Whatever Hillary Clinton may say about how helpful Benjamin Netanyahu’s “promise” not to start new settlements in the occupied territories may be, and no matter how much Palestinians may find themselves without alternatives to acquiescence in the face of overwhelming Israeli military dominance, the fact remains that the prospects for a viable Palestinian state are rapidly diminishing as settlements expand; the point of no return may already have been reached. Because Israel is utterly dependent on American support – economically, militarily and diplomatically -- the United States effectively calls the shots there, even if only by giving Israel carte blanche to do whatever it pleases. In the present circumstances, there are three general courses U.S. policy can take; the first two involve departures from the past (i.e. change); the third would continue the usual policy of (depending on one’s point of view) malign or benign neglect:
1) The United States can demand not just that the pace of settlement construction slow down or even stop altogether, but that some, indeed most, settlements be dismantled – along the lines indicated in the near-agreement reached at Tabah in the final days of the Clinton administration. Unless Israel is forced to give back at least that much of what it has illegally appropriated since the so-called peace process began, a two-state solution will be out of the question because there will be no way to make a viable state out of geographically isolated Bantustans.
2) Or it can impose a one-state solution in which, as throughout the modern world, members of all ethnic groups enjoy equal citizenship rights and full human rights. Since the very idea of an ethnic state rightly offends modern (post-American and French Revolution) sensibilities, this is plainly the preferred outcome for everyone who is not in the thrall of Israeli nationalism, Jewish ethnocentrism or Christian Zionism. But since a secular democratic state in “the Land of Israel” would entail the end of a Jewish state, and since Israeli nationalism, Jewish ethnocentrism and Christian Zionism are weighty positions in the United States and Israel, this outcome would be much harder to implement than a two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state.
This is why (1) is what the United States should impose, even if it is morally and philosophically indefensible. It is indefensible; the idea of a Jewish state – not a state of its citizens but of a self-identified ethnic group scattered around the world -- was always a bad idea – even in the aftermath of the Nazi Judeocide when, thanks in part to the efforts of anti-Semites and Zionists alike, Western countries, the United States especially, were unwilling to absorb more than a handful of Jewish refugees. But belief in the legitimacy of a Jewish state in “the land of Israel” has become so entrenched in our political culture, and in the political culture of Israeli Jews, that it may now be impossible to expunge the idea. There may be no alternative other than to come to terms with it.
The Obama administration is, of course, officially in favor of a two-state solution, as is most of the rest of the world and most of the (increasingly disorganized) leadership of the Palestinian national movement. But, as in so many other areas, Obama only “talks the talk” – raising expectations that are soon dashed thanks to his singular reluctance to turn his words into deeds.
Of course, in the case of Israel/Palestine, the transition from words to deeds would be unusually difficult even if the will were present – because the Israel lobby has a stranglehold over the Congress of the United States. To implement real, not just verbal, changes in American policy towards Israel would require that Obama spend vast amounts of his rapidly diminishing political capital. He could have done it last spring; maybe he can do it still. But don’t hold your breath.
3) Thus the most likely prospect is that the United States will continue to permit Israel to dictate its Israel/Palestine policy – continuing the status quo in Israel and the occupied territories. The State Department’s reaction to the Goldstone Commission Report – saying only how “disappointing” it is – is a portent of things to come. Israel will therefore remain the settler state it has always been, and will continue its policy of creating “facts on the ground” accordingly. It will also continue to crush opposition to its Apartheid regime on the West Bank and to its on-going crime against humanity in Gaza -- by any means it deems necessary. Count on Obama to let it happen.
The Occupation has persisted now for more than forty years, and its trajectory has been, almost without exception, from bad to worse. Unless Obama rises to the occasion, expect the downward trend to continue into the near and not-too-distant future. But it can’t go on forever; the demographics of the situation and strategic factors beyond American control make a Final Solution to the Palestine Question impossible. In the long-term, supporting the status quo will mean not only a further diminution of Israel’s Herrenvolk democracy and its generally liberal civil society, but a diminution in the very prospect of maintaining Israel as a Jewish state.
The end of Israel as the state of the Jewish people would not be an outcome to regret. The beneficiaries would not just be the indigenous population of Palestine and peoples elsewhere who are historically or currently Muslim. The end of Israel would be good for “diaspora” Jews too, inasmuch as Zionism has hijacked Jewish identity and the Jewish religion – to no good ends in either case. I would venture that the end of Israel as an ethnic state would be an especially good thing for Israeli Jews as well. If nothing else, it would relieve them of the burden of oppressing their Arab compatriots. It would even advance the cause of establishing a safe haven for world Jewry, one of the few Zionist aims that is worth preserving. After all, the Israeli settler state is now the only place on earth where, thanks to the Palestinian resistance, Jews are in danger just for being Jewish. But the end of Israel as a Jewish state is an outcome that will be vigorously resisted in ways that could well put the region and indeed the planet in grave jeopardy. The American government can prevent this result. But don’t count on Obama to do anything of the sort. He’s too much of a go-with-the-flow and don’t-make-enemies kinda guy.
Change Obama style is change in words only – and even then, if the words are carefully parsed, there’s less change spoken of than most people assume. In this case, that’s bad for Israelis and for Palestinians and for diaspora Jews. It’s bad for Americans who are not Jews too.
The so-called realist position in international relations theory holds that there are genuine “national interests,” interests of the entire nation as distinct from its national elites. I am skeptical of this contention. But if anything does count as a national interest, surely a more “balanced” Israel/Palestine policy is a prime candidate. From a realist point of view, unqualified support for the policies of Israeli governments may have been warranted when the “enemies” were “International Communism” or Arab nationalism. Then, arguably, it was useful to have an independent state in the region that could function as an offshore military asset of the American empire; which is more or less what Israel became after 1967. But when the enemy is religious fanaticism, Islamicism, there is little that Israel can do that is in the American national interest. What it does instead is help generate even more fanaticism. Along with the continuing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s Israel/Palestine policies are doing untold harm to the American national interest already. Needless to say, Obama is doing nothing to change this unhappy state of affairs, except by raising expectations that his inaction then quickly confounds.
* *
Political difficulties in the way of doing the right thing are less formidable in the case of Afghanistan, where nothing like an Israel lobby exists. But, even there, it is change Obama style, not real change, that is in the offing.
Would withdrawal, a “strategic retreat,” be in the national interest? Here the situation is more complicated than with Israel/Palestine. There is no doubt that the American people, the vast majority anyway, would be better off were the United States not at war with Afghanistan – if only because it would diminish the likelihood of the kind of blowback experienced eight years ago at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But, for America’s ruling elites, the situation is not so clear. To be sure, there are sectors of American capitalism that benefit from on-going wars, and Afghanistan is not without strategic importance. But, even from the vantage point of those who do benefit from the Afghan War, it is far from obvious that the benefits outweigh the risks. After all, blowback blows back over everyone equally.
Once upon a time, Barack Obama called the Iraq War a “stupid war.” For reasons having mainly to do with his electoral campaign in 2008, the Afghan War got a different billing; it was somehow a “war of necessity.” That made no sense then, and it makes even less sense now. The time is long past due that Obama should come out and declare that the Afghan War is a stupid war too.
This would hardly be news to anyone. But, for our elites, it hardly matters. They know it’s a stupid war from which no good will come, but they also believe that, once in, there is no obvious way out. Like street-level gangsters who think they must never be seen as weak, the commanders of our capitalist economy think that they cannot permit their state, the imperial center of the empire from which they benefit egregiously, to seem to back down in defeat. As their counterparts did four decades ago in Vietnam, they will therefore do their best to keep the war going beyond any chance of victory -- whatever “victory” might mean in this case -- just to avoid (or postpone) an outcome they cannot abide.
That’s why the “debate” over what to do next, eight years into a long lost war, is between the likes of General Stanley McCrystal, Vice President Joe Biden, and Senator John Kerry; and why withdrawal is “off the table.” McCrystal wants more troops – 40,000 of them at least – to keep the murder and mayhem going Iraq-surge style. He and his fellow “counter-insurgency” advocates – including the hapless but wildly popular General Petreus – are proponents of “nation building;” they therefore propose staying engaged in Afghanistan for as long as it takes. Leaving aside the moral fact that Afghanistan’s fate is for the Afghan people to decide, not American elites or defense intellectuals or Generals who lead economic conscripts into battle, the good General is plainly pissing in the wind. It is beyond the means of the American military to accomplish anything like what he has in mind. This is why his might be called the throw good money after bad strategy. And not just money – lives and limbs too.
Meanwhile, our Vice President wants a technological fix – targeting “terrorists” only, wherever they may be (in other words, expanding efforts to bring the war into the tribal areas of Pakistan, in plain disregard of our ally’s sovereignty). His strategy, compared to McCrystal’s, would probably save lives and money, but it would also destabilize the region as much or more than McCrystal’s would. No surprise there: Joe Biden has always been a reliable source of atrocious ideas. I never thought I’d say it, but I’m glad that Obama made Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State. It could have been worse; it could have been Joe.
That leaves John Kerry, who proposes keeping things pretty much as they are. Kerry’s position is the most honest of the three main contenders: it reflects a realization that the only reason to remain in Afghanistan -- the only achievable outcome, in any case – is to avoid, or rather postpone, the appearance of defeat. Ironically, Kerry’s proposals, eschewing even the appearance of change, would do the least harm. But they are still bound to lead eventually to as bad or worse consequences for Afghanistan as would immediate withdrawal, and like Biden’s proposals, though to a lesser degree, they will continue to destabilize the region.
I’d wager that Kerry will win the debate. After all his pondering, Obama will decide that the best, least bad, course of action is just to keep on keeping on. He owes it, after all, to the ruling class.
But this is foolishness. No good will come from muddling on ahead in Afghanistan, just as no good will come from letting Israel continue to dictate America’s policies in the Middle East. For anything good to come out of the present situation the only real alternative is, as it were, to give peace a chance. That would be a real change, not a change Obama style. But for that to happen, Obama would have to be the agent of change that most of his supporters thought he was. A year after he made an indelible mark on history just by the fact of having won, Obama has yet to show that he is anything of the kind.
Showing posts with label Obama's governing style. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama's governing style. Show all posts
Friday, November 6, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Stages of Enlightenment
In the beginning, Barack Obama, the Rorschach candidate in whom people saw what they wanted to see, was, for an alarmingly large number of voters, an agent of “change.” This illusion flourished throughout the primary campaign, notwithstanding the absence of any supporting evidence, and it survived his selection of Joe Biden as a running mate. It persisted too as Obama, once elected, loaded his administration with old Clinton hands, including Hillary Clinton herself; and as he re-empowered the Clinton economic team, insuring that Wall Street’s hold over the economy would be maintained. Nevertheless, in due course, as counter-indications accumulated, a bit of light penetrated the Obamamaniacal miasma. Thus, at some point after the first Hundred Days, a new, slightly less untenable illusion insinuated itself into many hearts and minds.
Specifically, the idea was born that Obama is a master-tactician who brought the Clintonites and the Wall Streeters into his administration only to benefit from their “expertise,” but that he was riding them; not vice versa. In the end, many believed, he’d somehow make it all right. Of course, there was no evidence for this belief either; with illusions there seldom is. Accordingly, by August, as the Moronic Minority of tea-partiers, birthers, deathers, tenthers, and other constituents of the Fox News-talk radio demographic mobilized with more than a little help from their corporate friends, this illusion too fell victim to the light.
Thus a more enlightened view has taken hold; it is even on the threshold of becoming the conventional wisdom. We’ll know it has arrived when Cokie Roberts, the doyenne of conventional wisdom, declares it. For the time being, though, Maureen Dowd will have to do. Her column in this morning’s New York Times is exemplary. According to Dowd and many others nowadays, the problem is that Obama’s is too conflict averse, too disposed to get on everyone’s good side, and too inclined to compromise. If he would just get over it, the expectations that were riding on his presidency will get a new lease on life. Insofar as this belief takes hold, our political culture will rid itself of disabling illusions. But we will still not achieve a genuinely enlightened view.
This is because the Obama-is-too-nice theory, though true, is superficial. The flaw in Obama’s governance style is more profound than Dowd claims, and it has very little to do with his or anyone else’s psychology; it is a structural problem. In a word, Obama is a creature of the regime, just as anyone who got into the White House in anything like the usual way would have to be. Of course, his quest for “bipartisan” compromises has made matters worse, and he is, in any case, constrained by the various messes Bush era torturers and free marketeers bequeathed him. But, above all, what shapes his policies is the overriding need American presidents have to serve the interests not of the people who elected them, but of the country’s elites. The problem is not just that these elites are the paymasters of all Republicans and nearly all Democrats; though this also makes matters worse, much worse, than need be. The more basic problem is that, this side of genuine change – radical, structural change – the interests of our elites must be served; because the regime exists for them and does well only when and insofar as they do.
In a more enlightened political culture, Obamania would have been tempered by the realization that a state in a capitalist society like ours has to serve the requirements of the capitalist system and must therefore operate, broadly speaking, in ways that accord with capitalists’ interests. Then Obama would have raised fewer expectations that he would go on to disappoint. But it is also the case that when a state in a capitalist society does its job poorly, as it did spectacularly under Cheney and Bush, opportunities are greater than usual for making things better not just by changing the system (which is a pipedream at this point), but even within the framework of the old regime. They would also know that capitalist crises, such as the one Obama inherited, make the prospects for constructive change within the system greater still. This was the case in the United States in the 1930s. Then the Roosevelt administration rose to the occasion to some extent. It was, again, the case last year – when opportunities that had not existed for decades briefly opened up. It goes without saying that Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress – not just the Blue Dogs, but the “liberals” as well – have not risen to the occasion at all; and that, to the extent opportunities still exist, they still show no signs of doing so.
Thus while there is now a more enlightened view of Obama than there used to be, there is still not nearly enough enlightenment. One need only look at how America’s “quality” media – National Public Radio is the best example – frames its accounts of policy debates in Washington. Leaving aside all the many “things” they do not “consider” but should, if the idea is indeed to enhance democracy, the journalists and commentators at NPR, along with their counterparts at The New York Times, The Washington Post and other supposedly liberal media, take for granted the framework within which our political leaders debate the issues they do address, marginalizing views that are obviously better than the ones in contention. The health care debate and the debate over the Bush-Obama Afghanistan War are cases in point. In a more enlightened political culture, mainstream media would at least acknowledge that the obviously best policies were dispatched into the night and fog even before the current debates began. This they have yet to do.
With health care, for example, it is obvious -- at least for anyone who thinks that health care should be a right, not a commodity – that a government run single-payer system or its functional equivalent (operating through not-for-profit, highly regulated private insurers) is indispensable. There is no other way to lower costs significantly and no other way to guarantee universal coverage. Every other developed capitalist country effectively decommodified health care along these lines years ago; a single-payer system is not a radical departure from capitalist norms. But it is anathema to American capitalists in the insurance, pharmaceutical and for-profit health care industries, especially now that the system they have constructed for their own benefit has grown to involve more than a sixth of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. This is why Democrats with Obama in the lead, along with Republicans, have taken the obvious solution “off the table.” Our media have let them get away with it, leaving the progress of enlightenment stalled.
Or take Afghanistan. The debate now raging is between Generals in search of fresh cannon fodder, and “doves” reluctant, as it were, to throw more good money after bad. The leader of the good (less bad) guys, it seems, is Joe Biden, the imperialists’ best friend, whose presence on the Obama ticket should have led even the willfully blind to realize that an Obama presidency would not be all that different from the Clinton or, for that matter, the Bush presidency on matters of concern to the beneficiaries of American world domination. Biden thinks that, for now, no additional troops should be sent into the Afghan “quagmire,” while the Generals look forward to another “surge.” But neither Biden nor anyone else whom Obama takes seriously favors immediate withdrawal, the obviously right way to deal with an ill-conceived war that was lost long ago. Biden just wants to fight the war Colin Powell-Bill Clinton style – from the air (ideally with unmanned drones) and with less self-defeating “nation building.” The indications now are that Biden will lose. But even if his side doesn’t, it’s far from clear that less harm will be done than if the Generals get their way. The murder and mayhem and waste of treasure needed elsewhere will go on indefinitely no matter who wins; and the occupation will continue to generate resistance (and, yes, terrorism), and to destabilize a strategic region awash in armaments, including nuclear weapons. Joe Biden on one side; Stanley McChrystal on the other. How pathetic is that!
Immanuel Kant declared the motto of Enlightenment to be “dare to know.” That is a hard thing for Obamamaniacs, past or present, to do because faith in Obama has always rested on illusions -- on beliefs based, not on evidence, but on wishes and hopes. But, with the stakes now so high, it is urgent that even the true believers confront reality and deal with it accordingly. I am confident that, in time, even the most Obamamaniacal among us will see the light; that they will realize that Obama, though better in countless ways than his predecessor, is hardly the agent of change he was once widely thought to be. The evidence is mounting and it is compelling. For everyone’s sake, it is better that this next stage of enlightenment be reached sooner rather than later. If not now, when?
Specifically, the idea was born that Obama is a master-tactician who brought the Clintonites and the Wall Streeters into his administration only to benefit from their “expertise,” but that he was riding them; not vice versa. In the end, many believed, he’d somehow make it all right. Of course, there was no evidence for this belief either; with illusions there seldom is. Accordingly, by August, as the Moronic Minority of tea-partiers, birthers, deathers, tenthers, and other constituents of the Fox News-talk radio demographic mobilized with more than a little help from their corporate friends, this illusion too fell victim to the light.
Thus a more enlightened view has taken hold; it is even on the threshold of becoming the conventional wisdom. We’ll know it has arrived when Cokie Roberts, the doyenne of conventional wisdom, declares it. For the time being, though, Maureen Dowd will have to do. Her column in this morning’s New York Times is exemplary. According to Dowd and many others nowadays, the problem is that Obama’s is too conflict averse, too disposed to get on everyone’s good side, and too inclined to compromise. If he would just get over it, the expectations that were riding on his presidency will get a new lease on life. Insofar as this belief takes hold, our political culture will rid itself of disabling illusions. But we will still not achieve a genuinely enlightened view.
This is because the Obama-is-too-nice theory, though true, is superficial. The flaw in Obama’s governance style is more profound than Dowd claims, and it has very little to do with his or anyone else’s psychology; it is a structural problem. In a word, Obama is a creature of the regime, just as anyone who got into the White House in anything like the usual way would have to be. Of course, his quest for “bipartisan” compromises has made matters worse, and he is, in any case, constrained by the various messes Bush era torturers and free marketeers bequeathed him. But, above all, what shapes his policies is the overriding need American presidents have to serve the interests not of the people who elected them, but of the country’s elites. The problem is not just that these elites are the paymasters of all Republicans and nearly all Democrats; though this also makes matters worse, much worse, than need be. The more basic problem is that, this side of genuine change – radical, structural change – the interests of our elites must be served; because the regime exists for them and does well only when and insofar as they do.
In a more enlightened political culture, Obamania would have been tempered by the realization that a state in a capitalist society like ours has to serve the requirements of the capitalist system and must therefore operate, broadly speaking, in ways that accord with capitalists’ interests. Then Obama would have raised fewer expectations that he would go on to disappoint. But it is also the case that when a state in a capitalist society does its job poorly, as it did spectacularly under Cheney and Bush, opportunities are greater than usual for making things better not just by changing the system (which is a pipedream at this point), but even within the framework of the old regime. They would also know that capitalist crises, such as the one Obama inherited, make the prospects for constructive change within the system greater still. This was the case in the United States in the 1930s. Then the Roosevelt administration rose to the occasion to some extent. It was, again, the case last year – when opportunities that had not existed for decades briefly opened up. It goes without saying that Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress – not just the Blue Dogs, but the “liberals” as well – have not risen to the occasion at all; and that, to the extent opportunities still exist, they still show no signs of doing so.
Thus while there is now a more enlightened view of Obama than there used to be, there is still not nearly enough enlightenment. One need only look at how America’s “quality” media – National Public Radio is the best example – frames its accounts of policy debates in Washington. Leaving aside all the many “things” they do not “consider” but should, if the idea is indeed to enhance democracy, the journalists and commentators at NPR, along with their counterparts at The New York Times, The Washington Post and other supposedly liberal media, take for granted the framework within which our political leaders debate the issues they do address, marginalizing views that are obviously better than the ones in contention. The health care debate and the debate over the Bush-Obama Afghanistan War are cases in point. In a more enlightened political culture, mainstream media would at least acknowledge that the obviously best policies were dispatched into the night and fog even before the current debates began. This they have yet to do.
With health care, for example, it is obvious -- at least for anyone who thinks that health care should be a right, not a commodity – that a government run single-payer system or its functional equivalent (operating through not-for-profit, highly regulated private insurers) is indispensable. There is no other way to lower costs significantly and no other way to guarantee universal coverage. Every other developed capitalist country effectively decommodified health care along these lines years ago; a single-payer system is not a radical departure from capitalist norms. But it is anathema to American capitalists in the insurance, pharmaceutical and for-profit health care industries, especially now that the system they have constructed for their own benefit has grown to involve more than a sixth of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. This is why Democrats with Obama in the lead, along with Republicans, have taken the obvious solution “off the table.” Our media have let them get away with it, leaving the progress of enlightenment stalled.
Or take Afghanistan. The debate now raging is between Generals in search of fresh cannon fodder, and “doves” reluctant, as it were, to throw more good money after bad. The leader of the good (less bad) guys, it seems, is Joe Biden, the imperialists’ best friend, whose presence on the Obama ticket should have led even the willfully blind to realize that an Obama presidency would not be all that different from the Clinton or, for that matter, the Bush presidency on matters of concern to the beneficiaries of American world domination. Biden thinks that, for now, no additional troops should be sent into the Afghan “quagmire,” while the Generals look forward to another “surge.” But neither Biden nor anyone else whom Obama takes seriously favors immediate withdrawal, the obviously right way to deal with an ill-conceived war that was lost long ago. Biden just wants to fight the war Colin Powell-Bill Clinton style – from the air (ideally with unmanned drones) and with less self-defeating “nation building.” The indications now are that Biden will lose. But even if his side doesn’t, it’s far from clear that less harm will be done than if the Generals get their way. The murder and mayhem and waste of treasure needed elsewhere will go on indefinitely no matter who wins; and the occupation will continue to generate resistance (and, yes, terrorism), and to destabilize a strategic region awash in armaments, including nuclear weapons. Joe Biden on one side; Stanley McChrystal on the other. How pathetic is that!
Immanuel Kant declared the motto of Enlightenment to be “dare to know.” That is a hard thing for Obamamaniacs, past or present, to do because faith in Obama has always rested on illusions -- on beliefs based, not on evidence, but on wishes and hopes. But, with the stakes now so high, it is urgent that even the true believers confront reality and deal with it accordingly. I am confident that, in time, even the most Obamamaniacal among us will see the light; that they will realize that Obama, though better in countless ways than his predecessor, is hardly the agent of change he was once widely thought to be. The evidence is mounting and it is compelling. For everyone’s sake, it is better that this next stage of enlightenment be reached sooner rather than later. If not now, when?
Thursday, July 23, 2009
A Flicker of Light
It was just a flicker. At his prime time July 22 news conference on health care reform,one of the corporate media stage props pre-selected to ask questions asked President Obama how close to 100% health insurance coverage would be enough to satisfy the “guidelines” he has given Congress. Obama replied that the only way to insure 100% coverage would be with a single-payer system that provides health care for everyone as a matter of right. Then he launched into his usual answer – about how he proposes to get close but not all the way there. Thus, briefly, a flicker of light shone through. It was then immediately quashed by the unforgiving steamroller that is Obama’s “pragmatism.”
How much more salutary it would have been had Obama gone on, for just a few more seconds, to say what he clearly knows to be the case: that a single-payer system is unthinkable – notwithstanding the plain fact that its superiority over the alternatives (including the left-most version of Obama’s still vague plan) is indisputable. It is unthinkable because health care profiteers in the private insurance industry, Big Pharma and the for-profit health delivery system own Congress. So, Obama might then have said, “we might as well just get on with seeing what we can accomplish within that constraint.” If only Obama had dared say this, he would have done more to advance public deliberation and debate than anything any President has done in decades.
It’s a familiar syndrome. Everyone, Obama included, knows that the only feasible way to bring a semblance of peace and justice to Israel/Palestine is to establish a Palestinian state on all or nearly all the territory Israel has occupied illegally since 1967. But, of course, this is unthinkable given the Israel lobby’s control over Congress and the White House. Thus Obama babbles on about a two state solution and halting settlement growth (he doesn’t dare talk of dismantling settlements!). His babble may be enough to unnerve the right-wing politicians who run Israel, but everyone understands that it’s just words. Because American legislators are bought and paid for, the obviously right solution is unthinkable.
Or again: everyone with the sense they were born with – including Obama most emphatically -- also knows that continuing the occupation of Iraq and ratcheting up the war in Afghanistan is all but guaranteed to make “the homeland” less, not more, secure – and also to squander public monies needed urgently for constructive purposes (including health care). But “cut and run” is an unthinkable option. After all, it would prove the empire vulnerable – and the many interests who also own Congress, not just the military-industrial complex narrowly defined, can’t have that. Thus perpetual war has become the norm. Since Obama has become president, hardly anyone even notices anymore.
Ditto for turning the economy over to “the malefactors of great wealth,” as earlier generations of Progressives called them; the people who brought the economy to the brink of collapse, and who continue to do so, as they enrich themselves egregiously. In these matters too Obama, along with nearly everyone else, knows better. But with bought and paid for Democrats (and Republicans), doing otherwise is unthinkable. It is hardly even mentionable in policy debates.
The problem is not just Obama’s “pragmatism” (which comes to nothing more than unprincipled and ultimately self-defeating tactical flexibility). It’s that who pays the piper calls the tune. Back in the darkest days of the Cheney/Bush administration, it was easy enough for “liberals” to see how wrong-headed everything was, and how the country was headed for disaster upon disaster. Not so anymore. Instead, in Obama’s Washington, the who-pays-the-piper phenomenon has reached almost totalitarian levels. The obvious, the known to be obvious, has become unthinkable, with only the occasional and easily quashed flicker of light showing through.
How much more salutary it would have been had Obama gone on, for just a few more seconds, to say what he clearly knows to be the case: that a single-payer system is unthinkable – notwithstanding the plain fact that its superiority over the alternatives (including the left-most version of Obama’s still vague plan) is indisputable. It is unthinkable because health care profiteers in the private insurance industry, Big Pharma and the for-profit health delivery system own Congress. So, Obama might then have said, “we might as well just get on with seeing what we can accomplish within that constraint.” If only Obama had dared say this, he would have done more to advance public deliberation and debate than anything any President has done in decades.
It’s a familiar syndrome. Everyone, Obama included, knows that the only feasible way to bring a semblance of peace and justice to Israel/Palestine is to establish a Palestinian state on all or nearly all the territory Israel has occupied illegally since 1967. But, of course, this is unthinkable given the Israel lobby’s control over Congress and the White House. Thus Obama babbles on about a two state solution and halting settlement growth (he doesn’t dare talk of dismantling settlements!). His babble may be enough to unnerve the right-wing politicians who run Israel, but everyone understands that it’s just words. Because American legislators are bought and paid for, the obviously right solution is unthinkable.
Or again: everyone with the sense they were born with – including Obama most emphatically -- also knows that continuing the occupation of Iraq and ratcheting up the war in Afghanistan is all but guaranteed to make “the homeland” less, not more, secure – and also to squander public monies needed urgently for constructive purposes (including health care). But “cut and run” is an unthinkable option. After all, it would prove the empire vulnerable – and the many interests who also own Congress, not just the military-industrial complex narrowly defined, can’t have that. Thus perpetual war has become the norm. Since Obama has become president, hardly anyone even notices anymore.
Ditto for turning the economy over to “the malefactors of great wealth,” as earlier generations of Progressives called them; the people who brought the economy to the brink of collapse, and who continue to do so, as they enrich themselves egregiously. In these matters too Obama, along with nearly everyone else, knows better. But with bought and paid for Democrats (and Republicans), doing otherwise is unthinkable. It is hardly even mentionable in policy debates.
The problem is not just Obama’s “pragmatism” (which comes to nothing more than unprincipled and ultimately self-defeating tactical flexibility). It’s that who pays the piper calls the tune. Back in the darkest days of the Cheney/Bush administration, it was easy enough for “liberals” to see how wrong-headed everything was, and how the country was headed for disaster upon disaster. Not so anymore. Instead, in Obama’s Washington, the who-pays-the-piper phenomenon has reached almost totalitarian levels. The obvious, the known to be obvious, has become unthinkable, with only the occasional and easily quashed flicker of light showing through.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Bush Rules (Still)
Bernie Madoff got a hundred and fifty year sentence, but if you go by the standard of the amount of harm done – or even by the number of people swindled – there are far worse criminals out there still. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld are among the most conspicuous. They deserve a hundred times a hundred and fifty years in prison. But they are protected by the Forgiver in Chief, by He Who (liberals still think) Can Do No Wrong. Therefore, instead of making license plates, they are raking in millions in book advances and speakers’ fees. This in the name of “restoring the rule of law” – and, oh yes, “looking forward,” being “bipartisan” and the like!
Barack Obama has truly extraordinary political gifts. He can make anybody think he’s on their side even when, especially when, he’s not especially. Witness his meeting yesterday with representatives of the LGBT community, the constituency he’s so far betrayed the most -- or rather second most, since we must not forget (as Obama has) organized labor. It’s not just Orwellian; it’s downright uncanny. Or, back in the rule of law department, witness his efforts to “close Guantanamo” by keeping scores of inmates in indefinite preventive detention. Amnesty International is on to him, but most liberals still are not.
Obama’s unconstrained “pragmatism” is replete with unintended ironies. Thus today, as the anti-war candidate pulls U.S. troops out of Iraqi cities – sort of, they’re just moving to bases in the burbs – the Iraqi government, while celebrating its “independence,” is putting oil contracts out for bid. It’s the first time since Iraq nationalized its oil fields some forty years ago. Mission accomplished!
Barack Obama has truly extraordinary political gifts. He can make anybody think he’s on their side even when, especially when, he’s not especially. Witness his meeting yesterday with representatives of the LGBT community, the constituency he’s so far betrayed the most -- or rather second most, since we must not forget (as Obama has) organized labor. It’s not just Orwellian; it’s downright uncanny. Or, back in the rule of law department, witness his efforts to “close Guantanamo” by keeping scores of inmates in indefinite preventive detention. Amnesty International is on to him, but most liberals still are not.
Obama’s unconstrained “pragmatism” is replete with unintended ironies. Thus today, as the anti-war candidate pulls U.S. troops out of Iraqi cities – sort of, they’re just moving to bases in the burbs – the Iraqi government, while celebrating its “independence,” is putting oil contracts out for bid. It’s the first time since Iraq nationalized its oil fields some forty years ago. Mission accomplished!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Obama = Hoover
Will we ever get an official accounting of the crimes (war crimes, crimes against the peace, crimes against humanity) committed by, among others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush? Will they be brought to justice? It is becoming increasingly difficult, even for the willfully blind, not to realize -- not if Barack Obama can help it.
Will our immoral and strategically disastrous wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars lost long ago that now serve mainly to keep the imperialist project free of the taint of abject defeat, even at the cost of producing new generations of terrorists, be brought to an end? Many of the folks who voted for him thought Obama good for that. But by now, who can deny that while he may deescalate one of them without quite ending the murder and mayhem, he’s hell bent on escalating the other.
No sane person last November thought that American capitalism was about to be replaced by anything better; but, in the face of a crisis approaching Depression level proportions, there were many who thought Obama would at least force a more human face on the capitalist system; that he’d force capitalists to “serve the people” better. That’s what happened in the Roosevelt era. But who now thinks that Obama – or, rather, the old Wall Street hands he selected to deal with the situation – have it in them to do anything of the kind?
Will the ecological catastrophe towards which the world is heading be diverted? The expectations of Obama voters notwithstanding, hardly anyone still expects more than token gestures from the Obama administration.
Will Obama help us get the healthcare system we need? No way. Single-payer is “off the table.”
Will Obama address the issue of nuclear proliferation satisfactorily? Will he force Israeli leaders to accept a two state solution in Israel/Palestine? Will he end the blockade of Cuba? Will we get genuine transparency in government under Obama? Will CIA and special forces “dark ops” be quashed? Will he even close Gitmo, without resurrecting it somewhere else, probably somewhere extra-territorial? It’s now clear that Obama won’t even lift a finger to help the citizens ofWashington D.C. gain representation along with taxation? The list goes on. George Bush’s successor is officially on the right side, more or less, on many issues. Nevertheless, these questions answer themselves.
Blame Congress with its bought and paid for imbeciles on one side and its bought and paid for cowards on the other. [There are also, of course, a handful of powerless exceptions, holding forth meekly for doing the right thing.] Blame the corporations. Their oceans of money, stuffed into the pockets of a servile political class, constrain what political scientists would call “the opportunity set” Congress and the White House confront. Blame the schools, blame the media – both do a good job of dumbing down political discourse and keeping citizens ignorant and acquiescent.
But, conceding all that, it is becoming increasingly plain that in this (potential) watershed period Obama is culpable too. I never expected much from him. [I am proud to say that I didn’t even vote for him! As I habitually do, I voted for Ralph Nader in protest.] But, even before taking office, as he reassembled the Clintonite minions – indeed, even before he became the official Democratic nominee, when he selected Joe Biden to be his Vice President – Obama has been a manifest disappointment to progressive Obamaniacs and to Obama-skeptics alike. In office now for several months, it just keeps getting worse. Soon, reality will have intruded enough so that the honeymoon between our rulers’ CEO and what passes for a Left in this country will be over; one can see it happening already in the so-called progressive media. Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters and fans are beginning to jump ship.
As happens when illusions pass, everybody pretty much complains about the same things, pretty much in tandem. But, occasionally, there are fresh insights. Harper’s magazine is often a good place to look for them. The current issue (July, 2009; unfortunately not available on line except to subscribers) does not disappoint.
In an article entitled “Barack Hoover Obama: the best and the brightest blow it again,” Kevin Baker draws parallels between Obama’s governing style and the style of our last genuinely intelligent, knowledgeable and worldly President, Herbert Hoover. Baker’s contention, in short, is that both Presidents know (or knew) better than their actions suggest, and that they are both self-made prisoners of the ambient political culture. If Baker is right, Obama, like Hoover, is a tragic character – obliged by necessity (or rather by his understanding of what necessity requires) to cede power to advisors in the thrall of a conventional wisdom that is manifestly inadequate for the tasks at hand, even as he envisions better, more radical, alternatives. As everyone knows, Hoover’s unwillingness to take bold measures made the Great Depression disastrously worse, setting his party back for generations. Baker warns that it is looking increasingly like this will be Obama’s fate as well.
Obama’s style and wit suggest JFK, but what he promises, in fact, is less Camelot than Vietnam (in the form of an endless quagmire in Afghanistan). Obama’s political acuity and guile recalls FDR’s. But Obama has boxed himself in too much to experiment with anything like a New Deal. That’s why we are not living through the Second Coming of Camelot or the Roosevelt years. Quite the contrary. Obama is, or is likely to become, the Herbert Hoover of our time.
According to the dominant historical narrative, Hoover was a non-entity with implacable conservative instincts, in way over his head. He might have been able to muddle along well enough in better times. But thanks to the stock market crash of 1929 and the bank failures that followed, he had mediocrity or worse thrust upon him. Baker’s article corrects that misapprehension. On his account, Herbert Hoover was capable of greatness – he had both the intellect and the opportunity – but he made himself a slave of the norms of the political culture of his time. That, Baker claims, is what brought his administration down in failure. Now history is repeating itself; Obama is making similar mistakes. Baker’s article is an eye-opener. Would that Obama would read it and that it would open his eyes too while there is still time to change course. There isn’t much time left. As in the Dylan song, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”
* *
The same edition of Harper’s also contains a fine piece by Ken Silverstein on the massive effort to quash the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) waged by the leaders of what the media euphemistically call “the business community.” Nothing could more effectively improve public life in this country – and raise the level of public discourse – than a reempowered labor movement. Obama knows this. Seeking labor votes, he endorsed EFCA during his run for office, and he continues to voice support. But will he spend his still considerable political capital to make EFCA happen? It doesn’t seem likely, not with so much else on his plate. While saving health care for the health care profiteers, keeping the Bush (now Obama) wars going, retaining the power and riches of Wall Street predators, and letting the environment go to hell, where will he find the time?
Will our immoral and strategically disastrous wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars lost long ago that now serve mainly to keep the imperialist project free of the taint of abject defeat, even at the cost of producing new generations of terrorists, be brought to an end? Many of the folks who voted for him thought Obama good for that. But by now, who can deny that while he may deescalate one of them without quite ending the murder and mayhem, he’s hell bent on escalating the other.
No sane person last November thought that American capitalism was about to be replaced by anything better; but, in the face of a crisis approaching Depression level proportions, there were many who thought Obama would at least force a more human face on the capitalist system; that he’d force capitalists to “serve the people” better. That’s what happened in the Roosevelt era. But who now thinks that Obama – or, rather, the old Wall Street hands he selected to deal with the situation – have it in them to do anything of the kind?
Will the ecological catastrophe towards which the world is heading be diverted? The expectations of Obama voters notwithstanding, hardly anyone still expects more than token gestures from the Obama administration.
Will Obama help us get the healthcare system we need? No way. Single-payer is “off the table.”
Will Obama address the issue of nuclear proliferation satisfactorily? Will he force Israeli leaders to accept a two state solution in Israel/Palestine? Will he end the blockade of Cuba? Will we get genuine transparency in government under Obama? Will CIA and special forces “dark ops” be quashed? Will he even close Gitmo, without resurrecting it somewhere else, probably somewhere extra-territorial? It’s now clear that Obama won’t even lift a finger to help the citizens ofWashington D.C. gain representation along with taxation? The list goes on. George Bush’s successor is officially on the right side, more or less, on many issues. Nevertheless, these questions answer themselves.
Blame Congress with its bought and paid for imbeciles on one side and its bought and paid for cowards on the other. [There are also, of course, a handful of powerless exceptions, holding forth meekly for doing the right thing.] Blame the corporations. Their oceans of money, stuffed into the pockets of a servile political class, constrain what political scientists would call “the opportunity set” Congress and the White House confront. Blame the schools, blame the media – both do a good job of dumbing down political discourse and keeping citizens ignorant and acquiescent.
But, conceding all that, it is becoming increasingly plain that in this (potential) watershed period Obama is culpable too. I never expected much from him. [I am proud to say that I didn’t even vote for him! As I habitually do, I voted for Ralph Nader in protest.] But, even before taking office, as he reassembled the Clintonite minions – indeed, even before he became the official Democratic nominee, when he selected Joe Biden to be his Vice President – Obama has been a manifest disappointment to progressive Obamaniacs and to Obama-skeptics alike. In office now for several months, it just keeps getting worse. Soon, reality will have intruded enough so that the honeymoon between our rulers’ CEO and what passes for a Left in this country will be over; one can see it happening already in the so-called progressive media. Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters and fans are beginning to jump ship.
As happens when illusions pass, everybody pretty much complains about the same things, pretty much in tandem. But, occasionally, there are fresh insights. Harper’s magazine is often a good place to look for them. The current issue (July, 2009; unfortunately not available on line except to subscribers) does not disappoint.
In an article entitled “Barack Hoover Obama: the best and the brightest blow it again,” Kevin Baker draws parallels between Obama’s governing style and the style of our last genuinely intelligent, knowledgeable and worldly President, Herbert Hoover. Baker’s contention, in short, is that both Presidents know (or knew) better than their actions suggest, and that they are both self-made prisoners of the ambient political culture. If Baker is right, Obama, like Hoover, is a tragic character – obliged by necessity (or rather by his understanding of what necessity requires) to cede power to advisors in the thrall of a conventional wisdom that is manifestly inadequate for the tasks at hand, even as he envisions better, more radical, alternatives. As everyone knows, Hoover’s unwillingness to take bold measures made the Great Depression disastrously worse, setting his party back for generations. Baker warns that it is looking increasingly like this will be Obama’s fate as well.
Obama’s style and wit suggest JFK, but what he promises, in fact, is less Camelot than Vietnam (in the form of an endless quagmire in Afghanistan). Obama’s political acuity and guile recalls FDR’s. But Obama has boxed himself in too much to experiment with anything like a New Deal. That’s why we are not living through the Second Coming of Camelot or the Roosevelt years. Quite the contrary. Obama is, or is likely to become, the Herbert Hoover of our time.
According to the dominant historical narrative, Hoover was a non-entity with implacable conservative instincts, in way over his head. He might have been able to muddle along well enough in better times. But thanks to the stock market crash of 1929 and the bank failures that followed, he had mediocrity or worse thrust upon him. Baker’s article corrects that misapprehension. On his account, Herbert Hoover was capable of greatness – he had both the intellect and the opportunity – but he made himself a slave of the norms of the political culture of his time. That, Baker claims, is what brought his administration down in failure. Now history is repeating itself; Obama is making similar mistakes. Baker’s article is an eye-opener. Would that Obama would read it and that it would open his eyes too while there is still time to change course. There isn’t much time left. As in the Dylan song, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”
* *
The same edition of Harper’s also contains a fine piece by Ken Silverstein on the massive effort to quash the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) waged by the leaders of what the media euphemistically call “the business community.” Nothing could more effectively improve public life in this country – and raise the level of public discourse – than a reempowered labor movement. Obama knows this. Seeking labor votes, he endorsed EFCA during his run for office, and he continues to voice support. But will he spend his still considerable political capital to make EFCA happen? It doesn’t seem likely, not with so much else on his plate. While saving health care for the health care profiteers, keeping the Bush (now Obama) wars going, retaining the power and riches of Wall Street predators, and letting the environment go to hell, where will he find the time?
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