August 26, 2008
In judging the shape of a future John McCain presidency, there are already plenty of dots that are easy to connect. They reveal an image of a war-like Empire so full of hubris that it could take the world into a cascade of crises, while extinguishing what is left of the noble American Republic.
McCain has made clear he would continue and even escalate George W. Bush’s open-ended global war on Islamic radicals. McCain buys into the neoconservative vision of expending U.S. treasure and troops to kill as many Muslim militants as possible.
Read on.
6 comments:
This current and imperialistic paradigm places the weight of such foolish militarism on us, the taxpayers. We get nothing out of the deal in terms of constitutional freedoms that are effectively enforced or even in terms of a fair and viable economic system. Chalmers Johnson is right. Down we, the People, go.
Your article, while very much on point, carries the implicit subtext of 'so that's why you should vote for Obama' and, regarding domestic civil rights policy you're certainly correct that Obama would be leagues better than McAwful. That said, there's little substantive difference between the GOP's and the DNC's corporate dependency and little to suggest that a remedy for democracy's greatest threat - the progressive power of the military-industrial-congressional-religious complex would be that much less under Obama than under McCain. It might be less rapid but no less complete.
Similarly, Obama's foreign policy is different than McCain's only in degree, not quality... one need only look at his foreign policy advisers and his V.P. selection to know that it's going to be 'Washington Consensus' & democracy at bayonet-point. The only difference will be the sympathetic Democratic smile as opposed to the arrogant GOP sneer.
Given the limited time available to the U.S. & the world to make effective changes to meet the existential threat of global warming (which will render all the current geopolitical paradigms irrelevant) both mainstream candidate's approaches are off-target by a long-shot and those that do address the really threatening issues are too little, and will be far too late by the time they recognize the need to address them with the urgency they deserve.
Yeah, McAwful will be a disaster, but Obama's not a solution either.
Sadly, the candidate who grasps the issues and has the policies, Ralph Nader, has been relegated to irrelevance by the corporate media.
Summing up the answer, some 221 years down the line, to Benjamin Franklin's implied question : «No, they were unable to keep it». It seems extremely unlikely that either Barack Hussein Obama or John Sidney McCain, if elected US president, will take any steps to restore the US Republic. But Tweedeldum and Tweedledee as they may be, I hope that it is Mr Obama rather than Mr McCain who swears (mendaciously) the oath of office on 20 January 2008, as the chances of human life on Earth surviving the collapse of the US Empire seem to me far better if the former is at the helm - the risk of a nuclear conflagration with McCain in office is clear and present....
Henri
I appreciate and agree with most of the points you've made in this great article. I think there are huge differences between McCain and Obama, because, at heart, war seems to be McCain's default mode, and consensus-building seems to be Obama's. It's interesting to note that Pat Buchanan would agree with you on many of your points (although the coward won't say it on televsion). "Day of Reckoning" is his latest book, and the subtitle says it all: "How hubris, pride and greed are tearing America apart." He says Bush has turned democracy into a fundamentalist religion, and it's our job to convert the world. McCain would also want to be "president of the world." I do think Obama would be satisfied with being president of the United States.
The Obama presidential campaign will rise or fall by the degree to which it makes unequivocally ending the US military occupation of Iraq its focal point. As long as ten billion dollars a month (borrowed abroad, so as to fuel the downward spiraling devaluation of our currency) gets continuously pissed away - yielding only hatred and inevitable blowback in return - then nothing meaningful, literally nothing, on the domestic social or economic front can ever be achieved.
McCain's rabid, mindless embrace of Little George's imperial militarist folly should be hung around his neck like an albatross. He simply doesn't get it. He is incapable of ever getting it. And all else flows from there.
If Barack Obama goes any more wobbly about ending the occupation of Iraq as a first step towards reasserting some measure of real, popular democratic control over the ravenous global sprawl of the American military/industrial complex, then his candidacy will slowly sink like John Kerry's did, and for much the same reason: you can't triangulate away fundamental moral issues of life and death.
In that regard, Obama's selection of Joe Biden to bring "balance" to the Democratic ticket may be an ominous sign. We should all have a pretty good feel for what's in store by the end of the Denver convention. If Barack and Michelle do a fist bump in Mile High Stadium, salute, and declare they're reporting for duty, then the ship is definitely going down.
Senator Joe Biden was a big time hawk in the run up to the Iraq invasion. He remains a major proponent of using the US military presence there to promote "balkanization" of Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite regions, as though such grandiose boundary realignments were Uncle Sam's call to make. Karl Rove's disciples on the McCain media team are already revving up videotapes from Joe Biden's remarks on the primary campaign trail just a few months ago, in which Biden openly declared Obama was too young and too inexperienced to have the judgment necessary to occupy the White House.
Everybody knows this line of wedge attack is coming. Can this lemon be turned into lemonade?
Will the Democrats try to pretend it's no big deal, and hope people aren't going to notice?
Or worse, will the Dems instead follow the failed centrist strategy of the 2004 Kerry campaign, and pretend the voters who need to be appealed to in 2008 are not the 60% of the electoral grassroots who want to end the Iraq war, but rather the waffling 40% who remain willing to muck and surge along on the ground militarily in the Middle East indefinitely, regardless of the lies, the bloodshed, futility, and cost?
Stay tuned. We'll know for sure real soon.
Bill from Saginaw
In the typical neanderthal mindset of the war criminal and intellectually challenged neo-con called "John Mccain"; his choice of a person who has demonstrated the capacity and arrogance to abuse the power that comes with public trust is NO SURPRISE!
His choice for a political "attack dog" was well vetted. His choice was based on the same criteria GW Bush used to choose a ruthless, self-serving Darth Cheney as
his running mate. Both have a vested interest in placing the demands of big oil, AIPAC, and other special interest groups of questionable integrity above all else, including; the needs, concerns, and safety of honest hard working American citizens.
John Mccain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years. John Mccain wants to "bomb, bomb, bomb - bomb, bomb Iran". John Mccain is itching for a fight with Russia over their
REACTION to the US incited/financed Georgian attack on Russian CIVILIANS in South
Ossettia earlier this month. Bush/Mccain want to place missiles in Poland which is sure to create a new "missile crisis". Those US missiles in Poland have the same
perceived intention as the Soviet missiles had in the Cuban missile crisis in the 60's.
Bullying, terrorizing, harassing, torture, intimidation, genocide, and propagandizing are not effective tools of diplomacy, nor are they appropriate as domestic policy. Neither do those methods demonstrate good will or good character. There has been no honor, integrity or justice in our foreign or domestic policies
since 2001. With a third Bush administration; the depravity will only deepen.
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