As Barack Obama’s presidency continues in the United States, it’s safe to say that a pattern is now emerging that reveals his true tradition. He is a politician, lest we forget, and his loyalties lie with nationalist and capitalist interests. That he should act accordingly should not surprise us. That he should make campaign promises to secure election and consequently turn from those should also not surprise us.
And so it also should not surprise us that Obama would turn his Change Chariot right back around in the direction previously traveled by one George W. Bush.
We have experienced a lot in the last few days, with a decision to try to block the release of photos showing prisoner abuse and another decision to avoid pursuit of the Bush era officials who may have sanctioned torture. Obama’s explanations are cluttered and mystifying, far from the straight-ahead platform of change he ran on.
The latest volte-face finds Obama restoring military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay and sending a very clear message that the architecture of his predecessor is good enough for him.
The Obama Administration seems to have itself fixated on moving forward, pressing the public to hurriedly move beyond the appalling torture of the Bush years and into a new, sunlit future. But if Barack Obama is adopting many of the same policies from the Bush Doctrine, how can the public be expected to see change on the horizon?
As a candidate, Obama criticized the military trials of the Bush Administration and claimed a desire to restore the rule of law and dignity to the United States on the global stage. Shortly after taking office in January, the president announced that he would close up shop at Gitmo within a year. He also suspended the military trials there, establishing a task force to deal with the detainees and the legal process mess.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy
Jordan,
If I didn't have so much contempt for this Chicago thief, this immigrant incompetent of a president, I call his reversals "statesmalike". But, incompetent that he is, his twisting and turning like a snake in the wood only reveals his lack of competence - and how far fallen your neighbors to the south are in having to choose between him and a near senile idiot for president.
O, Cry the Beloved Country!
2 - roger nowosielski
I'm afraid you're right in your estimate, Jordan. My main concern is - beyond the issue of human rights - it doesn't bide well for his "solutions" to the economic crisis. Just another case of putting lipstick on a pig.
3 - Jeannie Danna
Jordan,
I am a fierce supporter of the Obama administration and am proud that America finally rid itself, if even just temporarily, of the Republican party. We want Obama to succeed! but the underlying powers in this country are too strong. I will never give up my personal effort to educate my fellow citizens or the world; the military industrial complex, the conservative top 1%, and corporate America are the reasons Obama is up against the wall. Most Americans want, national health care, education for all, and jobs that pay a living wage. Whether we get these things remains to be seen...
4 - m A r k
Most Americans want, national health care, education for all, and jobs that pay a living wage. Whether we get these things remains to be seen...
Jeannie, we will need to work out a way to get these things other than through the (bought and paid for) federal government.
5 - Clavos
Most Americans want, national health care, education for all, and jobs that pay a living wage. Whether we get these things remains to be seen...
Great protest placard, but without definitions, meaningless.
Example: "Education for all." To what level? What course of study? To what end?
What constitutes a "living wage?" How would you determine it? Should a "living wage" be the limit? Or can a physician earn more? What about those who don't receive any wages, but are paid by commission or royalties?
6 - m a r k
...lacking precise definitions, but hardly meaningless.
7 - roger nowosielski
Sorry, Mark. I do tend to agree with Clavos on "the education" issue. It does come across as a slogan.
8 - m a r K
Calling the (admitted) slogan 'meaningless' is a bit too dismissive for me.
9 - roger nowosielski
I agree; but even slogans have their purpose. Is vacuous a better term?
10 - m a r K
How about 'ambiguous'?
11 - roger nowosielski
I'll go with that. BTW, just finished the three-piece series - all posted now. So give me your feedback when you get to it. We may have to slug it out a bit over the good old Karl Marx.
12 - Baronius
"his loyalties lie with nationalist and capitalist interests"
I can only hope so! However, none of the policies discussed in this article favor capitalism. They don't even particularly support nationalism; they impede a few potential prosecutions. That's it.
13 - Dan(Miller)
Most Americans want, national health care, education for all, and jobs that pay a living wage.
...lacking precise definitions, but hardly meaningless
I don't see any definitions at all, precise or even ambiguous. Still, I'll play the game: What does the collection of warm but fuzzy words mean? Perhaps some of them are icons for something? For what?
It strikes me that President Obama now has substantial latitude to waffle because he used that sort of bumper sticker slogan to get elected. Many people liked his words but few grasped their real-life meanings; he did not explain what he actually had in mind beyond, of course, getting elected. And, boiled down to a bumper sticker slogan, that seems to be the thrust of the article.
Dan(Miller)
14 - m a R k
If you claim that the slogans convey no meaning to you, I'll claim that you are merely playing and are full of shit.
15 - Clavos
If you claim that the slogans convey no meaning to you...
Most of them don't, and are meaningful to (and are intended for) only the shallow-minded.
16 - m a rk
I'm not sure what you mean by your slogan re the 'shallow-minded'.
17 - Clavos
see?
18 - m a rk
(wink)
19 - Clavos
"nudge, nudge"
20 - Dave Nalle
You make the common mistake in this article of confusing state-corporatism with capitalism. State-corporatism is a characteristic of socialist and fascist government and inherently inimical to true, entrepreneurial capitalism.
Obama is a state-corporatist but he is hostile to free market capitalism. It's a vital distinction.
Dave
21 - roger nowosielski
In other words, Dave, it's socialism in disguise.
22 - Bliffle
Oh, get off it!
You guys know perfectly well what this means:
"Most Americans want, national health care, education for all, and jobs that pay a living wage."
If you don't AGREE with those goals, then argue against them, but pettifoggery over terms is silly.
Maybe you have arguments against UHC. Let's hear them.
Maybe you don't think education should be available to all. Tel us why.
Maybe you think that living wages undermine the economic system. At least spell it out.
But this hiding behind childish nitpicking is dragging the quality of BC down the tubes and making this a very easy site to avoid. Especially after the crappy format change that makes it torture (hmmm, do you suppose Pelosi agreed to this too?) to either read or contribute.
I suppose it's all Pelosi's fault. After all, it now seems evident that Pelosi twisted the arms of Bush and Cheney and forced them to torture innocent foreigners whisked off US streets.
23 - roger nowosielski
I don't think Pelosi did that, bliffle. But it does begin to look more and more that she, along with many others, has been complicit.
24 - roger nowosielski
And since when, anyway, you're being so trustful of the politicians seeing they're all selling our country down the river?
25 - handyguy
Obama's 'hostility' toward free-market capitalism is an imaginary construct of the right.
If Dave ran the world, all situations, including extreme crises, would be handled according to a rigid, inflexible set of ideological principles, i.e., Hands Off.
You may agree or not with the president's aggressive approach [some say not aggressive enough] to the banking, auto and housing industries. But caricaturing this as 'hostility' to capitalism is pernicious, foolish propaganda.