by Mike Whitney
Global Research, May 17, 2009
Anyone who has ever wasted good money on a clunker only to drop the transmission 15 minutes after leaving the car-lot, knows the feeling. It’s like a swift-kick in the groin followed by weeks of fist-pounding rage. It’s called buyer’s remorse; “Gawd, I wish I hadn’t bought that piece of dogshite!”
There are probably a lot of former-Obama supporters feeling that same agonizing sense despair now that President Rainbow has done an about-face on every campaign promise he made. So much for “truth in advertising”, eh?
What a disaster. Did anyone know it was gonna be this bad?
For the record; I didn’t vote for Obama because I didn’t like the way he backpedaled on wiretapping and because he promised to escalate the war in Afghanistan. (Like everyone else who voted for Ralph Nader; I got loads of grief for it) But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want Obama to succeed. I did. The country is in too big a mess NOT to hope that he would succeed. But now…?
Let’s just forget about the fact that Obama never lifted a finger to stop Israel’s two week rampage through Gaza which killed 1,100 unarmed civilians and destroyed much of the critical infrastructure. And let’s give him a pass for equivocating on Iran, Georgia, missile defense in East Europe, Cuba, NAFTA, FISA, torture, war crimes, the Employee free Choice Act (EFCA) and any other issue that’s important to liberals, progressives, leftists or anyone else who eats with a fork or walks on two legs. And let’s excuse Obama for stepping up the air war in Afghanistan even though another 140 Afghan villagers were blown to bits 10 days ago while sitting in their schools, sleeping in their beds or having dinner with their families. (After all, Obama did say he was sorry, didn’t he?)
But now Obama is backing off on his promise to withdrawal troops from Iraq in 16 months. And, now he’s planning to restore Bush’s kangaroo courts (Military tribunals) for prisoners at Guantanamo who’ve never even been formally charged with a crime! And, now, he’s threatening to hold some prisoners indefinitely in the U.S. without trial. (http://news.antiwar.com/2009/05/14/obama-mulls-indefinite-detention-without-trial-for-detainees/)
I don’t know about you, but I believe that America is based on the idea that every man has certain basic rights, and the most fundamental of all those rights is the right to know why the state has thrown your ass in jail. That’s numero uno! It’s called habeas corpus and the whole judicial system rests on that one foundation stone. People like Obama, who don’t believe in habeas, shouldn’t even call themselves “American” in my book because they don’t believe in the underlying principles.
Does Khalid Sheik Mohamed–the so-called “9-11 mastermind”– deserve his day in court?
You’re damn right he does! That’s how the system works. Deal with it.
Obama is an unprincipled poseur; a snake charmer; a complete phony. No wonder the gushing David Brooks has been singing his praises lately. No wonder Andrew Sullivan calls him the “Neocon in Chief”. Heck, even Cheney was talking-up Obama’s bloody AfPak policy a few days ago. That says it all, doesn’t it?
Here’s a blurp from Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, that sums up Obama perfectly:
“Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that civilians courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney.”
Hypocrite? We’d be better off with McCain. At least with McCain you know what you’re getting.
© Copyright Mike Whitney, Global Research, 2009
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13645
see
Obama: I understand why Israel considers Iran an existential threat
Obama Takes Over Where Bush Left Off By Mike Whitney
Changing Obama’s Mindset By Howard Zinn + Zinn at Busboys & Poets, Washington DC
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I am trying to help a homeless veteran apply for disability right now, and, he pretty much has nothing to lose at this point, so , if someone would like to snatch him up before Blackwater does, he’s already trained ‘in the art”…..sigh
I am so unbelievably angry….sorry, sortve off topic…
I am not certain that a Third Party representative, on the slim chance that they would get elected, would have to succomb to becoming a figurehead…but, they probably wouldnt be “appealing” enough for the “hooked on hot” media and electorate…
On the other hand, dont start the Revolution without me!
We first need to accept the fact that whoever is president of this country is nothing more than a figurehead. The behind the scenes players who make up the military industrial complex will keep pushing their blood-drenched agenda forward regardless of who is president. The person who gets elected is the one that is seen as least likely to ruffle the feathers of those who are truly in power. And if by some miracle a person who isn’t afraid to stand up to them gets elected (like Nader or Kucinich) he’d conveniently be removed from the picture.
Yes, Dave, we do. I voted for the sp-usa candidate, but, he never had a chance, either.
Reading Mike’s stuff about David Brooks, I recall needing a barf bag, when, while watching Lehrer on pbs, I heard Brooks say, “I think that the troops in the field will all say, ‘he took one for us'”…with tears brimming out of his bogus eyes…..AAAUGH!!!!!!!!!
You forgot to mention the economic team he chose: the very crooks who enabled the destruction of the global economy in the first place: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and his protege Timothy Geithner, our Treasury Secretary so beloved of bankers that Sandy Weill, the mastermind behind Citigroup, wanted to install him as Citi Chief-In-Law. As overseer of unlimited taxpayer funds, he’s funneling all of our money into private hands. The gap between the haves and the rapidly increasing have-nots is growing larger by the day.
Our President doesn’t even pretend to acknowledge his painfully loyal liberal base. You can deride the Repubs all you want, at least they deal with their base.
I can’t wait to see who Obama picks as Supreme Court justice and watch progressive blogs like dailykos fall all over themselves to justify picking someone “moderate” (translate: that the Repubs want) who will continue the eradication of rights started by Scalia through Roberts and Alito.
Mike Whitney has covered the economic side to Obama in previous posts. Please see: http://en.wordpress.com/tag/whitney-mike/
Good points, MayKathi Berke.
Obama forgot his “base” during the campaign, so not surprising he is ignoring it now.
We need real change. Nader never had a chance. We need a new political party that can capture the whitehouse in 2012.
The question is why didn’t Nader (or any of the 3rd Party candidates) have a chance? They were shut out by both the Dems and the Repubs and of course, the corporate media. We have one party: The Capitalist Party, with 2 very similar sides.