Dear comrades and friends, I have considered one of the chief questions in the current presidential elections to be the war in Iraq, and it seemed to me that if Obama were to take a clear position against the war in Iraq, it would be correct to call for people to give him their vote. Even in this situation, I think that not just communists, but anti-imperialists, would have to point out that Obama would simply represent a wing of the representatives of US monopoly who had at least realized that they could not win in Iraq, and that it was "the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place."
But whenever I moved towards this position, I heard Obama himself, who made it clear that he was hardly even a consistent "anti-war" candidate. I listened to one of the debates with Clinton, in which he said that Iraq was the wrong war, and that the US should shift its forces from Iraq to Afghanistan where the "real terrorists" were. Now, if he does win the presidency, he may be forced out of Iraq, and may find it difficult politically difficult to send hundreds of thousands of US troops, who want to go home, to Afghanistan instead. Also, in his statement on the war in Iraq, he had not one word of sympathy for the Iraqi people, not for the millions of Iraqis who had been killed and displaced by the US invasion - only a few crocodile tears of sympathy for the US troops - in which he is again playing to US great nation chauvinism, which sees a US life as much more valuable than the live of an Iraqi, or other oppressed peoples in the world. Yesterday, I heard a good part of Obama's speech as the AIPAC (one of the main Zionist organizations in the US) forum. He stated clearly his commitment to Israel, which is the ley US imperialist outpost in the Middle East. This "democrat" so much believed in "free elctions" that he stated that the US should not have allowed elections in Palestine with Hamas on the ballot, since both the Israeli government and the Palestine Authority had pointed out that Hamas was likely to win, as it did. This is the height of imperialist arrogance - not only can the US tell other countries when they can and cannot have elections, but who they can and cannot permit on the ballot. On Iran, while Clinton had the arrogance to state her willingness to "exterminate" Iran to prevent them from gaining nuclear weapons, yesterday Obama stated that as president he would prevent by any means necessary Iran from getting nuclear weapons, which seemed to me at least a clear signal that he would bomb the Iranian nuclear plants. Once again, it is clear that Obama is another imperialist candidate, with at best certain tactical differences (which are due to the strength of the Iraqi resistance) with either Clinton or the Republicans. There are many other important points that should be made about Obama's campaign. In particular, his statements in the campaign, and in particular his repudiation of Rev. Wright (I am talking in particular of his second repudiation, where he denounced Wright's views), make it clear that, as he has basically stated himself, he is running not to take up the demands of the Afro-American people's movements, but stands for "all Americans," which, as it should be clear for all Marxists, means that he stands for the position of the US monopoly capitalist as a whole. There is much more that could be said about that question, but I will leave it at that for now. Those interested in a critique of Obama's position from a Marxist-Leninist view should see the analysis by the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA (formerly the Ray O. Light Group), which is on my web-ste, www.mltranslations.org, under the US section, ROL, if the link below does not work. The 2008 Presidential Election, the Barack Obama Campaign, and the Need for Afro-American National Liberation Just in a brief reply to one question from Waistline, I have voted in just about every election since I became of voting age. I have only once voted for a presidential candidate of one of the major bourgeois parties, and that was for Eugene McGovern in 1972, when he was willing to recognize that the US had lost the war in Vietnam, and I think would have saved the Vietnamese people from almost 3 more years of US bombing until Nixon finally was forced to pull out of Vietnam. There are other candidates, particulary Cynthia McKinney, Afro-American former Congress member from Georgia, who has taken objectively anti-imperialist positions against the war and the whole of US foreign policy, as well as taking up the demands of the Afro-American people, particularly around the right to return of the people of New Orleans. More on her campaign at a later period. Fraternally, George _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
