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 80's 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 every one 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 LebanonÂ…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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