Barak Obama

This page is a commentary on Barak Obama's performance as President. As I said on the home page, it's great to have a President who can actually speak the English language, has more than a handful of brain cells to rub together, and won't grope the Chancellor of Germany (or, for that matter, barf into the lap of the Prime Minister of Japan). But as we see more and more of what he's really like, what we see is just as ugly as Dumbya ever was. In fact, I'm so sick of adding things to this page that I'm going to close this page and let it just rot here and stink.

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank. " – Barack Obama, 10/27/2007 On December 1, 2009, President Obama announced his decision to further escalate the Afghanistan War. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that morning, "The commander-in-chief has issued the orders."
Source: "Obama, the War President" by Kenneth J. Theisen http://www.worldcantwait.net/

He's already backpedaled on some of his important campaign promises:

He pledged an immediate end to the debacle in Iraq;
first he extended our time there to 16 months, and now he says we'll be there for 23 months.
He pledged to bring us peace in the Middle East;
but now he's turning Afghanistan into a 21st-century Vietnam. Wasn't he watching when the Soviet Union had to withdraw from Afghanistan in utter defeat?
He said he'd vote to repeal the so-called PATRIOT Act;
but he actually voted for its re-authorization.
He pledged to filibuster any attempt to give retroactive immunity to the telephone companies that helped the Cheney/Bush junta in its warrantless wiretapping program;
actually, he voted for that immunity.
Publicly, he said that "NAFTA was a mistake;"
but privately he reassured Canadian officials that that was just campaign rhetoric.

He has also refused to prosecute - or pursue any kind of justice against - the people in the Cheney/Bush administration who approved and encouraged torture. After World War II, the United Stated prosecuted, and executed, Japanese soldiers who had administered the same kind of torture to our people that the United States administered in its secret prisons, waterboarding.

He says, "Let's not dwell on the past, and just move forward." Can you think of a better way to encourage such illegal and immoral actions by this country's forces in the future? And imagine the reaction in this country if Truman had said that at the end of World War II, instead of convening the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

A while back, Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury, issued a call for an icon to use for Obama - like the tattered Roman helmet he used for George II. You can see my own personal submission for that symbol to the right: a U-Turn sign. (And note: it's heading towards the right.)

And speaking of not living up to his obligations, here's
the big one:

He is ordering this nation to engage in not one, but two, illegal, immoral, and unwinnable wars. You all know about the one in Iraq; we've been struggling against that one for 6 years now. But the invasion of Afghanistan isn't getting much mention, in the press or in the anti-war movement. Here's a frightening fact: counting mercenaries and US soldiers, the United States now has more people fighting in Afghanistan than the Soviets did at the height of their involvement there. For details, read Obama Is Leading the U.S. Into a Hellish Quagmire on Alternet.

How about some out-and-out lies from our noble President, coupled with an arrogance that would put George II to shame? Go to Greg Palast's article about the fact that a "6-page letter from the White House, dated September 3, was sent to the 20 heads of state that will meet this Thursday in Pittsburgh." Fascinating stuff, as only Greg Palast can reveal it.

On December 14, 2009, however, the man's true face came to light. I can't say it any better than the writer of the article Supremes : 'Suspected Enemy Combatant' no Longer a 'Person' in the Rag Blog in Austin said it:

"... this is what Barack Obama - who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer - has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution. They can't even be sued for, in the specific case under review, subjecting uncharged, indefinitely detained captives to 'beatings, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, extreme hot and cold temperatures, death threats, interrogations at gunpoint, and threatened with unmuzzled dogs.'

"Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand - in court - that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities. Nothing to answer for, nothing meriting punishment or even civil penalties. What's more, in championing the lower court ruling, Barack Obama is now on record as believing - insisting - that torture is an ordinary, 'foreseeable consequence' of military detention of all those who are arbitrarily declared 'suspected enemy combatants.'"

Aaaahh, read the whole article - just don't do it on a full stomach.

Dennis Kucinich was the only Democrat in the 2008 Presidential Race with ethics or integrity. In a phone conversation with Chris Hedges of The Nation Institute and Princeton University, Representative Kucinich had some insightful comments about the recent bank bail-out and President Obama. In this article, Mr. Hedges describes that conversation and adds a few of his own comments about the bail-out, the Democrats, and Mr. Obama.

Obama's national security advisor, retired Marine general James Jones, said at the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 8, 2009:

"As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through Generaal (sic) Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today."

Henry Kissinger, the real-life model from which Stanley Kubrick took "Dr. Strangelove", is German by birth. One of his most telling quotes is from the minutes of a secret 1975 meeting of the National Security Council attended by President Ford: "It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination." A summary of the case against him for war crimes is at Wanted: War Crimes - Henry Kissinger.

Mr. Obama's two main formal advisors during his campaign were:

Zbigniew Brzezinski - Mr. Brzezinski seems to have been behind Obama from the beginning, orchestrating his primary campaigns as if they were CIA coups. We also ought to mention that Mr. Brzezinski, Polish by birth, is the author of The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, a handbook for the United States to control the world.
Philip Zelikow - He was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, a major part of whose job was to investigate the Cheney/Bush administration's failures in that tragedy. However, he had deep ties to the Cheney/Bush administration, making his participation in the commission questionable at best. The report itself is clearly a whitewash job - and not that good a job, at that. See The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions.

We probably also ought to mention that Mr. Obama has one very important characteristic in common with George W. Bush: he's utterly inexperienced in the process of running a nation - especially in the area of foreign policy - and so he has to rely on his advisors for everything.

The real problem is that no one who reaches that level of power in this country is free from corruption:
  * US voters mainly decide how to vote on the basis of TV ads.
  * TV ads cost money - lots of money.
  * Where do candidates get that money? From people who have it.
  * People who have money aren't about to let go of it without some expectation of return.

George II was a consummate master at giving those who invested in his campaigns a good level of ROI. The "defense" contractors who paid for his selection got thousands of percent of return when the country bought all that disposable war equipment from them. Obama is well on the way toward that same goal - and the utter defeat of this nation both on the battlefield and in the court of world opinion.