"... On the contrary, Obama and each and everyone of his foreign policy
appointments to the Pentagon, State and Justice Departments, Intelligence
and Security agencies are calling for vast increases in military spending,
troop commitments and domestic militarization to recover the lost fortunes
of a declining empire. Obama and his appointees plan to vigorously pursue
Clinton-Bush's global war against national resistance movements in the
Middle East. ... ... ... Obama's appointments of Clinton, General Jim Jones,
dual Israeli citizen Rahm Emanuel and super-Zionist Dennis Ross, among
others, fit perfectly with his imperial-militarist agenda of escalating
military aggression. ... Robert Gates, continuing as Obama's Secretary of
Defense, is a staunch supporter of unilateral, unlimited and universal
imperial warfare. As the number of US-allied countries with troops in Iraq
declines from 35 to only 5 by January 1, 2009 and even the Iraqi puppet
regime calls for a withdrawal of all US troops by 2012, Gates, the
intransigent, insists on a permanent military presence. ..."
A Historic Moment: The Election of the Greatest Con-Man in Recent History
James Petras, December 2008
I have a vision of Americans in their 80s being wheeled to their offices and
factories having lost their legs in imperial wars and their pensions to Wall
Street speculators and with bitter memories of voting for a President who
promised change, prosperity and peace and then appointed financial swindlers
and war mongers. - An itinerant Minister 2008
Introduction
The entire political spectrum ranging from the 'libertarian' left, through
the progressive editors of the Nation to the entire far right
neo-con/Zionist war party and free market Berkeley/Chicago/Harvard
academics, with a single voice, hailed the election of Barack Obama as a
'historic moment', a 'turning point' in American history and other such
histrionics. For reasons completely foreign to the emotional ejaculations of
his boosters, it is a historic moment: witness the abysmal gap between his
'populist' campaign demagoguery and his long-standing and deepening carnal
relations with the most retrograde political figures, power brokers and
billionaire real estate and financial backers.
What was evident from even a cursory analysis of his key campaign advisers
and public commitments to Wall Street speculators, civilian militarists,
zealous Zionists and corporate lawyers was hidden from the electorate, by
Obama's people friendly imagery and smooth, eloquent deliverance of a
message of 'hope'. He effectively gained the confidence, dollars and votes
of tens of millions of voters by promising 'change' (implying higher taxes
for the rich, ending the Iraq war and national health care reform) when in
fact his campaign advisers (and subsequent strategic appointments) pointed
to a continuation of the economic and military policies of the Bush
Administration.
Within 3 weeks of his election he appointed all the political dregs who
brought on the unending wars of the past two decades, the economic policy
makers responsible for the financial crash and the deepening recession
castigating tens of millions of Americans today and for the foreseeable
future. We can affirm that the election of Obama does indeed mark a historic
moment in American history: The victory of the greatest con man and his
accomplices and backers in recent history.
He spoke to the workers and worked for their financial overlords.
He flashed his color to minorities while obliterating any mention of their
socio-economic grievances.
He promised peace in the Middle East to the majority of young Americans and
slavishly swears undying allegiance to the War Party of American Zionists
serving a foreign colonial power (Israel).
Obama, on a bigger stage, is the perfect incarnation of Melville's
Confidence Man. He catches your eye while he picks your pocket. He gives
thanks as he packs you off to fight wars in the Middle East on behalf of a
foreign country. He solemnly mouths vacuous pieties while he empties your
Social Security funds to bail out the arch financiers who swindled your
pension investments. He appoints and praises the architects of collapsed
pyramid schemes to high office while promising you that better days are
ahead.
Yes, indeed, 'our greatest intellectual critics', our 'libertarian' leftists
and academic anarchists, used their 5-figure speaking engagements as
platforms to promote the con man's candidacy: They described the con man's
political pitch as 'meeting the deeply felt needs of our people'. They
praised the con man when he spoke of 'change' and 'turning the country
around' 180 degrees. Indeed, Obama went one step further: he turned 360
degrees, bringing us back to the policies and policy makers who were the
architects of our current political-economic disaster.
The Con Man's Self-Opiated Progressive Camp Followers
The contrast between Obama's campaign rhetoric and his political activities
was clear, public and evident to any but the mesmerized masses and the
self-opiated 'progressives' who concocted arguments in his favor. Indeed
even after Obama's election and after he appointed every Clintonite-Wall
Street shill into all the top economic policy positions, and Clinton's and
Bush's architects of prolonged imperial wars (Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates), the 'progressive true
believers' found reasons to dog along with the charade. Many progressives
argued that Obama's appointments of war mongers and swindlers was a 'ploy'
to gain time now in order to move 'left' later.
Never ones to publicly admit their 'historic' errors, the same progressives
turned to writing 'open letters to the President' pleading the 'cause of the
people'. Their epistles, of course, may succeed in passing through the
shredder in the Office of the White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.
The conjurer who spoke of 'change' now speaks of 'experience' in appointing
to every key and minor position the same political hacks who rotate
seamlessly between Wall Street and Washington, the Fed and Academia. Instead
of 'change' there is the utmost continuity of policy makers, policies and
above all ever deepening ties between militarists, Wall Street and the Obama
appointments. True believer-progressives, facing their total debacle, grab
for any straw. Forced to admit that all of Obama's appointments represent
the dregs of the bloody and corrupt past, they hope and pray that 'current
dire circumstances' may force these unrepentant warmongers and life long
supporters of finance capital to become supporters and advocates of a
revived Keynesian welfare state.
On the contrary, Obama and each and everyone of his foreign policy
appointments to the Pentagon, State and Justice Departments, Intelligence
and Security agencies are calling for vast increases in military spending,
troop commitments and domestic militarization to recover the lost fortunes
of a declining empire. Obama and his appointees plan to vigorously pursue
Clinton-Bush's global war against national resistance movements in the
Middle East. His most intimate and trusted 'Israel-First' advisers have
targeted Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine and
Iraq.
Obama's Economic Con Game
Then there is the contrast between the trillions Obama will shower on the
financial swindlers (and any other 'too big to fail' private capitalist
enterprise) and his zero compensation for the 100 million heads of families
swindled of $5 trillion dollars in savings and pensions by his cohort
appointees and bailout beneficiaries. Not a cent is allocated for the long
term unemployed. Not a single household threatened with eviction will be
bailed out.
Obama is the trademark name of a network of confidence people. They are a
well-organized gang of prominent political operative, money raisers, mass
media hustlers, real estate moguls and academic pimps. They are joined and
abetted by the elected officials and hacks of the Democratic Party. Like the
virtuoso performer, Obama projected the image and followed the script. But
the funding and the entire 'populist' show was constructed by the
hard-nosed, hard-line free marketeers, Jewish and Gentile 'Israel Firsters',
Washington war mongers and a host of multi-millionaire 'trade union'
bureaucrats.
The electoral scam served several purposes above and beyond merely
propelling a dozen strategic con artists into high office and the White
House. First and foremost, the Obama con-gang deflected the rage and anger
of tens of millions of economically skewered and war drained Americans from
turning their hostility against a discredited presidency, congress and the
grotesque one-party two factions political system and into direct action or
at least toward a new political movement.
Secondly the Obama image provided a temporary cover for the return and
continuity of all that was so detested by the American people - the arrogant
untouchable swindlers, growing unemployment and economic uncertainty, the
loss of life savings and homes and the endless, ever-expanding imperial
wars.
Featuring Paul Volker, 'Larry' Summers, Robert Gates, the Clintons,
Geithner, Holder and General ('You drink your kool-aid while I sit on
Boeings' Board of Directors') Jim Jones USMC, Obama treats us to a re-run of
military surges and war crimes, Wall Street banditry, Abu Ghraib, AIPAC
hustlers and all the sundry old crap. Our Harvard-minted Gunga Din purports
to speak for all the colonial subjects but acts in the interest of the
empire, its financial vampires, its war criminals and its Middle East
leaches from the Land of the Chosen.
The Two Faces of Obama
Like the Janus face found on the coins of the early Roman Republic, Obama
and his intimate cronies cynically joked about 'which is the real face of
Barack', conscious of the con-job they were perpetrating during the
campaign. In reality, there is only one face - a very committed, very
consequential and very up front Obama, who demonstrated in every single one
of his appointments the face of an empire builder.
Obama is an open militarist, intent by every means possible to re-construct
a tattered US empire. The President-Elect is an unabashed Wall Street
Firster - one who has placed the recuperation of the biggest banks and
investment houses as his highest priority. Obama's nominees for all the top
economic positions (Treasury, Chief White House economic advisers) are
eminently qualified, (with long-term service to the financial oligarchy), to
pursue Obama's pro-Wall Street agenda. There is not a single member of his
economic team, down to the lowest level of appointees, who represents or has
defended the interests of the wage or salaried classes (or for that matter
the large and small manufacturers from the devastated 'productive'
industrial economy).
The Obama propagandists claim his appointments reflect his preference for
'experience' which is true: his team members have plenty of 'experience'
through their long and lucrative careers maximizing profits, buyouts and
speculation favoring the financial sector. Obama does not want to have any
young, untested appointees who have no long established records of serving
Big Finance, whose interests are too central to Obama's deepest and most
strongly held core beliefs. He wanted reliable economic functionaries who
recognize that re-financing billionaire financiers is the central task of
his regime. The appointments of the Summers, Rubins, Geithners and Volkers
fit perfectly with his ideology: They are the best choices to pursue his
economic goals.
Critics of these nominations write of the 'failures' of these economists and
their role in 'bringing about the collapse of the financial system'. These
critics fail to recognize that it is not their 'failures', which are the
relevant criteria, but their unwavering commitment to the interests of Wall
Street and their willingness to demand trillions of dollars more from US
taxpayers to bolster their colleagues on Wall Street.
Under Clinton and Bush, in the run up to the financial collapse, they
facilitated ('deregulated') the practice of swindling one hundred million
Americans of trillions in private savings and pension funds. In the current
crisis period with Obama they are just the right people to swindle the US
Treasury of trillions of dollars in bailout funds to refinance their fellow
oligarchs. The White President (Bush) leaves steaming financial turds all
over the White House rugs and Wall Street summons the 'historic' Negro
President Obama to organize the cleanup crew to scoop them out of public
view.
Obama, the Militarist, Outdoes His Predecessor
What makes Obama a much more audacious militarist and Wall Streeter than
Bush is that he intends to pursue military policies, which have already
greatly harmed the US people with appointed officials who have already been
discredited in the context of failed imperial wars and with a domestic
economy in collapse. While Bush launched his wars after the US public had
their accustomed peace shattered by an orchestrated fear-mongering after
9/11, Obama intends to launch his escalation of military spending in the
context of a generalized public disenchantment with the ongoing wars, with
monumental fiscal deficits, bloated military budgets and after 100,000 US
soldiers have been killed, wounded or psychologically destroyed.
Obama's appointments of Clinton, General Jim Jones, dual Israeli citizen
Rahm Emanuel and super-Zionist Dennis Ross, among others, fit perfectly with
his imperial-militarist agenda of escalating military aggression. His short
list of intelligence candidates, likewise, fits perfectly with his all-out
effort to 'regain US world leadership' (reconstruct US imperial networks).
All the media blather about Obama's efforts at 'bipartisanship',
'experience' and 'competence' obscures the most fundamental questions: The
specific nominees chosen from both parties are totally committed to
military-driven empire-building. All are in favor of 'a new effort to renew
America's standing in the world' (read America's imperial dominance in the
world), as Obama's Secretary of State-to-be, Hillary Clinton, declared.
General James Jones, Obama's choice for National Security Advisor, presided
over US military operations during the entire Abu Ghraib/Guantanemo period.
He was a fervent supporter of the 'troop surge' in Iraq and is a powerful
advocate for a huge increase in military spending, the expansion of the
military by over 100,000 troops and the expanded militarization of American
domestic society (not to mention his personal financial ties to the military
industrial complex). Robert Gates, continuing as Obama's Secretary of
Defense, is a staunch supporter of unilateral, unlimited and universal
imperial warfare. As the number of US-allied countries with troops in Iraq
declines from 35 to only 5 by January 1, 2009 and even the Iraqi puppet
regime calls for a withdrawal of all US troops by 2012, Gates, the
intransigent, insists on a permanent military presence.
The issue of 'experience' revolves around two questions: (a) experience
related to what past political practices? (b) experience relevant to pursue
what future policies? All the nominees' past experiences are related to
imperial wars, colonial conquests and the construction of client states.
Hiliary Clinton's 'experience' was through her support for the bombing of
Yugoslavia and the Nato invasion of Kosova, her promotion of the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA), an internationally recognized terrorist-criminal
organization as well as the unrelenting bombings of Iraq in the 1990s,
Bush's criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Israel's murderous bombing of
civilian centers in Lebanon, and now full-throated calls for the 'total
obliteration of Iran'. Clinton, Gates and Jones have never in their mature
political careers proposed the peaceful settlement of disputes with any
adversary of the US or Israel. In other words, their vaunted 'experience' is
based solely on their one-dimensional militarist approach to foreign
relations.
'Competence', as an attribute again depends on the issue of competence to do
what? In general terms, 'The Three' (Clinton, Gates and Jones), have
demonstrated the greatest incompetence in extricating the US from prolonged,
costly and lost colonial wars. They lack the minimum capacity to recognize
that military-driven empire-building in the context of independent states is
no longer feasible, that its costs can ruin an imperial economy and that
prolonged wars erode their legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens.
Even within the framework of imperial geo-political strategic thinking,
their positions exhibit the most dense incompetence: They blindly back a
small, highly militarized and ideologically fanatical colonial state
(Israel) against 1.5 billion Muslims living in oil and mineral resource-rich
nations with lucrative markets and investment potential and situated in the
strategic center of the world. They promote total wars against whole
populations, as is occurring in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia and, which, by
all historical experience, cannot be won. They are truly 'Masters of
Defeat'.
The point of the matter is that Obama appointed the 'Big Three' for their
experience, competence and bipartisan support in the pursuit of imperial
wars. He overlooked their glaring failures, their gross violations of the
basic norms of civilization (of the human rights of tens of millions
civilians in sovereign nations) because of their willingness to pursue the
illusions of a US-dominated new world order.
Conclusion
Nothing speaks to Obama's deep and abiding commitment to become the savior
of the US empire as clearly as his willingness to appoint to the highest
position of policy making the most mediocre failed politicians and generals
merely because of their demonstrated willingness to pursue the course of
military-driven empire building even in the midst of a collapsing domestic
economy and ever more impoverished and drained citizenry.
Just as Obama's electoral campaign and subsequent victory will go into the
annals as the political con-job of the new millennium, his economic and
political appointments will mark another 'historic' moment: The nomination
of corrupt and failed speculators and warmongers. Let us join the inaugural
celebration of our 'First Afro-American' Imperial President, who wins by con
and rules by guns!
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