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Now
Barack Obama is a windblown politician.
The junior Illinois senator avoids anchoring himself to any principle,
lest his political sails fail to catch the slightest breeze blowing
from the left or the right. His political direction is always
tentative, although his ultimate destination is never in doubt:
he will be a formidable national presence--maybe even president.
But Barack Obama--who has never
claimed to be a Black leader--is in fact not a leader at all.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the most critical issue
facing Americans and the world at this dangerous juncture in
history: the war in Iraq.
One year after his bland and
idea-less speech on Iraq to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations
(see "Obama Mouths Mush on War," December 1, 2005),
Obama returned to mush more of the same to the Chicago Council
on Global Affairs. The U.S. should "begin to move towards
a phased redeployment of American troops from Iraqi soil,"
he told the business-oriented crowd. Since the objective reality
on the ground in Iraq and in U.S. public opinion had changed
dramatically in the intervening year--resulting in Democratic
capture of the House and Senate--Obama's failure to substantively
revise his previous, timid prescriptions actually amounts to
a turn to the right.
As the 2008 campaign begins,
Obama instinctively positions himself even closer to the right
wing of the party. His finger is in the wind, as always, but
not the popular national or Democratic rank and file winds. Rather,
Obama's game is to maneuver himself deep into thefoggy
Iraq policy realm inhabited by the gaggle of Democratic "front-runners"--a
muck from which nothing ever emerges of any relevance to Iraqi
or world realities. On that soggy playing field, the Senator
is betting that his personal popularity and charisma will propel
him towards his goal--whether that be the presidential or vice-presidential
nomination, or simply to solidify his position as a major power
broker.
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold
dropped out of the race this month, the only presidential hopeful
to call for a firm timetable for the bulk of U.S. troops to actually
leave Iraq by July, 2007, rather than a schedule to begin
withdrawal at some point months in the future--Obama's position.
With no one to Obama's left, he feels free to repeat the platitudes
offered by the rest of the Democratic presidential field.
Obama's focus on gamesmanship
rather than principled leadership, which became strikingly evident
well before he won election to the U.S. Senate, in 2004, has
rendered him virtually useless in the struggle to end the occupation
and war in Iraq, or to prevent further U.S. aggressions in the
future. Both his Chicago speeches testify to that sad fact.
Obama in
Wonderland
In contrast to Sen. Feingold's
proposal that U.S. troops "redeploy from Iraq" by mid-summer,
and Congressman Jack Murtha's proposal that Washington "immediately
redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces,"
Sen. Obama calls for "a phased redeployment of U.S. troops
from Iraq on a timetable that would begin in four to six
months. Such a timetable may not need to begin in 2007, but begin
it must."
That's essentially the same
kind of mush Obama served the Chicago Council on Foreign relations
in 2005, when he said: "The strategic goals should be to
allow for a limited drawdown of U.S. troops, coupled with shift
to a more effective counter-insurgency strategy that puts the
Iraqi security forces in the lead and intensifies our efforts
to train Iraqi forces."
This time around, Obama again
puts forward a faux withdrawal plan full of holes big
enough to drive a convoy of Bradley Fighting Vehicles through.
"The President should announce to the Iraqi people that
our policy will include a gradual and substantial reduction in
U.S. forces," said the senator. "He should then work
with our military commanders to map out the best plan for such
a redeployment and determine precise levels and dates. I am not
suggesting that this timetable be overly-rigid."
Oh, heavens no! Let's not be
too "rigid" with a president who has vowed the U.S.
will not leave Iraq while he remains in office.
Obama's so-called withdrawal
strategy is full of gaping loopholes. "The redeployment
could be temporarily suspended if the parties in Iraq reach an
effective political arrangement that stabilizes the situation
and they offer us a clear and compelling rationale for maintaining
certain troop levels."
There is no When, How or How
Many in Obama's amorphous vision--but he keeps on talking, anyway:
"As a phased redeployment is executed, the majority of the
U.S. troops remaining in Iraq should be dedicated to the critical,
but less visible roles, of protecting logistics supply points,
critical infrastructure, and American enclaves like the Green
Zone."
Ah, that Green Zone, the vast
fortress in the heart of Baghdad where the U.S. is building the
largest embassy by far in the world. Leaving the Green Zone in
U.S. military hands would be like a foreign occupier "withdrawing"
from New York City while retaining fortifications stretching
across all of mid-town Manhattan.
The fantasy continues: "Drawing
down our troops in Iraq will allow us to redeploy additional
troops to Northern Iraq and elsewhere in the region as an over-the-horizon
force."
Yes, sort of like Dorothy in
the Wizard of Oz, Obama wants some U.S. troops, but not all,
to go somewhere over the horizon. But the horizon he's talking
about is Kurdish turf, protected by 60,000 battle-hardened Pesh
Merga fighters who have already secured the territory's virtual
independence and, at last word, have not requested that their
region be occupied. Given the habitual conduct of U.S. troops,
a redeployment to Kurdish Iraq would likely alienate the only
major Iraqi group that is not yet actively hostile to the Americans.
The Kurds constantly threaten to seize for themselves the oil
fields at Kirkuk--a move that would almost certainly provoke
war with both Sunnis and Shia. If, as he claims, Obama doesn't
want U.S. troops caught in a crossfire, he's got a strange way
of avoiding it.
Contradictions abound in the
ephemeral formula Obama shares with most of the Democratic presidential
field. The senator donned his Uncle Sam top hat to scold the
Iraqi parties/militias, demanding that they provide the U.S.
with a "political solution" to the chaos ushered in
by the invading Americans:
"To reach such a solution,
we must communicate clearly and effectively to the factions in
Iraq that the days of asking, urging, and waiting for them to
take control of their own country are coming to an end. No more
coddling, no more equivocation. Our best hope for success is
to use the tools we have--military, financial, diplomatic--to
pressure the Iraqi leadership to finally come to a political
agreement between the warring factions that can create some sense
of stability in the country and bring this conflict under control."
No more "coddling"?
Here, Obama reveals himself as just another imperialist, oblivious
to his own nation's crimes and incapable of internalizing the
concept of self-determination and sovereignty of weaker nations.
The U.S. has "coddled" 600,000 Iraqis to death--not
counting those who previously perished during decade-long sanctions.
The Americans methodically destroyed the Iraqi state, and now
wonder why the militia/parties can't put it back together again.
The Americans drove most Iraqis to hate them, yet remain persuaded
that they retain the moral authority to scold one part of the
nation, their "allies," while "extinguishing"
(Obama's word) another part, the resistance.
The Roman, Tacitus wrote in
his Annals: "[T]he legions create a wasteland and call it
a peace."
A number of modern writers
have quoted Tacitus, with the Americans standing in for the Roman
legions: "They create a wasteland and call it Democracy."
Barack Obama, surveying the
wasteland and finding no peace and no Democracy, refuses to blame
the Americans, but instead claims the U.S. is "coddling"
Iraqis. He admits "polls show that almost two-thirds of
all Iraqis now sympathize with attacks on American soldiers"--an
amazing figure, since the Kurdish region of Iraq is relatively
untouched by the war and occupation, and Sunnis make up only
about 20 percent of the population. Apparently, a huge chunk
of the Shia majority, the group the Americans thought would be
their natural allies, would just as soon see them dead.
In such a situation, the word
"coddling" seems wildly out of place. But delusions
run deep in the American political culture, undermining the faculties
of even the most popular Black man in America.
Obama did succeed in putting
distance between himself and presidential front-runner Hillary
Clinton, in Chicago. "[W]hile some have proposed escalating
this war by adding thousands of more troops, there is little
reason to believe that this will achieve [U.S. objectives] either"--a
clear reference to the New York senator.
The truth is, Obama's speech
is relevant only to U.S. domestic politicking, and has no bearing
on events as they unfold on the ground in Iraq. Sen. Clinton
postures as a hawk to prove to war-lusting white men that she
has balls. Sen. Obama continues on his lifelong quest to demonstrate
that he is a reasonable, thoughtful Black man--unlike the others.
This is theater for American audiences only, and has nothing
to do with statesmanship, or the search for peace.
Just two weeks before Obama
delivered his pablum-filled speech, his constituents across the
Illinois voted overwhelmingly to stop the war and "immediately
begin an orderly and rapid withdrawal." In Chicago, the
ballot measure passed by a whopping 80-to-20 percent. Similar
results were tallied in suburban Cook County, Evanston and Oak
Park--wherever the measure was on the ballot.
The voters, from both political
parties, are way ahead of Obama and his fellow senatorial shufflers.
Nationwide, more than 70 percent of Democrats--the people who
nominate the party's presidential candidates--favor an immediate
withdrawal from Iraq. To lead, Obama would have to run to catch
up.
There is a political
solution to the American war in Iraq, although not the one Obama
and his corporatist friends are willing to accept. Get out. Now.
Glen Ford is executive editor of the newly launched
website The Black
Agenda Reprt. He can be reached at Glen.Ford (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.
Be sure to substitute @ for (at).
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