<http://www.blackagendareport.com/006/006a_gf_obama_winds_of_war.php>
Barack Obama and the Winds of War: Turning Right by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
"Obama's focus on gamesmanship has rendered him virtually useless in the struggle to end the occupation and war in Iraq."
Barack Obama is a windblown politician. The junior Illinois senator avoids anchoring himself to any principle, lest his political sails fail to catch the slightest breeze blowing from the left or the right. His political direction is always tentative, although his ultimate destination is never in doubt: he will be a formidable national presence – maybe even president.
But Barack Obama – who has never claimed to be a Black leader – is in fact not a leader at all. Nowhere is this more evident than in the most critical issue facing Americans and the world at this dangerous juncture in history: the war in Iraq.
One year after his bland and idea-less speech on Iraq to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (see "Obama Mouths Mush on War," December 1, 2005), Obama returned to mush more of the same to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The U.S. should "begin to move towards a phased redeployment of American troops from Iraqi soil," he told the business-oriented crowd. Since the objective reality on the ground in Iraq and in U.S. public opinion had changed dramatically in the intervening year – resulting in Democratic capture of the House and Senate – Obama's failure to substantively revise his previous, timid prescriptions actually amounts to a turn to the right.
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