By Robert Parry
July 29, 2009
"After six months in office, Barack Obama’s presidency reveals striking parallels not only to Bill Clinton’s troubled first term, but to Jimmy Carter’s only term. And, how those dangers are reappearing show that the Democrats and American progressives have learned little over the past 30 years.
Many analysts already have noted the eerie similarities between Obama’s troubles and Clinton’s political woes 16 years ago. In both cases, the Democratic presidents started off by rebuffing calls for serious investigations of abuses committed by their Republican predecessors.......
‘Hussein’ Obama
Already, pro-Likud elements in the Israeli media have been riling up the population for a prolonged battle with Obama – and some of that anti-Obama animosity is spilling over into the American press as well.
On Tuesday, the New York Times devoted half its op-ed page to an article by Israeli journalist Aluf Benn complaining that Obama, as President, had not yet traveled to Israel to deliver a speech, although he has made a major address in Cairo to the Islamic world and has spoken elsewhere, such as Europe, Russia and Africa.......
Nevertheless, Benn’s article offered a window into how the Israeli media is reacting to Obama. “Israeli rightists have – in columns, articles and public statements – taken to calling the president by his middle name, Hussein, as proof of his pro-Arab tendencies,” Benn wrote......
Given the hostility that Obama has engendered among right-wing Israelis and the continued influence of neocons in the U.S. political/media system, Obama, like Carter, appears surrounded by powerful adversaries, also including many business interests and social conservatives.......
So, the stage is set for a sustained war against Obama and his presidency, with what is likely to include both the ugliness of the personal assault on Clinton and the secret maneuvering that proved so devastating against Carter."
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