steel-up" ... I had asked the question some 10 years ago "why should whites wait until they're outnumbered to fight back, it's too obvious there's an agenda to reduce our numbers" I hope we're not too soft to at least give these no good mother-fuckers a run for their fiat currency !
This blog is a far too detailed reading of the Muddled East, however, the central current hypothesis is the defacto Alliance between the above two cities, with the Sheikhdoms of the Gulf lassoed in, where else are they gonna go. Often hard to digest in one reading, he details the shenanigans in the Levant, Saudi money versus Iran, jihadi groups funded by the Saudis, with a wink and a nod by the USA, pointing out the absurdity of thinking that fungible money won't make its way from one Salafi group to another. Absurd, but one strain of Arab nationalism, the Baathis, have been removed from any influence or power, and the other, the Syrian one, under stress, as one of the last secular states of the Arab world, led by a Alawite minority, faces the power of Saudi petrodollars and Israeli intrigues ( How did Imad Mugniyeh get blown up, not that he didn't deserve it a million times over). His latest..... AFTER DISMEMBERING ARAB IRAQ: ON THE ANGST OF THE SAUDI RULING ELITE AND ITS NURSING OF SUNNI NATIONALISM
ah ha. very interesting. good catch. i've not seen anyone else talking about that. f Obama is not elected nation-wide riots could result in martial law, which would bring back the draft and provide cover for the use of nukes against Israel's Muslim enemies. If Obama wins Mud people will eagerly volunteer, especially gang members, as enforcers for a massive "Big Brother" government dictatorship. The gulags are already in place across America. agree with you here..and that may indeed be the reason for obama's selection. we shall see and soon.
Do You Know What Freedom Really Means? Freedom4um.com
I am on Medicare and, despite having diabetes and arthritis, I am in reasonably good health at age sixty-nine, which probably makes me a prime candidate for euthanasia under Obama's health care plan.
Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.
Euthanize them before they do you.
We're down to months, maybe weeks. He##, maybe days (but I doubt it). The 'war is the way' folks rule the economy. We're a sovereignty-sapped world socialist lot now ruled explicitly by the Feral Reserve/Masters and insured per the direction of the (also unelected) head of the Treasury. General Welfare - Warfare!
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
Reminds me of Patton's motto on war, "Kill the other SOB before he kills you." I saw that in the movie "Patton" but I imagine he really said it because his family exercised iron control over the script.
Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.
You really think they want Obama when he said in his book that if the political winds shifted in an ugly direction that he would stand with the Muslims? That statement alone proves, despite his and his supporters rhetoric to the contrary, that he is NOT a Christian. We already had one alleged "Christian" in the White House who sided with the Muslims against the Christians in Kosovo. And the one who followed him and is currently there feeding at the public trough has not seen any need to remove our troops from there or to say that Clinton was wrong.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. Obama pledged to a rabid AIPAC mob that he take American blood and treasure to the mat for Isreal.
Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.
Well, who do you reckon he lied to? It is apparent he is lying to someone.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. The other principal voice of non-Islamist Arab Nationalism, Mumar Qaddafi, is now meek as a lamb. He probably realized that with Iraq down and Syria on the short list for regime change, it was time for a change of image and a new PR program. That leaves only the Saudis as power brokers on the Arab side, who are in some ways the worst of what the Arab world has to offer politically. They combine the most backward interpretation of the Muslim faith with incredible venality.
But they have the pull. Heard a rumor a while back that one of the Saudi palaces, built by Papa BinLadin is reserved for Poppy Bush. Back in 1926 or so, when the nascent Saudi Kingdom was coming into being, a delegation of Senior Muslim Theologicans, encompassing all the different denominations of Islam, from Morocco to India, petitioned the British Empire to make the MeccaMedina area an international enclave, most certainly not to be under the control of Ibn Wahhab's minions. The British, loving pliable subjects, nixed it. The Red Sea coast, long a bastion of sophisticated cosmpolitanism of the Ottomans and many Egyptians was turned over to the fanatical Wahhabs.
What's the excuse of those who still pretend that Obama, who now talks like Wesley Clark, is a real alternative to global interventionism?
Ancient teeth and modern human origins: An expanded comparison of African Plio-Pleistocene and recent world dental samples, Journal of Human Evolution Volume 45, Issue 2, August 2003, Pages 113-144
#2. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#0)
What's the excuse of those who still pretend that Obama, who now talks like Wesley Clark, is a real alternative to global interventionism?
#3. To: christine (#2)
#4. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#0)
His speech to the AIPAC conference was, perhaps, the low point of his campaign: the pandering, once started, didn't stop. Of course, we had been warned when, early on, he declared an attack on Iran wasn't "off the table," and his reiteration of this stance in front of Israel's amen corner – he would, he averred, do "everything, and I mean everything" to stop Iran from going nuclear – was hardly composed to offer us any solace.
Lord Acton
#5. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#0)
Q. Do you think the deaths of 500,000 Iraki children due to the West's sanctions have been worth it.
#6. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#0)
As a debater Obama is pitifully slow on his feet.
#7. To: James Deffenbach (#4)
(Edited)
Obama made it amply clear where his loyalties lay when he said: "I will stand with the Muslims should the political wind shift in an ugly direction.
#8. To: swarthyguy (#6)
(Edited)
Of the two performances, Obama's was the more appalling since he is meant to be the candidate of change and new ideas. He has no detectable commitment to change and no new ideas. Neither does McCain.
#9. To: swarthyguy (#5)
(Edited)
#10. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#7)
AIPAC and the Muzzies are still counterbidding on Obama.
Mike Flaherty: Yeah, it's been there a long time. I wish I knew which corner.
My Man Godfrey (1936)
#11. To: Zoroaster (#3)
Apparently they believe it's time for Black power in America. I wonder why?
#12. To: Esso (#10)
No, I think it's pretty safe to say that once you don the beanie and make your trip to the Whine-Ass wall, you're Bought & Paid For.
#13. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#7)
If so, then this election may be a real contest after all. We get to choose whether Americans should take orders from Tel Aviv or from Riyadh.
Lord Acton
#14. To: Zoroaster (#3)
Apparently they believe it's time for Black power in America. I wonder why?
#15. To: James Deffenbach (#13)
It's a d@mned shame we don't have an American to vote for
#16. To: Dakmar (#15)
I'm not sure we even have an America to vote for anymore.
Lord Acton
#17. To: christine. None222 (#11)
Apparently they believe it's time for Black power in America. I wonder why? what would be your best guess, Z?
#18. To: Zoroaster (#17)
If Obama wins Mud people will eagerly volunteer, especially gang members, as enforcers for a massive "Big Brother" government dictatorship. The gulags are already in place across America.
#19. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#7)
(Edited)
from Tel Aviv or from Riyadh.
#20. To: Zoroaster (#17)
Biden may have spilled the beans in the debate with Palen when he replied to her complement about his support for Zionism by responding that Bush has put Israel in great danger by permitting Hezbella(sp?) to remain entrenched on Israel's northern border.
#21. To: christine, noone222 (#20)
#22. To: Zoroaster (#21)
#23. To: Jethro Tull (#22)
#24. To: Jethro Tull (#22)
Euthanize them before they do you.
#25. To: Zoroaster (#17)
Zionist rulers in America may feel a dictatorship must be established in America to ensure the success of an all-out genocidal war against Israel's enemies in the so-called Holy Land.
Lord Acton
#26. To: James Deffenbach (#25)
#27. To: Zoroaster (#26)
Lord Acton
#28. To: swarthyguy (#19)
(Edited)
Absurd, but one strain of Arab nationalism, the Baathis, have been removed from any influence or power, and the other, the Syrian one, under stress, as one of the last secular states of the Arab world, led by a Alawite minority, faces the power of Saudi petrodollars and Israeli intrigues ( How did Imad Mugniyeh get blown up, not that he didn't deserve it a million times over).
#29. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#28)
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