Obama
And The Middle East
By Joshua Frank
18 January, 2006
Countercurrents.org
So
I guess we know what the buzz is going to be for the next, ah, year
or so. It looks like Barack Obama, the rookie Senator from Illinois,
is going to run for president. He has received a plethora of accolades
from key primary states in recent weeks for his (alleged) tenacity and
willingness to shoot it straight -- not unlike the great bamboozler
before him, Bill Clinton, who seemed to fool most everyone into believing
his words actually meant something.
The gift Obama has is unique
but potentially dangerous. A taste of his personal appeal: "Politics
has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence,
that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions,”
he said in a video on his website. “And that's what we have to
change first."
What are the problems the
Senator plans on tackling? Certainly not the big one: U.S. policy in
the Middle East. While assuring us that he supports the troops in Iraq,
he’s made it quite clear he won’t bring them home, and instead
has pressured the White House to come up with a plan on the matter of
their own. How Obama, or anyone, can possibly believe that the Bushites
could come up with a worthwhile strategy for Iraq is beyond me.
On Iran Obama also serves
the status-quo with the kind of hawkish zeal we are used to seeing in
most Republicans. He’s admitted he may favor surgical missile
strikes on Iran and Pakistan if that’s what it takes to fight
the war on terror. And Obama even boasts that Bush hasn’t taken
a hard enough line on the foreign menaces.
How about Israel? Obama even
embraced Israel’s brutal bombings of Lebanon last summer -- the
type of complicity we’re sure to see continue if he’s successful
in his political evolution.
Beyond that, Obama voted
in favor of the Pentagon budget last year, with its beefy handouts to
Halliburton and the rest tax and waste crooks. So I’ll stop right
there and ask, just what in the heck is the big deal about Barack Obama?
Aside from not being Hillary Clinton, Obama has little to offer the
antiwar movement or proponents of an alternative U.S. strategy for the
Middle East.
Barack Obama may indeed talk
big about “change” and “priorities”, but that’s
all it is: talk. The main concern this year and next will be Iraq and
the Middle East. If Obama can’t offer up an alternative solution
to the mess we’ve helped create in the region, he doesn’t
deserve our support.
Joshua Frank, co-editor of
DissidentVoice.org, is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect
George W. Bush and edits BrickBurner..
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