Who can forget all the hype and fervour surrounding the election of Obama. Here there was going to be a new broom and someone who stood out, and apart after the days of the George Bush-Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. So, what do we have 4 years later. Someone in many respects worse than Bush. Certainly no humanitarian, not someone who is prepared to abide by international law and definitely someone beholden to Wall Street and big business. In other words, a dud!
"Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick, Paul Ryan, as with himself, is an uninformed opportunist who was born into wealth and privilege and whose proposed policies aim to perpetuate that privilege at the expense of the rest of the population with whom he nominally shares a national identity. Barack Obama is a cynical opportunist who serves the interests of wealth and privilege and whose policies more effectively promote those interests than Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan could ever hope to. Those circling the wagons to get Mr. Obama re-elected should spend a bit of time getting to know their guy.
At the highest level Mr. Obama codified, through both continuation of, and failure to prosecute, the worst of the Bush / Cheney administration’s war crimes, domestic crimes, civil intrusions and economic policies. When Mr. Obama entered office he had the opportunity to repudiate these crimes and restore the illusion that America has ever been a civilized nation. America’s global torture prisons have been moved out of sight but not out of fact (link). The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq remain illegal wars of aggression undertaken to boost the fortunes of multi-national oil companies and the slaughter-for-profit military industry. The war in Afghanistan has been expanded under Mr. Obama and the war in Iraq was only ended against his wishes by Bush era treaties. And U.S. foreign policy remains the preeminent force of repression and unjust order overseas.
Mr. Obama’s recently disclosed ‘kill lists’ (link) suggest an unhinged monarch, fully divorced from legal accountability and history, carrying out vendettas against unproven enemies with fevered impunity (if he doesn’t have to show evidence, he doesn’t have to have evidence). With Americans now openly subject to murder at the whim of whoever occupies the Oval Office, the long, inglorious history of domestic power politics carried out through strategic assassination finds a home on our shores. (One need only recall the Bush / Cheney hilarity at putting Ted Kennedy and other prominent Democrats on lists of suspected terrorists used by airlines to imagine where this abuse of power can lead)."
Continue reading this piece "Meet Barack Obama" on CounterPunch, here.
"Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick, Paul Ryan, as with himself, is an uninformed opportunist who was born into wealth and privilege and whose proposed policies aim to perpetuate that privilege at the expense of the rest of the population with whom he nominally shares a national identity. Barack Obama is a cynical opportunist who serves the interests of wealth and privilege and whose policies more effectively promote those interests than Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan could ever hope to. Those circling the wagons to get Mr. Obama re-elected should spend a bit of time getting to know their guy.
At the highest level Mr. Obama codified, through both continuation of, and failure to prosecute, the worst of the Bush / Cheney administration’s war crimes, domestic crimes, civil intrusions and economic policies. When Mr. Obama entered office he had the opportunity to repudiate these crimes and restore the illusion that America has ever been a civilized nation. America’s global torture prisons have been moved out of sight but not out of fact (link). The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq remain illegal wars of aggression undertaken to boost the fortunes of multi-national oil companies and the slaughter-for-profit military industry. The war in Afghanistan has been expanded under Mr. Obama and the war in Iraq was only ended against his wishes by Bush era treaties. And U.S. foreign policy remains the preeminent force of repression and unjust order overseas.
Mr. Obama’s recently disclosed ‘kill lists’ (link) suggest an unhinged monarch, fully divorced from legal accountability and history, carrying out vendettas against unproven enemies with fevered impunity (if he doesn’t have to show evidence, he doesn’t have to have evidence). With Americans now openly subject to murder at the whim of whoever occupies the Oval Office, the long, inglorious history of domestic power politics carried out through strategic assassination finds a home on our shores. (One need only recall the Bush / Cheney hilarity at putting Ted Kennedy and other prominent Democrats on lists of suspected terrorists used by airlines to imagine where this abuse of power can lead)."
Continue reading this piece "Meet Barack Obama" on CounterPunch, here.
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