THE REAL POLITIK ISSUE: VOLUME 106, ISSUE 127
MAKES YOU WANNA HOLLER
by Malik Isasis




It appears the Democratic Party has learned one thing in particular from eight years of President Bush’s foot on their throats: make failure appear like winning. After having started negotiating the health care debate at a disadvantage (taking Medicare-for-all off the table), to a watered down, Public Option, to expanded Medicare for some, to nothing, President Obama and his Administration, along with the Democratic Party are selling their cowardice and lack of vision on health care as a once-in-a-generation accomplishment—for what seems like a political gimmick to check off an empty campaign promise. One thing is for sure, it seems we are back where we started from, hundreds of billions for two wars, and occupations, and cowardly Democrats, and thuggish Republicans putting war and corporate interests before the people’s.

The speed in which the Democrats turned on their backs to corporate interests is the very ingredient that will see the Democrats lose it all again, and maybe earn their rightful place in politics, under the fat belly of the Republicans who seem to fuck them whether they are in power, or not.

Republicans are the corporate players, with corporate conglomerates calling plays like a coach on the sideline. The beaten-wife syndrome Democrats have evolved to react to political slurs the Republican use to pass or stop progressive policies. There are even a few outliers of corporate Democrats, who called themselves conservative, but there is nothing conservative about them, nor their Republican brethren. Republicans and Democrats, two sides of the same coin, a mutual dysfunction that has brought a systemic breakdown in governance because the only thing that matters in the lizard-brain of an American politician is the maintenance of power.

TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK

I have noticed a disturbing trend with President Obama over the months. Republicans and their political operatives have called him everything from a socialist, to a voodoo witch doctor; a Republican Congressman even called him a liar before the country and the world during his Presidential Address. He turned his cheek, and said nothing, only that his critics motives were not based in racism. When asked about Kanye West’s antics at the MTV Awards, he referred to West as a “jackass”. The Republicans since his inauguration have been trying to smother his presidency in its crib, yet he continues to reach out.

When the Black Caucus speaks out, liberal groups and former governor of Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, his Administration slap back, and hard—what could only be to curry favor with the corporate media and the Right wing.

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This is the type of reactionary response that is needed when Republicans Attack, however, it seems President Obama is only willing to slap back liberals, because he understands they have no corporate influence.

Back to the Health Care

Malcolm X once said that if you stab a man in the back with a nine-inch knife, and pull it out two inches, you can’t call that progress. Calling what is likely to pass the Congress, reform, is absurd since most of us will have no other choice if we are being hosed by our current health care provider. They pulled the knife out a couple of inches and expect us to jump up and down, when the act of stabbing us in the back was the cause of the wound.

In 2003 I attended a lecture by Princeton Professor, Cornell West. West said something profound. He said that we no longer have leaders who would die for us. Leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa who would not only die for their cause but would die for their people. These people are an example of leaders who were able to transcend to the next level of consciousness, the enlighten state of consciousness. Today our leaders lack sacrifice, they much prefer that others sacrifice for their political gain. It is personal gain over political responsibility.

We don’t expect much from the people we elect, and they in turn don’t expect much from us. It is not a decay of leadership. Our leadership is a symptom of our failure, our lack of critical thinking, our ability to be easily frightened, easily manipulated and managed by superficial distractions, and easily misinformed. Our politicians seem stuck in a Sisyphean loop of destruction, moral corruption, and narcissism, with no end in sight, assured by our being entertained to death by the ongoing saga of Tiger Woods and his many paramours.

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DOPENESS
There is dopeness, and there is wackness. This is dopeness.

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MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX ISSUE: VOLUME 105, ISSUE 126
Obama's Af-Pak is as Whack as Bush's Iraq
by Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report




President Obama has reached a watershed in his presidency: he has devolved to the intellectual level of George Bush, while retaining his world class powers of speech. History may remember Obama as just another vapid but predatory imperialist president who happens to be…superficially eloquent. Unfortunately, the clarity of Obama’s diction is not matched by coherence of policy. Af-Pak is at least as whack as Bush’s Iraq.

Barack Obama’s oratorical skills have turned on him, revealing, as George Bush’s low-grade delivery never could, the perfect incoherence of the current American imperial project in South Asia. Bush’s verbal eccentricities served to muddy his entire message, leaving the observer wondering what was more ridiculous, the speechmaker or the speech. There is no such confusion when Obama is on the mic. His flawless delivery of superbly structured sentences provides no distractions, requiring the brain to examine the content – the policy in question – on its actual merits. The conclusion comes quickly: the U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.

The president’s speech to West Point cadets was a stream of non sequiturs so devoid of logic as to cast doubt on the sanity of the authors. “[T]hese additional American and international troops,” said the president, “will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”

Obama claims that, the faster an additional 30,000 Americans pour into Afghanistan, the quicker will come the time when they will leave. More occupation means less occupation, you see? This breakneck intensification of the U.S. occupation is necessary, Obama explains, because “We have no interest in occupying your country.”
“The U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.”
If the Americans were truly interested in occupying Afghanistan, the logic goes, they would slow down and stretch out the process over many years, rather than mount an 18-month surge of Taliban-hunting. The Afghans are advised to hold still – the pulsating surge will be over before they know it.

At present, of course, the Americans have assumed all “responsibility” for Afghanistan – so much so that President Hamid Karzai only learned about Obama’s plans earlier on Tuesday during a one-hour tele-briefing. This is consistent with Obama’s detailed plans for Afghan liberation, under U.S. tutelage. The president is as wedded to high stakes testing of occupied peoples as he is for American public school children. “This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over,” said the Occupier-in-Chief. He continued:

“And going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance. We will support Afghan Ministries, Governors, and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable.”

Such rigorous oversight of their country’s affairs should keep Afghan minds off the fact that they have been fighting to remain independent of foreign rule for centuries, if not millennia. If Obama is right, Afghans might also be distracted from dwelling on the question of who their “Ministries, Governors, and local leaders” are answerable to – the Afghan people or the Americans?

“Obama advises Afghans to be patient and trusting regarding their sovereignty.”
Although President Obama is anxious to bring U.S. troop levels above 100,000 as quickly as possible, he advises Afghans to be patient and trusting regarding their sovereignty. “It will be clear to the Afghan government, and, more importantly, to the Afghan people, that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country." That is, it will become clear in the fullness of time, but hopefully no later than 18 months after the planned surge begins. If all goes well, the Taliban will be dead or nearly so, and the non-Taliban Afghans will be prepared to begin assuming “responsibility for their own country.” If not, then the Americans will be forced to continue as occupiers – reluctantly, of course, since, as the whole world and the more intelligent class of Afghans know, the Americans “have no interest in occupying your country” – unless they have to.

Should the Afghans become confused about American intentions, they might consult with their Pakistani neighbors, for whom President Obama also has plans.
“[We] have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear,” the president declared. “America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan's democracy and development. We are the largest international supporter for those Pakistanis displaced by the fighting.”

Obama did not mention that it was the Americans that coerced and bribed the Pakistani military into launching the attacks that displaced over a million people in the Swat region and hundreds of thousands more in border areas. How nice of them to join in humanitarian assistance to the homeless.

The Pakistanis, like the Afghans, were assured the Americans will not abandon them to their own, independent devices. Said Obama: “And going forward, the Pakistani people must know: America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan's security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.”

Some Pakistanis might consider that a threat. According to polling by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, only 16 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of the United States in 2009. Actually, that’s a point or two higher than U.S. popularity in Occupied Palestine (15 percent) and Turkey (14 percent), the only other Muslim countries on the Pew list.

Not to worry. Obama knows things that escape the rest of us. For example, the fact that “we have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim World - one that recognizes our mutual interest in breaking a cycle of conflict, and that promises a future in which those who kill innocents are isolated by those who stand up for peace and prosperity and human dignity.”

Which means, we can expect those polling numbers to start going up, soon.
“Only 16 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of the United States in 2009.”
When Obama isn’t launching bold initiatives and “new beginnings,” he’s busy taking care of U.S. imperial business as usual. Obama is most proud that the U.S. spends more on its military than all the rest of the nations of the planet, combined.
“[T]he United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades,” he told the cadets, “a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.” Others might not view the rise of U.S. hegemony in such a positive light. But they are wrong, said the president. “For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours.”

In Obama’s worldview, it’s the thought that counts. Americans don’t seek world domination; it just comes to them. “We do not seek to occupy other nations,” they leave us no choice. If it were not for American concern for the welfare of all the world’s people, the U.S. would not maintain 780 military bases in other people's countries.

Obama has certainly matured as an American-style statesman in his nine and a half months in office. As a TV Native American might say, “Black man in white house speak like forked tongued white man.” Only better.

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