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COMMENTARY:Continuity Error: Guts, Goo and Obama's Imperial DreamDisappointment is taking hold around the world.Wednesday, 3 December 2008
This is the philosophy that has guided American foreign policy for decades; it is the philosophy that has guided it during the Bush Administration; it is the philosophy that will guide it in the Obama Administration.
Barack Obama's new "national security team" is a grim conglomeration of war criminals, warmongers and apologists for torture and empire who have been praised justly by some rightwingers as a continuation and validation of the Bush Regime's foreign policy. But despite the growing unease these choices have induced in some "progressive" quarters, they in no way constitute a "betrayal" on Obama's part. He has always made it abudantly clear that he stands squarely on the side of a militarist empire – expansive, dominating, brooking no challenge or hindrance to its actions or its preeminence. An empire conceived in bloodshed and dedicated to the proposition that no nation is created equal to the divine American state, whose "interests" – as self-servingly defined by whatever faction of the ruling elite holds temporary sway in Washington – must be pursued at any and every cost. A cost to be paid, of course, by the lesser breeds beyond the Homeland's borders, and, increasingly, by the American people themselves.
Obama's forthright stand on the issue of empire was evident throughout the campaign, in speeches, on his website, in his Senate votes and in his publicly announced positions – such as his always conditional, circumscribed promise to "end" the war in Iraq, on essentially the same terms by which George W. Bush claims to be ending it now. At no point in his much-ballyhooed "opposition" to the nation-gutting in Iraq did Obama ever once call it what it is: a crime. An abomination. An act of mass murder that has left more than a million innocent people dead. Who then can be surprised that he has chosen as his own war chief a man who has presided over this pointless slaughter for two of the five years that it has been going on? And who can be surprised that he has chosen as his secretary of state a woman whose chief contributions to foreign policy have been: urging her husband to bomb civilians in an illegal, undeclared war against Serbia; promising to "obliterate" an entire nation of 65 million people from the face of the earth; and voting for one of the worst war crimes in the last half-century – then damning the victims as lousy ingrates for not appreciating America's benevolent destruction of their country and murder of their children? Really now, what did anyone expect from a man who walks into a room where a dozen children have had their head bashed in by a thug in a silk suit still holding the blood-dripping bat in his hand, and says, "My word! I think a mistake has been made here. By gum, I think beating these children into a steaming pulp of guts and goo might have been a 'stupid policy.' If you give me that bat, I promise to stop beating these children into a steaming pulp of guts and goo within the next 16 months – depending, of course, on the conditions in the room at the time, and the advice of my new top adviser, an experienced, pragmatic, safe pair of hands who has just spent the last two years helping this thug – who should not be prosecuted, by the way, because that would just criminalize political differences – beat these children into a steaming pulp of guts and goo." This, in a nutshell, is Obama's Iraq policy, and always has been. Where then is the betrayal? II. Here we must turn, once again, to Arthur Silber, who has long understood the true nature of the Obama candidacy and what its triumph will mean for the future. No talk of "betrayal" from Silber, who knows that Obama's recent appointments are only the inevitable fruit of the imperial, exceptionalist philosophy that has always guided his votes and positions on foreign policy. Silber's new post, "Clinging to the Wreckage I: Murder Inc. -- The Continuing Obscenity of U.S. Foreign Policy," is a masterpiece of bitter clarity about the reality of the American empire -- even in the rosy glow of the false dawn of the era of "hope and change." You should read the whole, devastating piece -- and follow the links in the original -- but below are a few excerpts:
This is the philosophy that has guided American foreign policy for decades; it is the philosophy that has guided it during the Bush Administration; it is the philosophy that will guide it in the Obama Administration. Obama has made this clear, once more, with his "national security" appointments. But he has not betrayed us. He has indeed brought the promised change – a change in the faces that will mouth the required pieties when the next small child is beaten into a steaming pulp of guts and goo. Chris Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque, and is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press. He can be reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com.This column is republished here with the permission of the author. Copyright © 2008 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on December 5, 2008. |
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