> Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> > I consider
> > Obama a war criminal in making because I consider the presidency an
> > institution that maintains U.S. dominance and there is simply no way to
> > maintain U.S. dominance without supporting atrocities, starvation,
> > repression...
>
> > And yet, let me confess, I will probably take the 5 minutes it takes me
> to
> > walk down to my polling station and vote for Obama. Simply because the
> > people in power now are some of the worse gang of authoritarian
> terrorists
> > the world has known.
> ==================================
> You sound very confused, Jerry. Those intending to vote for Obama,
> including on this list, believe that his foreign policy will be less
> dangerous than the Bush administration's, relying more on multilateral
> economic and diplomatic pressure and compromise than on unilateral military
> aggression and threats to pursue US interests. So do the Cubans, Iranians,
> Palestinians, Chinese, Russians and others who have also indicated a
> preference for dealing with Obama than McCain. They may or may not have the
> illusions you attribute to them. It remains to be seen whether the Bush
> administration will prove an aberration or the first overt expression of an
> empire in terminal decline forced to maintain control by predominantly
> military means, no matter who is in charge. But it's clear few if any Obama
> supporters would knowingly, like yourself, support someone they knew was a
> "war criminal in the making" destined to perpetuate "atrocities, starvation
> and repression" - all the while pretendi!
> ng he was somehow, inexplicably, a lesser evil than the "worst gang of
> authoritarian terrorists the world has known".
Basically, the calculation is who will kill less people? Some war criminals are more dangerous than others. Some criminals in everyday life are less dangerous than others. It doesn't make them less criminal.
I never said I support Obama. I don't support my oppressor or the oppressor of others. I don't support ruling class politicians. I will make a calculated assessment whether my vote will make a difference to people on the other end of the guns.
The United States has a long standing and bipartisan policy of ignoring international law and of committing terrorism and supporting terrorist governments and torture regimes. The policy of open terrorism goes back at least to the period of World War II. It doesn't matter who is in power. It is a policy that is unquestioned by both Democrats and Republicans. Obama, Clinton and McCain all support certain aspects of this policy.
Thus we have supported Israel since 1967 and we are now responsible for a substantial portion of the Israeli budget. Israel is a client state and rarely acts without U.S. approval. We supply massive support for the Israeli economy, we supply Israel arms of all types, including arms specifically designed to spread terror among civilian population -- cluster bombs, for instance, used during the wars in Lebanon in the 1980s. Obama says he is going to support Israel to the fullest extent. So why not believe him? The crimes of Israel are the crimes of the U.S. state. There is no difference. When Israel institutes a program of collective punishment against the people in the Occupied Territories it is a war crime by every possible interpretation of international law. The U.S.G. supports such collective punishment, announces its support of such collective punishment, and has done so no matter who is in power Democrat or Republican. In has much as Obama is a great supporter of Israel he is a war criminal.
On voting: Most of the time I don't vote for President. I voted on a few occasions. I voted against Reagan because his crew openly announced that they were in favor of massive terrorism. I calculated that the people on the other end of U.S. violence would be slightly better off with a Mondale in power than with Reagan. I voted against Bush the Younger for essentially the same reason. Bush the Younger's regime is essentially Reagan Redux.
The major policies of a possible Kerry or Gore administration in the realm of foreign policy would not have essentially changed from the past 40 years. So for instance both Kerry and Gore talked a lot about U.S. business and promoting U.S. business abroad. Are you or Max at all aware what this means? Max either does not know, or pretends not to know, U.S. actions and policy in Central America for the past century continuing until today. The term Banana Republic comes from Central America because the United Fruit Company controlled whole countries. The UFC did not maintain this control alone but with the military support of the U.S. When U.S. corporations began to lose control in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, we overthrew governments, trained the military to slaughter civilians (i.e. to do the same thing we were doing in Vietnam), used the CIA and military intelligence to train torturers (many of whom are still in power and still supported by the U.S.), and eventually by the late 1970s continuing through the 1990s, instituted and fully supported regimes that committed mass murder, wiping out whole villages at a time, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in total. Those same regimes are still in power today and we still support them today. Obama does not indicate that he will change these policies. All indications are is that he supports them. These policies are a century old and are bipartisan and are mainly geared to promote U.S. business. So in Central America today, we are still forcing peasants and native peoples off of their land and forcing them into wage labor on coffee plantations (for example) on what was what their former land. If the people on these plantations try to form a union or cooperative, they are likely to be slaughtered. This is the result of U.S. policy and of U.S. support of terror regimes. If Obama supports U.S. business abroad, as he will, as he does, he will support this kind of thing.
Or take Afghanistan. Obama is a supporter of the war in Afghanistan. He has the typical Democratic Party line that Iraq distracted the U.S. from the war in Afghanistan. You say I am confused. Apparently Max is not confused. But he doesn't even know that an aggressive war is a war crime. The invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. was as much a war crime as the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. (Only the USSR had more reason to invade Afghanistan than we did.) I don't have the time to go through all of the atrocities the U.S. has committed in Afghanistan, but they include the bombing of isolated villages on no more than a rumor that their might be terrorists in the neighborhood; putting of thousands of people into concentration camps usually again on evidence of rumors; cross border raids to Pakistani villages, and on and on. There is no indication that Obama opposes any of this. In fact he has promised to increase it.
I could go on to discuss U.S. nuclear policy. Has Obama expressed a difference from the policy of Bill Clinton? Not that I know of. For the disastrous nature of U.S. nuclear policy I suggest reading the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which is on-line or Noam Chomsky's two recent books, "Hegemony or Survival" or "Failed States."
Obama is not going to change course in any of these areas and many more. He has promised not to change course. Why should I disbelieve him?
And yet I will probably vote for Obama. Why? Why will I probably vote for my oppressor for "a 'war criminal in the making' destined to perpetuate 'atrocities, starvation and repression'"? Because Bush and Co. and McCain and Co. are toward the authoritarian end of the spectrum of U.S. ruling class politics. They basically believe in an all powerful executive and they don't believe in basic conservative notions such as the rule of law. Any U.S. president will have to commit the most despicable crimes as a matter of institutional necessity. Any person running for president is running for chief executive of an imperial war machine that has never seen its equal in human history. The U.S. spends more on our military than all other nations combined. The U.S. divides the world into regional commands allowing each regional command to act as diplomatic and economic conduit for U.S. dominance. The U.S. judges each country by its openness to U.S. capital investment. And if the country is found wanting we have traditionally tried to undermine it.
Will this change under Obama? It did not change under Kennedy, who Obama admires. In fact these policies were accelerated. (Kennedy was in fact worse than Reagan in these matters. Kennedy help to complete the post war institutions of imperial dominance, Alliance of Progress, School of Americas, CIA torture programs, and on and on. And remember Obama is mostly compared to Kennedy and seems to be a Kennedy admirer.) It did not change under Carter and it did not change under Bill Clinton. And yet Carter would have been less disastrous for Central America than Reagan. Less people would have died. Carter was still a war criminal. He couldn't avoid. But I voted for him because I calculated that less people would be hurt by war criminal Carter than war criminal Reagan. This is a fair calculation. And I will make the same calculation with Obama or Clinton, who ever is nominated. It is not an easy calculation and it is possible to be wrong. (Who would have been killed less people, Bush or Dukakis? I don't know and I sat it out.)
Jerry
>
>
> Most to their credit would stay home rather than vote. The few who stayed
> loyal would lack any basis for holding him accountable. Maybe it would be
> more consistent and principled for you to stay home, and to give Julio,
> Charles, Max, and others the benefit of the doubt for encouraging support
> for Obama on the basis of his pledges to change course, and for being
> prepared to later hold him accountable if he deviates from them. If you know
> of better openings to develop opposition to US foreign policy at the present
> time, I'd be interested to hear about them.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
nd browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/