The Obama problematic

Actor Matt Damon laments on his lost hope in the Obama presidency,

 “I no longer hope for audacity."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, unfortunately not seeing how he too had been manipulated, tells army cadets:

"Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined', as General MacArthur so delicately put it." 

“I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6% over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100%. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.”

– Major General Smedley Butler, winner of two medals of honor

From Reuters this weekend:

“P.J. Crowley is abruptly stepping down as State Department spokesman under pressure from the White House, according to senior officials familiar with the matter, because of controversial comments he made about the Bradley Manning case.

“Crowley will step down as early as Sunday afternoon, the officials said, because White House officials are furious about his suggestion that the Obama administration is mistreating Manning, the Army private who is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, under suspicion that he leaked highly classified State Department cables to the website Wikileaks.

“Speaking to a small group at MIT last week, Crowley was asked about allegations that Manning is being tortured and kicked up a firestorm by answering that what is being done to Manning by Defense Department officials ‘is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.’”

Journalist Dr. Ludwig Watzal of Bonn, Germany recently published on his website regarding his disappointments with Obama’s jaundiced presidency, 'Let me just scrutinize three of Obama´s policies. As a candidate for the Presidency he campaigned rightly against President Bush´s illegal war in Iraq and the prison-camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He called the Afghan war a “war of necessity”, it seemed as if this war was a “good” one in contrast to the attack on Iraq which he designated as a “war of choice”. He promised to end the war in Iraq and to close the prison-camp in Cuba. Both promises were broken. Not only is the war in Iraq continuing despite the withdrawal of some 50 000 combat troops, but by a sleight of hand renamed the same number of combat troops “military instructors”, not to speak of tens of thousands of mercenaries who still remain there. When Obama speaks of a total withdrawal by the end of the year, no one should believe him. The military is already contradicting him. History shows that the US Empire will never withdraw voluntarily from a country that it attacked and occupied. The same will probably hold true of Afghanistan. The so-called war on terrorism will continue indefinitely until the human and financial costs will rise unbearably for all the Western occupying forces. As terrorism is a phenomenon that can arise anywhere and at any time, it can not be defeated. Therefore the “war on terror” is by definition an indefinite [and unwinnable] war.

'Just recently, Obama signed an executive order, reaffirming George W. Bush´s policy of indefinite detention for those held in Guantanamo Bay. He also revitalized Bush´s infamous military courts, widely considered as kangaroo courts. These courts do not stand for the rule of law but are rather a travesty of justice. Every American from the cradle to the grave cuts his teeth on the rule of law. Traditionally in the US, when the government cannot prove the guilt of a person before a court, the suspect has to be set free. But for alleged terrorists there seems to be no law, except arbitrary law as in Guantanamo or in the dungeons of the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. To approve such a policy, one is justified to ask at which university President Obama taught constitutional law before he took office. Such a contemptuous disregard for justice is the most un-American attitude.

'The third disappointment with, or should one say disaster of, the Obama presidency is its Middle Eastern policy, wrongly dubbed “peace process” and his policies towards the Muslim world. Unfortunately, this policy is not formulated independently by the US government as could be seen when the US put a veto in the UN-Security Council against its own policy that considered Israel´s colonial settlement project illegal. A UN resolution, criticizing in moderate language Israel´s colonial settlement policy, was vetoed by the Obama administration at the behest of the Israeli government and the Israel lobby in the US. The veto, 14:1; which even Germany – a staunch friend of Israel – supported, was defeated by the US. Before this shameful veto, the US criticized Israel´s policy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). President Obama even tried to bribe the Netanyahu government to extend a nine month settlement stop for another three more months, but Israel denied the very generous offer [an additional $3.5 billion in aid, on top of the 3 billion per annum already in place, billions in military hardware, and increased power in the UN] that accompanied this demand.'

Words do not suffice to describe the moral bankruptcy of the Obama government. How was the man, so fervent in his passionate outcries against the Bush, Jr. regime on the campaign trail, capable of such an about face in policy, philosophy and morality? What kind of insanity causes a man apparently so fully possessed of his senses and moral conviction to undergo such a complete loss of identity, a complete surrender of soul? A loss of soul? These are the questions, Mr. Obama, that are defining your politics, your agenda, your term in office, your legacy and ultimately yourself. If you had any audacity you would answer them in daring action. Sadly, you don’t. And as your first-term runs its course, it would seem the curtain is being drawn. Another establishment puppet (of a failed establishment) wriggling his last, the last gestures and movements of a doomed marionette.