With an Anti-War Candidate Like This...

Barack Obama’s opinion piece in today’s (July 14) New York Times, “My Plan for Iraq,” intended to calm his anti-war “base,” concludes with this remark: “…for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.” True enough. Obama has not flip-flopped, and neither is he prepared to accept defeat (“surrender”). To his everlasting discredit, he has consistently advocated the kinder, gentler imperialist program he advocates now.

For as long as Obama has had a plan, it has been to draw down combat troops in Iraq over sixteen months after he assumes office, conditions permitting. That would extend the war and occupation at least into the summer of 2010! Obama’s plan has also been to build up troop strength in Afghanistan. To that end, he has long called for adding two combat brigades (about 10000 soldiers) and other support troops, comprised largely of men and women redeployed from Iraq. The “anti-war” part of his message is just that, before the Iraq War began, he opposed it; and that he still thinks it a “blunder.” But Obama will not cut and run. That might encourage the emergence of an Iraq Syndrome to rival or even surpass the Vietnam Syndrome that Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton worked so diligently to wear down.

Needless to say, an Iraq Syndrome, making further military interventions and preemptive wars more difficult to wage, is just what the US needs. Without that break on imperialist predations, a soft-landing for the American people will be harder to accomplish, as the American empire inevitably and inexorably crumbles in the years ahead. But Obama, like most Democrats, will have none of it. Democrats can say, unabashedly though belatedly, that the Iraq War was a mistake. But since “we” are there, we must leave with dignity, the better to fight another day. Shades of Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s “peace with honor.” No doubt, Obama does want the war he’ll inherit to wind down; the quicker the better. But the main thing for him, as for Nixon and Kissinger and John McCain too, is to keep the imperialist project going. It’s with that thought in mind that Obama’s opinion piece concludes disingenuously: “it’s time to end this war.”

It’s worth bearing in mind that Obama’s is the mainstream Democratic position. In 2006, Americans thought they were voting to end the Iraq War. What they got were Democratic majorities in the House and Senate led by Pelosiites hell bent on funding Bush’s wars, while mouthing off as if they thought differently. Before the primary season degenerated into a seemingly endless contest between two Clintonites, Obama and Hillary Clinton, only one “electable” contender, Bill Richardson, even came close to voicing a genuinely anti-war position. [I leave aside Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, who were marginalized from the get go, and even excluded from joint public appearances (“debates”) at the party’s first opportunity.] The others, even John Edwards, whose domestic positions were light years ahead of Obama’s or Clinton’s, were on board. Like the hapless Howard Dean in 2004 (and still), the Democratic contenders were doves (on this war at least) – but hardly anti-imperialists or principled opponents of the militarism that makes American imperialism possible.

The Democratic leadership and rank and file have much to answer for, but the fault is not theirs alone. The POP, the Party of Pusillanimity, is only doing what comes naturally to it. Serving their paymasters is the default position for Democrats. They have become stuck there because they have not had to contend with a militant anti-war movement threatening to tear apart the regime they help maintain. There is probably some truth in the claim that the anti-Vietnam War movement helped end the Vietnam War. Back then, when the anti-war movement was militant enough for our rulers to fear the consequences of keeping the war going, there were probably fewer “doves” in the general population than there now are. But dovishness counts for very little; not with political institutions as unresponsive to public opinion as ours are. What counts is militancy.

There has not been much of that in the Home of the Brave in recent years. With the candidacy of the Rorschach man, Barack Obama, what little militancy there was dissipated further. Some of it even morphed into Obamamania. But, in the past few weeks, with Obama and the party he leads careening even farther to the right, it has become harder for liberals to maintain their illusions. That’s not good for Obama, and neither is it good for the regime he wants to administer. Thus, Obama and his handlers have embarked on an illusion-restoration offensive – to “shore up” their liberal base. They will probably succeed. After all, we are dealing with people who, as Robert Frost famously pointed out, are notoriously disinclined to take their own side in an argument.

Jesse Jackson is a case in point. Having said that, for talking down to African Americans, Obama should have his nuts cut off, he has spent the past few days apologizing profusely. Apparently, he does not want to jeopardize the prospects of the Great (Non-) White Hope. [Ironically, his remark seems actually to have bolstered Obama’s cred with white racist voters.] But Jackson’s original instinct was more salutary than his efforts to make amends. Opponents of the Iraq War should learn from this sorry episode. For playing anti-war Americans for fools, Obama deserves worse than the fate Jackson would dish out. In a better world, he, along with all the other “anti-war” Democrats, would be told so in no uncertain terms, and unapologetically.

That’s not going to happen, of course. But not all is lost as long as Obama still feels a need to shore up his base – in other words, to fool more of the people more of the time. Were he to jettison his Rorschach qualities entirely, it would be much harder for the Democrats to mobilize the support they need to defeat that even greater evil, John McCain – the doddering neo-con whom our vaunted democracy offers up as the only real alternative to the “anti-war” Democrat on whom so many well-meaning but deluded voters still pin their hopes.

What? Me Offensive?

As the Democratic Party under Barack Obama moves from right to righter, it is becoming harder than it used to be to bear in mind that the Democrats are the lesser evil. But John McCain all but insures them that role; much as Dick Cheney and George Bush insure the Democrats, if not Obama himself, electoral successes this year.

The Republicans’ problem, the main one, is that reality is getting in the way of the fantasies they govern by. To illustrate the point, consider what surrogates for Obama and McCain have to say to get demerit points for offensiveness. The differences reveal very different attitudes towards the truth. Democrats don’t dote on it; Republicans have no idea what it is. Thus, for a Democrat to cross the line, it is sufficient to state obvious but inconvenient truths. The Republican mind is so remote from anything real that the Democratic way doesn’t cut it with them. To step out of bounds on the Republican side, what one has to do is reveal the party’s nature too blatantly – for keeping all those useful idiots, the “patriots” and “values voters,” in line.

Thus the former Texas Senator Phil Graham, a McCain economic advisor, is now on the outs. His sin: calling people who complain about the economy whiners. There was a certain logic behind his indiscretion, at least in his mind. Since markets are always right (provided nasty regulators stay away), and since their (unregulated) workings give us the best of all possible worlds, what else could complainers be? Needless to say, only the ideologically besotted could think this is so; in the real world, it is pure and simple (minded) bunk. But it is what McCain’s free-marketeer constituency believes. Graham let it be known. In more prosperous times, that would not have been so awful. But with prosperity down the drain, Graham’s was a serious tactical error, one McCain’s handlers cannot abide. Since he won’t apologize to the people who are hurting, the “little people” and so-called Reagan Democrats, the man has got to go – for now.

I confess: I’m happy that Graham is in the shit house; it’s where he belongs. He is an unusually repellent Republican -- and not just because he shares Newt Gingrich’s inflated sense of his own intellectual abilities. That occupational hazard of failed and middling academics is common enough in the Halls of Congress. What gets my contempt going is that signature expression of his. His is the face of an aging, sweaty good ole’ boy sitting on a toilet in some god awful bus station – at just the moment when the janitor opens the stall door by mistake.

The Democrats have an eminence waiting in the wings who sports a similar look; a man similarly self-deceived about his intellectual abilities. That would be former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, the purported master of all things military. For purveyors of conventional wisdom, Nunn would make a fine running-mate for Obama. Lets hope Obama doesn’t agree, and lets hope too that, after Obama wins, Nunn doesn’t become his Secretary of Defense or otherwise find a place in the higher echelons of government. The last thing we need is yet another Democrat who just knows that all those voters who are impatient about getting out of Iraq, and all those soldiers complaining about getting called back to active duty after they’ve done their time, are whiners.

I’m hopeful because like some far greater malefactors – George Schultz, for example, and even Henry Kissinger – Nunn has pointed out that there is no need for any country – including our very own beacon of truth, justice and the American way -- to have a nuclear arsenal. [Why our so-called left hasn’t joined these eminences in pointing this out is something to ponder. That they are mum does not speak well for them.] Anyway, the need, even the urgency, for nuclear abolition is an obvious and inconvenient truth, if ever there was one. In a Clintonized Party, with Obama leading the rightward charge, that should seal his fate.

What's Truth Got to Do With It? Part Umpteen

Utter some obvious but “inconvenient” truth this electoral season – then, if you’re a Democrat, get denounced, diagnosed by media pop psychologists (aka pundits), and, if possible, forced out of public view. Thus Jimmy Carter on Apartheid in occupied Palestine, Samantha Power on how the Clintons will do anything to win elections, Jeremiah Wright on America’s racist past and present, Wesley Clark on John McCain’s lack of military and diplomatic experience and now – Jesse Jackson.

Jackson, according to the movers and shakers of conventional wisdom, is sore because he thinks he, not the upstart Obama, should be the first black President. So he acted out – by saying “crudely” that Obama was “talking down” to African Americans in casting blame on black fathers (Pat Moynihan style) and in pandering to black (and other) evangelicals on “faith based initiatives.” Well, duh! The only thing wrong with what Jackson said is that it’s incomplete. Not only is Obama talking down to African Americans; he’s sucking up to those “hard working white” folks Hillary Clinton spent her cynically courting.

But Jackson is not blameless. Had he not folded the Rainbow Coalition back into the mainstream of the Democratic Party in the late eighties, had he not been so loyal to the party’s mainstream ever since, and had he not accepted crumbs from the Clintons all these years (even to the point of “counseling” Bill when his Monica troubles were getting him down), the Democrats would, in all likelihood, have more backbone than they do today (they could hardly have less!), more progressive policies, and a candidate for President who wouldn’t be quite so ready to aid and abet Dick Cheney and George W. Bush as they continue to commit high crimes and misdemeanors – not to mention war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity. Remember this the next time Barack Obama joins the neo-con drum beat for war with Iran, as he has been doing with renewed vigor yesterday and today.

Worse than Clinton!

It had to happen sooner or later. It happened sooner – Barack Obama has now moved to the right of Hillary Clinton! It had to happen because, unlike in most other “capitalist democracies” (if I may be permitted that oxymoron), it’s the American way for candidates to betray their base before they are elected. For this, we have our unusually undemocratic electoral institutions to thank. With two semi-institutionalized Business parties competing with each other, the wisest electoral course is to go for the middle; or so our candidates believe. [This is not a strategy that has worked out particularly well for Democrats in recent decades, but Democrats, including Obama, evidently believe in it nevertheless.] Needless to say, the middle has been moving ever more rightward at least since the waning days of the Carter administration; a trajectory our electoral institutions has encouraged. Thanks to the incompetence of Cheney and Bush and the majority (Republican) party, there was an opportunity to change course this electoral season. But the paymasters and functionaries of the Democratic Party, and the media hacks who legitimate their doings, held their ground. The rightward drift is therefore still alive and well.

Thus Obama voted for the new FISA bill (and, in the end, for giving telecom companies retroactive immunity for having clearly violated U.S. laws). In other words, he voted against freedom (ostensibly for the sake of “security”). He voted with each and every Republican. Among Democrats, he was not alone. Only 26 of them voted against cloture and only 28 voted against the final FISA bill. Hillary Clinton voted on the right side both times.

These Democrats did the right thing for once: Akaka, Biden (yes, Biden!), Bingaman, Boxer, Brown, Cantwell, Cardin, Hillary Clinton, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Kerry, Leahy, Levin, Lautenberg, Murray, Reed, Reid, Sanders, Schumer, Stabenow, Tester and Wyden.

These Democrats voted like the pusillanimous enemies of liberty they are: Bayh, Carper, Casey, Conrad, Dorgan, Feinstein, Innuoye, Kohl, Landrieu, Lincoln, McCaskill, Mukulski, Nelson (Neb.), Nelson (Fla.), Barack Obama, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Webb, and Whitehouse.

I must therefore correct what I have been saying. In earlier postings, I several times ranked Obama better (less right-wing) than Joe Biden or Clinton and, of course, worse than John Edwards, Bill Richardson, and Chris Dodd. [Needless to say, he was and is also much worse than the “unelectables” – Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.] After today’s vote, that assessment cannot stand. Whether thanks to circumstances or character defects or both, Barack Obama is now the worst of the lot. Of course, he’s still better than John McCain -- though McCain at least had the decency to be out of town for the vote! But increasingly the race between those two is boiling down to a contest to see which one will be the less dangerous Bush Three.

What a Difference a Month Makes

One good thing about the Clintons’ obstinacy this past spring: it delayed Barack Obama’s not so slow but steady rightward drift. This thought was driven home when I read Eliot Weinberger’s very useful “Obama v. Clinton: A Retrospective” in the July 3 London Review of Books. Weinberger’s article articulates what many liberals were thinking as recently as a few weeks ago -- back when it was so much easier for proponents of “change” to delude themselves about Barack Obama. No doubt, there are still many Obamamaniacs who remain deluded. The farther away they are from American shores, the easier it is to keep the delusion going. This is why, from abroad, Democrats have always looked better than they are – compared to the “competition.” Thus I recall many a spirited argument with foreigners who should know better in the early days of the Clinton administration -- before it turned comically rotten and when memories of Ronald Reagan and Bush the Father were still very much alive – about the Man from Hope.

[It may be relevant too that European, especially British, audiences are inclined to go gaga when an American President is bright and not “linguistically challenged.” The latter affliction runs in the Bush family (along with ignorance and stupidity); in the case of the family's current avatar, all three afflictions have run amok. Thus the contrast could hardly be sharper.]

In any case, where Obama is concerned, it is becoming harder to indulge in wishful thinking. The current issue of The Nation (July 21/28) contains an informative article by Robert Dreyfuss on what can be ascertained about Obama’s foreign policy. It is sobering to read. Dreyfus is not yet ready to despair; he thinks Obama is still a work in progress. Perhaps, but the prognosis is becoming worse day by day.

Dreyfus does say tellingly, towards the end of his article, that “the most hopeful aspect of an Obama presidency …[may be]…the fresh face of America that he would present to the world.” True enough, and more than enough to justify opposition to John McCain. But how pathetic is it that at an historical conjuncture where, for the first time in decades, a real change of course is feasible, that’s about all there is in the offing.

Iraq Flip Flop?

It must be true that “the press corps” loves John McCain. Why else would they mention his many spectacular flip flops so rarely? Perhaps it’s because they’re rooting for him as he tries, in vain, to win over his party’s several extreme right wings. In the Democratic primaries, they notoriously favored Barack Obama too – not just over Hillary Clinton but, even more blatantly, over the more progressive candidates. Now, however, they have no hesitancy about pointing out his flip flops. Since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama has given McCain’s media “base” a lot to work with. He has flip flopped on, among other things, public financing, FISA, tax policy and “free” trade. The extreme nature of Obama’s flip flops is remarkable, as is the rapidity with which he is moving rightward (having already begun with a good head start), but there is nothing surprising about the phenomenon itself. Just as McCain has extreme right wingers to placate, Obama has a ruling class to win over. Sometimes the media flip flop detectors are wrong, however. Thus, contrary to what they would have us believe, Obama hasn’t flip flopped on Iraq; not yet. He did suggest that his plan to get the troops (the combat troops, that is) out in sixteen months isn’t written in stone. But this isn’t a flip flop. It’s worse than that.

It’s worse because his position really hasn’t changed – a point that George Packer makes perfectly clear, perhaps unintentionally, in his “Obama’s Iraq Problem” in the July 7/14 New Yorker.

Obama did oppose the invasion of Iraq in 2002, back when opposition from more prominent Democrats might have made a difference. This is to his credit; just as the support so many Democrats, including the still unapologetic Hillary Clinton, gave to Cheney and Bush marks them as Cheney/Bush collaborators. Like most of his advisors (in the halcyon days before his campaign and Clinton’s melded together), Obama understood that an effort to make Iraq a de facto U.S. colony – which is all the Iraq War was ever really about – was bound to fail. Thus he was a “dove” when most Democrats were still “hawks.”

But, as a dove, he never opposed the war for anti-imperialist reasons. If anything, the opposite was the case: he thought, correctly, that America’s imperial interests would be better served by not undertaking that war of choice. Note that, to this day, Obama has never objected to other recent American wars – the one in Afghanistan, for example. In fact, part of Obama’s plan from the beginning was to transfer troops from Iraq to that other theater in the so-called War on Terror. Neither has there ever been a peep of criticism from his quarter about Bill Clinton’s military adventures: in the former Yugoslavia, most conspicuously, but also in east Africa and central Asia.

The fact is that, for as long as he has been in public life, Obama has never been an anti-imperialist. He is against imperialist wars that harm imperial interests. But so are Cheney and Bush and the Clintons. The difference is just that Obama’s judgment is better than theirs-- and that, until recently, he surrounded himself with more competent advisors.

This is why Obama, like most Democrats, has never taken a truly anti-war position on Iraq. Democratic majorities in the House and Senate could have ended the war on a dime -- by defunding it, as is their Constitutional right and duty. But they can’t (or won’t) do anything of the sort. The reason why is not that they think electoral success depends on “supporting the troops” (by keeping them in harm’s way), though they’ve been talking up that howler for years. The reason is that even more than they want that disastrous war to be over, they don’t want the U.S. to suffer an abject defeat. Or rather, since the U.S. was defeated abjectly in Iraq long ago, they don’t want the outcome to seem like what it is. That would make it harder for the empire to continue on its longstanding course; something the candidate of “change we can believe in” wants desperately to avoid. For Obama, as much as for Hillary Clinton and the others, the first priority is not to revive the so-called Vietnam Syndrome; in other words, to keep the public more or less on board as the empire does what it’s gotta do.

Democrats like Obama, along with Republicans, do not want the fiasco in Iraq to result in an “Iraq Syndrome.” But this is just what the United States needs if it is to achieve anything like a soft landing as American economic dominance declines. Neo-conservatives and their Clintonite cousins are oblivious. Obama is oblivious. But the fact remains that either the United States eases itself out of its imperial role in a way that leaves intact what is still good about the country – especially, the civil liberties it still (mostly) honors – or life here will get worse fast, as the national security state ratchets up its project of perpetual war.

Democrats under Obama will obfuscate as they must to keep an Iraq Syndrome at bay. But there’s a better chance of their not getting their way if they, not McCain and his minions, control the government. Thus it is crucial to work against McCain. But it is equally crucial not to fall into line behind Barack Obama. In 2006, the POP, the Party of Pusillanimity (or of Pelosiites!), deceived Democratic voters. For that they deserve not just shame, but condemnation. If voters let themselves be duped again, then, as the saying goes, shame (and also condemnation!) on them too.

Democratic voters would have made the tasks ahead much easier had they chosen a more progressive candidate in the primaries. They had the opportunity. Instead they fell for an “inspiring” Rorschach Man, who seemed to be whatever they wanted him to be. Now reality is intruding into that illusion; Obama can’t remain a Rorschach Man forever. When will it dawn, though, on the Obamaniacs that if they want anything good to come of an Obama presidency, he will have to be fought every step of the way!

Partly because the press corps favored Obama so much during the primaries, a rare opportunity for real change, not plus ça change…, was missed. But it is not entirely gone. To salvage what we still can, it is crucial that we not obscure differences between doves and anti-imperialists. The difference affects policy, as Obama’s latest (non) flip flop should force even his anti-war supporters to acknowledge. But there is more than “just” the duration of this most disastrous and self-defeating of Bush’s wars riding on it. It is the wars to come that we must now fight to prevent.

Nauseating

In much the way that Ulysses had to bind himself to the masts of his ship in order not to succumb to the Sirens’ call and remain on course, sensible voters in 2004 had to force themselves not to listen to what John Kerry said and did in order to remain steadfast in their determination to vote for him against George W. Bush. It is fast becoming that way in 2008 with Barack Obama. If his public appearances these past few days are any indication, not paying attention to the content of Obama’s “inspiring” muttering will be necessary not only for voting for the lesser evil, but even for keeping down one’s lunch.

For political philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, patriotism can be something more than “the last refuge of scoundrels.” But not for the flag waving, lapel button wearing “patriots” Obama pandered to yesterday in Independence, Missouri (not incidentally, the “Show Me” state). Their “thinking” may not be out of line in the Land of the Free, but the fact remains: their patriotism is stupid. But it’s one of those things – there are many others – which Democrats feel obliged to encourage. [Another is “supporting the troops,” which is code for keeping the Bush wars going and keeping the economic conscripts who fight them in harm’s way.] We owe this nauseating spectacle to the fact that the Party of Pusillanimity, the POP, much like the country at large, never quite assimilated the real lessons the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon war against Vietnam (and then the rest of southeast Asia) taught. If it had, it would be unthinkable now that a John McCain might be the one to extend the Cheney/Bush presidency for yet another dreadful term.

The POP has also not learned from its real mistakes in 2004. Instead, it focuses on its imaginary mistakes; thus its determination to turn itself into the party of the godly. After Karl Rove mobilized Christian fundamentalists to clobber Kerry in 2004, it has become a Democratic axiom that, in their obsessive pandering, they must not forget evangelical Christians. It seems that, since 2004, they’ve learned (or at least convinced themselves) that evangelicals are not all the same; and that some of them can be won over (or won back) to “progressive” positions – by which they mean saccharine Democratic positions. Thus today, according to news reports, Obama will tell evangelicals in Ohio that he favors “faith based initiatives” of various sorts. With the primary season over, it’s evidently not enough that he and Hillary Clinton meld together. He now seems to want to go all the way – assuming the God-fearing mantle of George W. Bush.

To be sure, Obama has a problem. In our debased political culture, where the likes of Fox news help set the agenda, a disturbingly large number of very ignorant people believe that Obama is a “secret Muslim.” To this “charge,” a slightly more “audacious,” but still God-fearing Obama could reply: “I’m a Christian, but there’s nothing wrong or ‘un-American’ with being a Muslim” That would at least inject a little oxygen into some moribund brains. But NO. Obama prefers to deny the “charge,” letting the slight to Muslims go uncorrected.

Of course, in a saner possible world, being a Muslim would indeed be a reproach, as would being a Christian or a Jew. But that isn’t the universe Democrats choose to inhabit. Nevertheless, there are some well-meaning but deluded people, some of whom surely know better where godliness is concerned, who find Obama’s stance “pragmatic.” [In their ignorance, these good liberals have turned Sidney Morgenbesser’s quip about pragmatism inside out. Morgenbesser famously, and very wisely, said that “pragmatism is true in theory, but in practice it just doesn’t work.”] “Pragmatically,” Obama is now positioning himself as the candidate of God and Country, while liberal Democrats either cheer him on or turn a blind eye. Thus, like him, they reveal themselves to be the scoundrels they are.

* *

Speaking of which, Obama and his liberal supporters have dealt yet another blow to truth telling. This time, the one in trouble for stating the obvious isn’t Jimmy Carter, whom the liberals would love to go away, or Jeremiah Wright or Ralph Nader, whom the liberals love to bad-mouth: it’s Obama’s own “surrogate” -- General Wesley Clark. Like Jay Rockefeller before him, Clark pointed out that being shot down in an airplane and then held as a POW is not exactly a qualification for being Commander-in-Chief. Were he not a military man and a Democrat, he might have added that volunteering to drop bombs and napalm on a civilian population fighting for its independence isn’t much of a qualification either; or at least that it shouldn’t be. But through some convoluted reasoning, Obama and his handlers felt obliged to rebuke the good General – confounding his truth telling with an attack on John McCain’s “patriotism.”

In the seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal pointed out that when a point is carried to its extreme, it turns into its opposite. “Too much light blinds us,” Pascal wrote. Perhaps we’ll see another example today in Ohio. Or is it too much to hope that the next time Obama castigates someone for stating the obvious, he’ll confound their temerity not just with leveling charges about the patriotism of others, which Clark’s adventure in truth telling plainly was not, but with an attack on faith. Or will no Democrat dare state the obvious about believers (except, of course, the Islamic variety).