Is
It Time for the Peace Movement to Start Protesting Senator Obama?
By
Kevin B. Zeese
ccun.org, April 3, 2008
In the last two weeks Senator Obama has been
sounding rather hawkish. Perhaps he believes he has the Democratic
nomination wrapped up and now can start running to the center-right.
The peace movement needs to let him know
his positions are not acceptable.
Some peace advocates had already given up on
Sen. Obama because of his record since he came to the U.S. Senate.
His voting record on
Iraq and foreign policy is very
similar to Sen. Clinton.
Obama did make a great speech before the
war began, saying much the same thing that peace advocates were
saying, but that seems to have been the peak of his peace advocacy.
Indeed, Black Agenda Report described
how Obama took his anti-war speech off his website once he began
running for the senate.
And since coming to the senate he has
voted for Iraq funding, giving Bush hundreds of
millions of dollars. Further, he is calling for nearly 100,000 more
U.S. troops as well as
keeping the military option on the table for Iran.
But in the last two weeks he has moved to the
right. On April 1, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
interviewed Obama about what type of
U.S.
residual forces he would leave behind in Iraq.
First, Obama acknowledged combat troops
would be left behind as “a
strike force in the region.” Where would this strike force be based?
Obama said “It doesn't necessarily have to be in Iraq; it could be in Kuwait or other
places.”
Of even greater concern was the 140,000
civilian troops – the private security forces that some describe as
mercenaries – who are in Iraq.
With regard to these Obama said: “we
have 140,000 private contractors right there, so unless we want to
replace all of or a big chunk of those with US troops, we can't draw
down the contractors faster than we can draw down our troops.”
When Goodman pressed him on whether he
would support a ban on private military forces Obama said “Well, I
don't want to replace those contractors with more U.S.
troops, because we don't have them, alright?”
Obama
seems to be choosing his words very carefully when he talks of his Iraq plan. He always talks in terms
of only “withdrawing” “combat” troops and ending “the war.”
Withdrawal is not the same as bringing
troops home as it could mean moving the troops somewhere else in the
region and into
Afghanistan. Combat troops are a
minority of the 150,000 troops in Iraq.
And, ending the “war” is not the same as
ending the occupation.
Indeed, Obama plans to keep the massive
U.S. Embassy as well as the long-term military bases being built in Iraq.
No wonder he does not talk about ending
the occupation as it does not seem that is his intent.
What
are the two-thirds of Americans who oppose the
Iraq war and want to see U.S. forces brought home to think? It
sounds like Obama would leave more than 100,000 and perhaps even
more than 200,000 public and private military troops in Iraq. And, he
would leave strike forces in the region “not necessarily in Iraq” who could strike in Iraq when
needed.
Is this what he means by withdrawal?
The
other important speech that Obama gave focused on his broader
approach to foreign policy.
In
this
speech, given on March 28th, Obama praised the
foreign policy of George H.W. Bush.
Obama described his foreign policy as a
traditional U.S. approach – certainly not the
“change” he promises in his big campaign speeches saying “my foreign
policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic
policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some
ways, Ronald Reagan.”
There
is lot to unravel in the foreign policy of these former presidents.
While these X-President’s are much more
popular than the current occupant of the White House, which is why
Obama believes tying himself to those will garner votes, each of
their foreign policy strategies relied heavily on the use of the
U.S. military.
Here are some highlights:
Both George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan get
credit for negotiating with Iran to hold the U.S. hostages until after Reagan-Bush took power
in return for military and financial assistance to Iran.
This
act put their personal political ambitions ahead of the needs of U.S. citizens being held hostage.
Perhaps the best known Reagan-Bush foreign
policy was the Iran-Contra scandal, a scheme to circumvent
U.S. law by providing arms to
overthrow the government in Nicaragua.
They shipped weapons to the mullah’s in
Iran in return for cash which was
used to fund the Nicaraguan fighters.
This was done because the Congress
passed a law preventing
U.S. tax dollars being used
to arm the rebels in Nicaragua.
As part of their campaign against the Soviet
Union the Reagan-Bush team also armed Islamists fighting the Soviets
in Afghanistan.
This allowed Osama bin Laden to gain a
stronghold in Afghanistan and is one of the root
causes of today’s military adventures.
Thus Reagan-Bush armed two current “enemies” Iran and al Qaeda.
In fact, they also armed Saddam Hussein
by providing him with the makings of an array of weapons of mass
destruction.
The arming of Saddam continued with the
Bush-Quayle administration even after Saddam “gassed” his own
people.
President George H.W. Bush was the only CIA director to become
president.
As in the Reagan era, Bush I treated
Saddam Hussein as a close ally.
Shortly before the Gulf War he
approved the sale of an additional $4.8 million in "dual-use"
technology to factories identified by the CIA as Saddam's nuclear
and bio-weapons programs.
And, just before Saddam invaded Kuwait, Bush sold him $600 million in
advanced communications technology.
Prior to the Kuwait invasion the Bush
administration sent signals to Saddam that the U.S. was not worried
about a military conflict between Iraq and Kuwait.
But when Saddam sent tanks into Kuwait the U.S. responded with an aggressive aerial campaign
that destroyed much of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure and a
100 hour ground war.
Bush then urged anti-Saddam forces to
rise-up against Hussein and then left them hanging without
U.S. support.
Then, the “peace” with Iraq led to the
sanctions of the Bush and Clinton administrations which killed
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
The only Democrat mentioned by Obama was JFK.
Obama did not mention the less popular
LBJ, Jimmy Carter or his opponent’s husband, Bill Clinton.
Perhaps because the Kennedy
administration was so long ago he expects voters not to remember
their militarism. And, the Camelot aura of Kennedy is one Obama
aspires to.
Of course, President Kennedy must be given
credit for the steady expansion of the Vietnam conflict
and its escalation into a quagmire that trapped his successor.
Kennedy
drew a line in the sand against communism in
Vietnam saying “"Now
we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place.”
Troop escalation went from hundreds to
more than 15,000, the Green Berets and helicopters were both sent
in.
Kennedy approved a coup which led to the
killing of the prime minister and his brother in 1963 and a
succession of regimes seen more and more as U.S. puppets.
Kennedy was assassinated shortly after
the coup but the path into Vietnam had been laid.
What other foreign policy misadventures does JFK get credit for? One
of note was a military attack on Cuba known as the Bay of
Pigs.
This invasion by 1,500 exiled Cubans
ended in disaster for the U.S. as it was easily rebuffed by
Castro with most of the troops captured. JFK did not give up on
regime change after this failure; in fact he escalated it with
Operation Mongoose. Mongoose, which lasted until the Cuban Missile
Crisis in October 1962, included among its plans the use chemical
weapons against sugar cane workers, sending the Green Beret’s into
Cuba, using gangsters to kill Cuban police,
propagandizing the Cuban people, sabotaging mines, cash rewards for
killing Cuban officials and false flag attacks against the
U.S. to be blamed on
Cuba.
And Kennedy also gets credit for taking the initial steps that ended
up with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
In 1963 Kennedy backed a coup against
the Iraqi government.
The CIA helped bring the Baath Party to
power.
The CIA provided the new Iraqi
government with a list of suspected Communists to kill.
Saddam Hussein was one of those who
carried out the killings which included hundreds of doctors,
teachers, technicians, lawyers, Iraqi professionals and officials.
The U.S. began to arm the Iraq regime with weapons they used against the
Kurds and U.S. and British oil companies began
profiting from Iraqi oil.
No
doubt Senator Obama is well-aware of this history, so what did he
mean when he said his foreign policy would emulate these three?
Are we to expect more coups of regimes
we don’t like?
The arming of future adversaries?
Illegal actions to circumvent the
Congress?
Now that Sen. Obama has tied himself to
Kennedy, Reagan and H.W. Bush he needs to clarify whether this Hall
of Shame history of bi-partisan U.S. foreign
policy is what he intends to emulate.
Senator Obama clearly thinks he can take the peace movement for
granted.
Many peace advocates support Obama
because of his pre-U.S. Senate speech against the
Iraq invasion.
But, now his foreign and Iraq
policies are coming more closely into focus maybe it is time to
re-think that support.
It is time for the peace movement to
push Sen. Obama to be a better candidate, one that will really bring
change to U.S. foreign policy.
For
those who like Obama’s message of “hope” and “change” it is
important to realize his foreign policy, as he is beginning to
define it, brings neither.
Obama is risking the loss of votes to
three strong alternatives to the two parties.
If Obama is not pulled back toward his
pre-Senate position more and more peace voters will desert him for
either former Representative Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party,
Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez’s independent campaign, or possible
Libertarian candidates Mike Gravel or former congressman Bob Barr.
These are all candidates who are
strongly opposed to military intervention and the
Iraq occupation. In November there
will be choices of real peace candidates or a major party nominee
who is no longer promising real change.
Pressure now from the peace movement, if heeded by Sen. Obama, will
make him a stronger candidate.
Is it time to for the peace movement to
protest Obama?
Kevin
Zeese is Executive Director of Voters for Peace,
www.VotersForPeace.US.
