The Imperialism You Can Believe In- While
Leftists Celebrate “Change,” Obama Appointees Suggest Massive
Expansion Of Bush War Doctrine
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison
Planet.com
Thursday, November 20, 2008
http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-imperialism-you-can-believe-in.html
While naive, giddy and myopic establishment leftists
have been celebrating the great “change” heralded by the election
of Barack Obama, the President elect has been busy appointing
people to key positions who advocate the same Neo-Con imperialist
foreign policy crafted during eight years of the Bush
administration.
The New York Times, widely recognized as the voice of the
establishment Democratic left, set the tone of what we can expect
from an Obama foreign policy in a lead editorial last Sunday
entitled,
“A military for a dangerous new
world.”
The editorial calls for U.S. military imperialism not
to be scaled back under Obama, but to be vastly expanded both in
terms of budget and scope.
Iran, China, Somalia, Russia and Pakistan are all
listed as potential targets of U.S. military aggression and the
paper echoes what Obama himself has said he will implement - an
addition of nearly 100,000 more soldiers and marines to American
ground forces, bringing the total to 759,000 active duty forces, at
a cost of $100 billion dollars over the next six years.
Does this sound like a “change” from the Project For a
New American century framework of endless “multi-theatre warfare,”
the inspiration for eight years of Bush administration militarism,
or an expansion of that very doctrine?
Obama’s announced appointees and those that are expected to
follow differ only from their Bush administration contemporaries in
proficiency and competence, their zeal for military adventurism is
coequal, while others that shaped eight awful years of spying,
torture, eviscerations on freedom and unprovoked military attacks
on sovereign nations will merely stay on in their roles.
Welcome to the “change that you can believe in”.
Obama’s likely selection of Hillary Clinton for the
position of Secretary of State highlights the brazen hypocrisy with
which the “change” agenda has begun to be implemented since Obama
won the election two and a half weeks ago.
Clinton voted for the invasion of Iraq, a point on
which she was attacked by Obama during the phony punch and judy
show of the debates. Obama also denounced Clinton for voting in
favor of a Senate resolution branding the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard a terrorist organization. Clinton promised to “obliterate”
Iran if it attacked Israel, a mantra echoed by Obama when he
assured AIPAC, the notorious Israeli lobby, that military strikes
against Iran were very much on the table.
Does this sound like the language of diplomacy or a
change from eight years of the Bush doctrine?
Likewise, one of the favorites to become Obama’s
Defense Secretary is Michèle A. Flournoy, deputy assistant
secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and president of
the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank.
As Alex Lantier writes, “Members of
CNAS, a rather small Washington think tank with a staff of 30
employees founded in 2003 by (John) Podesta and Flournoy, play an
outsized role in the Obama transition team.”
“So many CNAS members are likely to join the Obama
administration that CNAS officials told the (Wall Street) Journal
they were concerned the think tank might fold after Obama’s
inauguration.”
CNAS has opposed a set timeline for withdrawal from
Iraq, has advocated the deployment of more troops in Afghanistan
and has called for U.S. troops to be stationed in Pakistan. CNAS
has also urged military spending to be beefed up in order to
compete with China’s growing Navy.
“CNAS publications, many of which are publicly
available on its web site, make it clear that the Obama
administration’s foreign policy will have a thoroughly imperialist
character,” notes Lantier.
How does this represent a “change” from eight years of
Bush administration foreign policy? How does this represent a shift
from a strategy of diplomacy based on intimidation, invasion and
occupation?
Obama’s advisors have also been floating the likelihood
of Robert Gates remaining as Obama’s Secretary of Defense, so it
looks like we’re either going to have a warmonger or a warmonger in
the position - what a choice!
The Financial Times
reported this week, “President-Elect Barack Obama and
Robert Gates are negotiating terms under which the defense
secretary would remain as Pentagon chief in the new
administration.”
Gates of course has a history of entanglement with the
military-industrial complex having pushed for the U.S. bombing of
Nicaragua when he was deputy director of the CIA and later being
indicted for his involvement in covering up the Iran Contra
scandal.
Gates was the primary advocate for the Iraq “surge”
which increased the U.S. military presence in the country.
Obama’s decision to appoint Eric Holder as Attorney
General caused a flutter of controversy considering Holder’s
involvement in ensuring billionaire fugitive investor Marc Rich
received a presidential pardon at the end of Bill Clinton’s term,
but the real dirt on Holder is far more shocking.
After leaving the Clinton administration, Holder, who
played a key role in the 2005 re-authorization of the Patriot Act,
which Obama voted for, set up the legal and lobbying firm of
Covington & Burling. The firm’s most high-profile case was its
defense of Chiquita Brands International, Inc, whose executives
were facing charges of aiding terrorists for bankrolling and arming
right-wing death squads in Colombia.
As Bill Van Auken writes, “Using his longstanding ties
at the Justice Department, Holder managed to get Chiquita off the
hook with a fine that amounted to 0.55 percent of its annual
revenue. This was despite the overwhelming evidence—and the
company’s own admission—that it had paid out millions of dollars to
the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish
acronym AUC), as its gunmen carried out the massacre,
assassination, kidnapping and torture of tens of thousands of
Colombian workers, peasants, trade union officials and left-wing
political activists.”
“Holder’s record is not that of a champion of civil and
democratic rights or a defender of the oppressed, but rather a
legal servant of the corporations and the state, complicit in their
criminality and repression.”
Holder’s law enforcement deputy in the Obama
administration is likely to be Robert Mueller, who will remain as
FBI Director despite his involvement in the use of National
Security Letters to illegally spy on American citizens via the
collection of email, telecommunications and financial records.
Obama’s head of the CIA transition team is none other
than John Brennan, an aide to former CIA director George Tenet and
a key participant in the formulation of policies that led to the
torture scandal, extraordinary renditions and secret prisons.
Van Auken notes, “Brennan, like Tenet, deserves to
confront a war crimes tribunal, yet he is shaping intelligence
policy for Obama.”
“Given these appointments, a report published Monday by
the Associated Press that the incoming Obama administration “is
unlikely to bring criminal charges against government officials who
authorized or engaged in” torture hardly comes as a surprise.”
Then we have Rahm Emanuel, “the enforcer”, and Obama’s
new chief of staff.
Emanuel is the
son of a member of the Zionist
terrorist group Irgun, which was responsible for bombing
hotels, marketplaces as well as the infamous Deir Yassin massacre,
in which hundreds of Palestinian villagers were slaughtered.
Upon news of his appointment, Emanuel’s father, Dr.
Benjamin Emanuel, told the Jerusalem Post, “Obviously he will
influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he be? What
is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White
House.”
But forget sins of the father, Rahm Emanuel himself is
a former Israeli IDF soldier who has a penchant for making death
threats against his political enemies while crazily slamming a
knife into a dinner table. Sounds like a diplomatic kind of
guy.
When Emanuel’s appointment was confirmed, top Israeli
newspaper the
Maariv Daily hailed the
news with the headline, “Our man in the White
House.”
Another Israeli news outlet,
Y Net, reported, “Emanuel is pro-Israeli, and would not
be willing to consider accepting the job unless he was convinced
that President-elect Obama is pro-Israel.”
Recall that President elect Barack Obama’s first act of
“change” upon winning the Democratic presidential nomination back
in June was to don a joint US-Israeli label pin, head on over to
AIPAC and prostrate himself in front of the Israeli lobby, vowing
to keep military action in mind for Iran and promising to hand over
another $30 billion of American taxpayers’ money in military
assistance to the Zionist state.
It seems that Obama has already answered the question
of whether he can be a more hardcore Israel hard-liner than George
W. Bush - ‘yes he can’!
When are left-wing establishment liberals going to
overcome their inane idolatry for Obama and realize that the people
he is putting into positions of power are the same and in some
cases worse than the Neo-Cons who ran eight years of Bush foreign
policy?
When are leftists going to get over their petty power
trips and understand that the mantra of “change” is a mere illusion
to provide left cover for a massive expansion in U.S. imperialism
the likes of which the Bush administration could never have
accomplished?
When are liberals going to stop behaving like gloating
children and understand that Obama’s exalted messiah status and
political capital, allied with his publicly stated agenda and the
nature and track record of those he has appointed to key positions,
is a recipe for a new wave of militarism and an expansion of the
pre-emptive Bush foreign policy doctrine that Obama himself
campaigned against with his rhetorical and empty promises of
“change”?