Tuesday, December 9, 2008

WILL THE REAL OBAMA PLEASE STAND UP?

By Eric Margolis

".....However, not all Democrats share Chicago’s euphoria. Obama’s recent cabinet appointments have the party’s liberal wing feeling betrayed, and fearful the new president may not bring the real change to US policies he promised.

The most important: ending the Bush era’s swaggering imperialism – I call it Mussolini Modern - that led the US into two foreign wars, unnecessary confrontations with Russia, and North Korea, and the faux `war on terror’ against the Muslim world, a thinly disguised campaign to grab the oil and gas resources of Iraq and the Caspian Basin.

Barack Obama seems to have adopted the mindset and vocabulary of the Bush/Cheney administration in branding all forces opposing American domination of the Muslim World, and those opposing Israel, as `terrorists,’ including Hamas and Hezbullah.

Obama misdescribes the war in Afghanistan, a struggle by its Pashtun tribes against Western occupation, as a fight against `terrorism.’ Like Bush, Obama persistently exaggerates the threat of al-Qaida, and insists on the need to combat this handful of extremists with military forces.

So much for hopes that the new President Obama would end the Bush administration’s childish, comic book description of complex issues in the Mideast and South Asia as `terrorism.’ A man of Obama’s intelligence owes America better than such cheap propaganda.

Senator Obama’s newly named foreign policy team has deepened concerns that the change he promised may not come in foreign policy......."

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