Re: Flag Lapel Stupidity .... this is great !!!
Obama?s campaign was not in any genuine sense an
?antiwar? campaign, although he appealed to popular hostility to the war in Iraq and constantly linked Clinton and Bush with his refrain that Iraq was ?a war that should never have been authorized and never been waged.?
The Illinois senator represents a section of the American ruling elite that has concluded that the invasion and conquest of Iraq was a strategic debacle and that a significant change in posture and personnel is required to salvage the interests of American imperialism in the Middle East and internationally. These layers do not oppose military action as such, but regard the Bush administration?s single-minded focus on winning a military victory in Iraq as unwise and ultimately disastrous.
Long before Obama became a household name, filling stadiums and attracting small contributions by the millions over the Internet, his candidacy had attracted the support of a significant section of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, including figures like former Carter national security adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Clinton national security adviser
Anthony Lake.
They were drawn to Obama not so much by his critique of the Bush administration?which was not particularly vigorous, even by the toothless standards of the congressional Democrats?
as by the symbolic effect that the election of the first African-American president would have in terms of reviving illusions, both internationally and within the United States, in the democratic pretensions of American capitalism.
With Obama?s nomination effectively secured,
the American media has now gone into overdrive to peddle such illusions. The television networks have devoted endless hours to glorifying the great achievement of American democracy in nominating an African-American to lead the presidential ticket of one of the two major bourgeois parties for the first time in US history.
There is no doubt that such
illusions are currently widespread, and not only among minority workers and young people of all racial backgrounds, who are genuinely appalled by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration?s eight-year record of war, reaction and social decay.
Obama is a fervent defender of the profit system and
has the backing of some of the wealthiest individuals?including billionaire investor
Warren Buffett, who this year became the single richest man in America, surpassing Bill Gates of Microsoft.
Like Senator Obama, Mr. Buffett is an intelligent man, and he is not backing the Illinois Democrat because he seeks a radical transformation in American society. He supports Obama because he recognizes, as do the more thoughtful sections of the ruling elite,
that at least a significant cosmetic change is required in American political life to forestall an upheaval from below.
The Obama nomination is not the product of a popular insurgency against the Democratic Party establishment or of a mass movement from below, as some of
Obama?s more self-deluded supporters on the liberal left now proclaim. The role of the masses in the Obama campaign is best demonstrated by the rallies like that held Tuesday night[6/3/2008] in St. Paul, Minnesota?the people serve as extras in a well-developed, highly skillful marketing campaign. The purpose of this campaign is to refurbish American capitalist politics without touching its rotten foundations.
Obama is a willing and, to a relatively high degree, conscious instrument of this campaign. This was clearly demonstrated in both the circumstances?starting with
the flag pin on his lapel, once the subject of media attention?and the content of his speech Tuesday night declaring himself the victor in the struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Obama attacked his presumptive Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, over his
?stay-the-course? policy in Iraq, but he couched his critique of the war in nationalistic terms. The Bush-McCain policy, he said,
?asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians,? as though it was Iraq exploiting the United States, and not the reverse. He cited the cost of the war for the American people, but not the far greater cost inflicted upon the Iraqi population by the American invasion and occupation, which has virtually destroyed Iraq as a functioning society.
At the same time, the Democratic candidate further parsed his supposed commitment to bring an end to the war, declaring?in implicit rejection of any rapid pullout of troops?
?I won?t stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq.? He added,
?We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in, but start leaving we must.? At some points in the campaign, Obama has suggested that all US combat troops would be pulled out in his first year in the White House. This has been whittled down to a vague pledge to
?start leaving,? a formulation that opens the door to an occupation of essentially indefinite duration.
Any US troops pulled out of Iraq would be available for military operations in other parts of the world, he made clear, particularly in Afghanistan, where he said,
?It?s time to refocus our efforts.?
Obama continued this emphasis on revived and renewed American militarism in his speech Wednesday morning to the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the principal
pro-Israel lobby in Washington. He declared that he would never negotiate with Hamas and other Islamic and nationalist groups that refuse to recognize the state of Israel.
?There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations,? he said, adding, ?Contrary to the claims of some, I have no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking.?
He criticized the Bush administration and Senator McCain on the grounds that the war in Iraq had strengthened Iran, the most formidable opponent of Israel in the Middle East. While repeating his support for diplomatic engagement with Iran, he said,
?I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.?
Press reports indicated that the 7,000 people attending the AIPAC conference gave Obama a far warmer reception than McCain, who addressed the same gathering two days earlier.
Obama prostrated himself before the
Zionist lobby, saying,
?Israel?s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable.?
Any Mideast peace agreement, he said, must ?preserve Israel?s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.?
As for Iran, the
Toronto Globe & Mail correspondent at the AIPAC meeting commented,
?Sen. Obama seemed almost as hawkish as Sen. McCain or current President George W. Bush.?
Obama told AIPAC, ?The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.? He added, in language that was vague but undeniably ominous,
?I will do everything in my power?everything, everything?to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.?
An Obama presidency would not represent a fundamental break with the politics of American imperialism, but rather its continuation in a new form. The first black president will prove as determined to uphold the interests of the US ruling elite as the first black secretary of state, Colin Powell, and his successor Condoleezza Rice, who is also African-American.
It is not skin color, but class position, which is the decisive political criterion. It is necessary to reiterate this fundamental Marxist truth under conditions in which all manner of left liberals
will seek to reinforce illusions in Obama and, through him, in the Democratic Party and the profit system as a whole.
The truth is that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are both instruments of the American ruling elite, whose differences are tactical rather than fundamental.
Driving an Obama administration will be the ongoing and ever-deepening crisis of American and world capitalism, and the efforts of the US ruling elite to defend its world position and its dominance at home by every possible means?from the honeyed words of the Democratic presidential candidate to police-state spying and war.
