CounterPunch, November 3, 2008
An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Between Hope and Reality
By RALPH NADER
Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change,"
"change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an
asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs
to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the
continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented
contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most
interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic
nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart.
Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street
bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator
Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record
and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants,
offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and
avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave
and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you
are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character,
courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism.
Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of
Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an
acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the
militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water
seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken
territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls
in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are
opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and
Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state
solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians) , will
there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet
you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous,
demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination
of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed
negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you
ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the
respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct
negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the
many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people
was describing when he wrote
"Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli
state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of
your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian
refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the
Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in
defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on
southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one
civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead
of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with
acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian
state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic
relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap
politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock
and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly:
"There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are
two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a
President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter
a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall
construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of
Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use
of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]
. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its
'legitimate right to defend itself.'"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the
Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the
heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance
before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning,
adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests.
After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian
peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from
Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged
his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one
thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very
bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world
and bad for the Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned
your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send
surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches
and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W.
Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper
sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled
"Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples
of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve
in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier
the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled
"Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change
your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans- - even though your father was
a Muslim from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the
mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the
hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the
Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and
one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his
recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the
Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an
important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international
problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous
applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina
work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American
life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on
www.votenader. org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor
Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always
mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the
"poor" in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward
career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change"
yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate
supremacists. " It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many.
It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his
back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed,
dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization
of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American
politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary
approaches)- - and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on
debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a
competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands.
"Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
