Alexander Cockburn, writing on Counterpunch in "Waiting for the Curtain to Rise", reflects on the challenges to a President Obama in the first 6 months of his presidency:
"So what happened to the Bush/Cheney pre-election attack on Iran? It’s like everything else. You think you have months. You put it on one side, in the “things to be done tomorrow” pile. Suddenly it’s a matter of weeks, then days. Then the moment just slips away. The father of one of my neighbors here in Petrolia had been a captain in the Wehrmacht and fought at Stalingrad. He’s dead now but a few years ago my brother Andrew once asked him, “Captain, what happened at Stalingrad?” “Vell, Andrew, the Fuehrer wanted to avoid casualties. Und then the equipment was running out. A tank here, a tank there. Und then..then it was too late!”
I guess Bush and Cheney are too busy working on the pardons to have time for anything else like an attack on Iran. . But don’t fret. Joe Biden hints that he and Obama are working on it, though they may declare war on Russia first. Or Venezuela. So much to do in those first 100 days. An empire in October will still be an Empire next January. We’ll have continuity.
"Mark my words," Biden said solemnly at a Seattle fundraiser last Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden went on. He mentioned the Middle East and Russia. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.”
What exactly is Biden hinting at in that last sentence? From the context of that whole paragraph it’s clear enough to me he’s suggesting that despite hopes that post-Bush/Cheney America might backpeddle from hasty military confrontations, President Obama will stand tall and lose no time in going eyeball to eyeball with those who would test his resolve."
"So what happened to the Bush/Cheney pre-election attack on Iran? It’s like everything else. You think you have months. You put it on one side, in the “things to be done tomorrow” pile. Suddenly it’s a matter of weeks, then days. Then the moment just slips away. The father of one of my neighbors here in Petrolia had been a captain in the Wehrmacht and fought at Stalingrad. He’s dead now but a few years ago my brother Andrew once asked him, “Captain, what happened at Stalingrad?” “Vell, Andrew, the Fuehrer wanted to avoid casualties. Und then the equipment was running out. A tank here, a tank there. Und then..then it was too late!”
I guess Bush and Cheney are too busy working on the pardons to have time for anything else like an attack on Iran. . But don’t fret. Joe Biden hints that he and Obama are working on it, though they may declare war on Russia first. Or Venezuela. So much to do in those first 100 days. An empire in October will still be an Empire next January. We’ll have continuity.
"Mark my words," Biden said solemnly at a Seattle fundraiser last Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden went on. He mentioned the Middle East and Russia. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.”
What exactly is Biden hinting at in that last sentence? From the context of that whole paragraph it’s clear enough to me he’s suggesting that despite hopes that post-Bush/Cheney America might backpeddle from hasty military confrontations, President Obama will stand tall and lose no time in going eyeball to eyeball with those who would test his resolve."
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