Obama in fact agrees with Rice on an important issue -- the goal of US
policy in the Middle East. His shrill cries of "being against this war
from the beginning" do not mean that he objects to using military force
to assure US control of ME energy resources -- he just doesn't want it
done inefficiently. (Cf. his remarks of Pakistan.) If you read his Chicago foreign policy speeches, you'll see that he agrees with the elite consensus on the matter -- but saw the failures of Bush administration in Iraq to be an opening for his ambitions.
Obama's speeches are worth paying attention to because their relentless
moralism makes clear what he's trying to do -- cover with smooth names
the contradictions between the interests of the few and those of the many in this country. He's smart enough both to know that's the problem and strenuously to pretend that the problem doesn't exist. (Harvard, as
it has for centuries, is in the business of educating the progeny of the ruling class and -- perhaps more importantly -- talented members of other classes who'll run errands for them.)
David Brooks (praising) today accurately describes Obama's speeches: they are "abstract, secular sermons of personal uplift -- filled with disquisitions on the nature of hope and the contours of change. He talks about erasing old categories like red and blue (and implicitly, black and white) and replacing them with new categories, of which the most important are new and old."
It's all balderdash, of course. But it's well-said that "Obama's post-everything, togetherness-via-neoliberalism message of ambiguously
described tomorrowhood may indeed be the next phase of American power politics." It's instructive that, of the the two winners in Iowa, the
Republican is by far the more vocal opponent of Wall Street. --CGE
^^^^^ CB: Do you think a fascist movement in America is likely to take the form of white masses supporting a Black liberal for President ?