Barack Obama – Page 17

Obama’s Afghanistan policy: Different but still the same

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There is not a lot to like about President Barack Obama’s newly announced Afghanistan strategy.

First, there will be more troops and advisers. So, war remains the answer in Afghanistan, even if the Obama administration is bulking up diplomatic efforts.

Second, there is the rhetoric — which Rachel Maddow last night showed was similar, sometimes word for word, to the language used by President George W. Bush.

It is true that the strategy is a break from the Bush administration’s, but it is a falsehood to say that the war in Afghanistan was not one of choice as we are hearing from some. Afghanistan may have been the home to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but a full-out war was not necessarily something that had to follow 9/11. A narrower approach was still possible back in October 2001, one that could have resembled a police raid on a drug-manufacturing house — a coordinated effort that would not have resulted in the kind of indiscriminate actions that have poisoned our relationship with the region and now appears to imperil Pakistan.

Tom Hayden is correct:

The Obama plan instead will accelerate any plans Al Qaeda commanders have for attacking targets in the United States or Europe. The alternative for Al Qaeda is to risk complete destruction, an American objective that has not been achieved for eight years. A terrorist attack need not be planned or set in motion from a cave in Waziristan. The cadre could already be underground in Washington or London. The real alternative for President Obama should be to maintain a deterrent posture while immediately accelerating diplomacy to meet legitimate Muslim goals, from a Palestinian state to genuine progress on Kashmir.

Or as another Nation writer, editor Kristina Vanden Heuvel, said not too long ago,

Escalating the occupation will bleed us of the resources needed for economic recovery, further destabilize Pakistan, open a rift with our European allies and negate our improved image in the Muslim world prompted by our withdrawal from Iraq. Escalation will not increase US security or secure a better future for the Afghan people–indeed, more troops will certainly mean more dead civilians.

We need a much greater break with Bush policy than what President Obama is offering.

The ‘S’ word

The Republicans need to find themselves a calendar. After all, it is not the 1930s or the 1960s, Communism is dead and the deregulation mania of the last 30 years has proven not to be worth the cost of an espresso at Starbucks.

And yet, the GOP continues to run against historical boogeymen that most people have little memory of. From Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), in response to an alternative budget being crafted by the Democrats, we get this:

“With this budget, the president and the Democratic majority are attempting, very quickly and rather openly, nothing less than the third and great final wave of government expansion, building on the Great Society and the New Deal.” He referred to the programs of Democratic presidents Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

So, let me get this straight: Republicans are still runnRunning against the New Deal? I mean, FDR has been dead nearly 65 years. LBJ — the man who won a huge re-election victory on the strength of public support for the Great Society — is dead about 37 years.

The problem is not the New Deal or the Great Society. It is the legacy of the last eight years.

And yet, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindahl, touted as a future Republican presidential candidate, offers this:

“We believe that an endless series of government expansions, bailouts, stimulus packages and bloated budgets will take our country down the very path that European socialism has already stumbled. And we believe that is a dangerous path that would harm the very promise of America.”

And there are these comments, thoughtfully collected by Bill Moyers on his PBS show, Bill Moyers’ Journal on Friday. As Moyers said, “Newt Gingrich, reincarnated once again as himself, sounds as if Obama ate his Contract with America for lunch and coughed it up as ‘European Socialism.'” Gingrich, of course, is not talking about the return of “those great American radicals Eugene V. Debs or Norman Thomas.” It is “Stalin, Marx and Lenin (who) have risen from the grave, stalking our highest officials” — at least according to the GOP and conservative TV.

JIM CRAMER: We’re in real trouble. We’re in real trouble between what is happening in the world economy and our president, who seems to be taking his cues from. Guess who he is taking his cues from? No, not Mao! Not Pancho Villa, although I had lunch with him today. No he’s taking cues from Lenin! And I don’t mean the all we need is love Lenin. I talking about we will take every last dime you have Cramericans Lenin!

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Liberal democrats and the drive-by media are speeding down the highway, implementing Socialism as fast as they can.

FOX & FRIENDS: Some economists say the stimulus plan that President Obama just put into law moves us closer to Socialism.

FOX COMMENTATOR: One small step for fixing the economy or one giant leap towards Socialism in the United States?

PAT BUCHANAN: That is Socialism pure and simple.

Huh?

Moyers used these comments to lead into a segment with Mike Davis, the great socialist historian, who pretty much debunked the entire socialism meme as utter nonsense — Moyers called it “partisan poppycock,” and a word that “lost its meaning long ago.” Davis, in the interview, offers a rather compelling notion of what a vibrant socialism — or at least socialist movement — might create in the United States. He said that

the role of the Left or the Left that needs to exist in this country is not to be to come up with a utopian blueprints and how we’re going to run an entirely alternative society, much less to express nostalgia about authoritative bureaucratic societies, you know, like the Soviet Union or China. It’s really to try and articulate the common sense of the labor movement and social struggles on the ground. So, for instance, you know, where you have the complete collapse of the financial system and where the remedies proposed are above all privileged the creditors and the very people responsible for that, it’s a straightforward enough proposition to say, “Hey, you know, if we’re going to own the banking system, why not make the decisions and make them in alliance with social policy that ensures that housing’s affordable, that school loans are affordable, that small business gets credit?” You know, why not turn the banking system into a public utility? Now, that doesn’t have to be in any sense an anti-capitalist demand. But it’s a radical demand that asks fundamental question about the institution and who holds the economic power. You know, why isn’t the federal government taking a more direct role in decision making?

He cited the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the creation of the Resolution Trust Corporation — which was created to “buy up the abandoned apartments and homes and then (sell) them at fire sale to private interests.”

For a year or two it had the means of resolving much of the housing crisis, you know, in the United States. Why shouldn’t the federal government basically turn that housing stock, into a solution for people’s housing needs? Sell them directly to homeowners at discounts you know, rent them out? In other words, the role of the Left is to ask the deeper questions about who has power, how institutions work, and propose alternatives that seem more common sensical in terms of the direct interest of, you know, of satisfying human needs and equality in this society.

While the Obama administration is pushing what is for the most part a progressive agenda — investing in human needs, modernizing, reforming health care, dealing with climate change — he has not raised fundamental questions about power relations. In fact, on the financial crisis, his ultimate goal is to salvage the status quo, to maintain Wall Street power but to regulate it.

If he succeeds in everything he sets out to do, the lives of average Americans will be better and our politics will be more civil, but the basic power structure that has ruled America will remain unchanged.

That’s why I agree with Davis when he says that

We need more protests. We need more noise in the street. At the end of the day, political parties and political leaderships tend to legislate what social movements and social voices have already achieved in the factories or the streets or, you know, in the Civil Rights demonstration.

We need a “radical critique” and a political and economic “imagination that goes beyond selfishness and principles of competition.” And we need people who are willing to stand up and loudly offer it.

Irony at its best

William Greider’s piece in The Nation needs to be read. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

Words, words, words

I started watching the presidential press conference until it became clear that the Washington press corps has yet to understand just what we are facing.

This has nothing to do with what I think of President Barack Obama. What I am talking about is the focus on what I can only call the political tropes of the past.

The questions assumed a rather conservative mindset, questioning the need for increased government authority (i.e., regulation), asking for sacrifice from Americans who have already sacrificed (OpenLeft‘s Tweet on this was priceless), worrying about deficits when the deficit should be placed on the backburner as we deal with the cratering economy.

That said, Keith Olbermann is not exactly taking a critical look at what President Obama had to say during the press conference — an hour of talk that, in the end, is meaningless, as David Sirota points out. It is, in his words, a manufactured event.

And really, why when every media figure is Twittering away telling us how much they are preparing for this press conference, do I not care all that much what President Obama says? Why am I just not buying the whole manufactured hullaballoo about another presidential speech, and instead find myself with the urge to watch an 80s movie on TNT? Indeed, why am I just nauseated by the desperate – and rather pathetic – attempt to Hollywood-ize and celebrify Washington, D.C. press conferences? Does that make me stupid? Or does that make me tired of listening to words and watching officialdom’s elaborate stagecraft, and only interested in actual concrete actions?

Obama at the precipice?

Two posts from David Sirota that are worth reading, one on the Obama administration’s unexpected tin ear on the AIG fiasco and the other on the odd respect still accorded to the Federal Reserve despite its very public failure of oversight.

The first post outlines the mixed messages that are coming from the administration — with his chief of staff and chief political advisor downplaying public anger while the president himself acknowledges it — and points out the potential damage to its credibility this could create:

I get that nobody in Establishment Washington genuinely cares that taxpayers are being ripped off, and I get that the super-wealthy political class from millionaire investment banker Emanuel to millionaire consultant Axelrod to millionaire banker Tim Geithner gives much of a shit that our taxpayer dollars are being used to make new millionaires on Wall Street. But their boss, President Obama, is right: The majority of Americans, most of whom are not millionaires, is really angry and has a right to be angry.

These latest mixed messages are yet another indication that a the White House is creating a major economic credibility gap for itself. On the biggest economic issues of the day, the administration is saying contradictory things, and if it doesn’t get out of the tone deaf D.C. echo chamber and get back on message, my bet is that very soon Republicans’ faux populism that portrays Democrats as part of the problem is going to start getting traction.

I’m expecting that, given the president’s words, the administration will unify its message and reclaim the populist mantle on the economy — especially because I am fairly confident that Obama understands the dangers of ceding it to the Herbert Hooverites in the Republican Party. He can’t afford to waste his high approval ratings and let the GOP up off the floor, creating a possibility of a rerun of the 1994 anti-Clinton backlash.

And, make no mistake, the Clinton reference is apt because the Clinton presidency was a failed presidency, his third way nothing more than moderate conservatism dressed up in Democratic stylings, his social liberalism a smokescreen for fiscal policies friendly to big money as opposed to working people.

The second post focuses on Barney Frank’s oversight plan, pointing out the basic problem:

Seems to me that if a secretive regulatory agency falls down on the job and then proceeds to waste trillions of dollars on no-strings-attached bailouts, Congress might want to look to better, more publicly accountable agencies to become the chief regulator.