12 Jun 2008






In
his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger reaches back into
the history of the Democratic Party and describes the tradition of
war-making and expansionism that Barack Obama has now left little doubt
he will honour.

In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote:
"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are,
first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy,
and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." What
has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor
have passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W
Bush finally steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest
of humanity will diminish.

The foregone nomination of Barack
Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, "marks a truly
exciting and historic moment in US history", is a product of the new
delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly exciting and historic
moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as
long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as bullshit
on a grand scale. Race, gender, appearance, body language, rictal
spouses and offspring, even bursts of tragic grandeur, are all subsumed
by marketing and �image-making�,
now magnified by "virtual" technology. Thanks to an undemocratic
electoral college system (or, in Bush�s case, tampered voting machines)
only those who both control and obey the system can win. This has been
the case since the truly historic and exciting victory of Harry Truman,
the liberal Democrat said to be a humble man of the people, who went on
to show how tough he was by obliterating two cities with the atomic
bomb.

Understanding Obama as a likely president of the United
States is not possible without understanding the demands of an
essentially unchanged system of power: in effect a great media game.
For example, since I compared Obama with Robert Kennedy in these pages,
he has made two important statements, the implications of which have
not been allowed to intrude on the celebrations. The first was at the
conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the
Zionist lobby, which, as Ian Williams has pointed out, "will get you
accused of anti-Semitism if you quote its own website about its power".
Obama had already offered his genuflection, but on 4 June went further.
He promised to support an �undivided Jerusalem� as Israel�s capital.
Not a single government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all
of Jerusalem, including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN
resolution designating Jerusalem an international city.

His
second statement, largely ignored, was made in Miami on 23 May.
Speaking to the expatriate Cuban community � which over the years has
faithfully produced terrorists, assassins and drug runners for US
administrations � Obama promised to continue a 47-year crippling
embargo on Cuba that has been declared illegal by the UN year after
year.

Again,
Obama went further than Bush. He said the United States had "lost Latin
America". He described the democratically elected governments in
Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as a "vacuum" to be filled. He raised
the nonsense of Iranian influence in Latin America, and he endorsed
Colombia�s "right to strike terrorists who seek safe-havens across its
borders". Translated, this means the "right" of a regime, whose
president and leading politicians are linked to death squads, to invade
its neighbours on behalf of Washington. He also endorsed the so-called
Merida Initiative, which Amnesty International and others have
condemned as the US bringing the "Colombian solution" to Mexico. He did
not stop there. "We must press further south as well," he said. Not
even Bush has said that.

It is
time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of
great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious
presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an
expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the
war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton
demonstrates. Obama�s difference may be that he feels an even greater
need to show how tough he is. However much the colour of his skin draws
out both racists and supporters, it is otherwise irrelevant to the
great power game. The "truly exciting and historic moment in US
history" will only occur when the game itself is challenged.






https://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=492