The world is a more complex place than you seem to allow, ake. Critical thinking and analysis, even when it seems harsh, is a necessary component of freedom. Even if its conclusions are mistaken, or only partially correct. It does not mean, as you seem to think, that one is writing off an event or a person or a situation. I think that often the critical person is actually as full of hope as anyone else. Just worried.

Here are some snippets from a roundtable discussion that lends more light:

Amy Goodman: "Your response to the election of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States?"

JOHN PILGER: "Well, my response, Amy, is that really anyone was better than Bush and the Bush administration. Having experienced election night in the United States and then seeing the response here, I feel that it's time that analysis and critical thinking took over and that those of us who wish to think that way, who wish to think critically, really should start addressing the—this rather manipulated emotional response.

"... But I do think we have to consider President-elect Obama as a man of the system."

"Michael Moore had it right when he said the other day, let's hope that Obama breaks all his election promises, as politicians generally do, because all his election promises, in terms of foreign policy, are a continuation of business as usual.

And even if there is a return to what used to be called a multilateral world, I think there has to be critical analysis of the return to the pretensions of America as a peacemaker around the world. We had to endure this, and I mean endure it during the Clinton years, and I don't think that we, in the rest of the world, ought to have to endure it now through the Obama years, so that we have a continuation, if you like, of liberalism as a divisive, almost war-making ideology, being used to destroy liberalism as a reality, because that has gone on under so-called liberal presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton, Democratic presidents. And President-elect Obama suggests to us, in his promises, that he is going to continue that, bombing Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Someone said to me—in fact, I was talking to my daughter when I got off the plane from Houston this morning, and she was—said, "What was it like over there?" And we were discussing it, and I said, "Well, it comes down to, I suppose, asking an Afghan child how they feel when their family has been destroyed by a 500-pound bunker-busting bomb dropped by the United States and dropped by President Obama, as he continues that war. I think that's the reality that we really have to begin to discuss now, having celebrated, and rightly celebrated, the ascent of the first African American president of the United States."

JUAN GONZALEZ: "And, John Pilger, what sign would you look for in these early days now, as Obama begins to move to a—in a transition period, that would indicate to you that he may be—he would be trying to break, in one way or other, from this neoliberalism of the Clinton years?"
JOHN PILGER: "Well, it's difficult to know. Breaking from the Bush years is going to be the first, and I suppose breaking from the Bush years means actually talking to people and negotiating. I think breaking from, let's say, the Democratic years—the Bush, yes—the Clinton years will mean giving us a sign that the ideological, rapacious, war-making machine that has been built over many years and reinforced, as perhaps never before during the eight years of Bush, that that ideological machine does not transcend a loss of electoral power

"You see, that's really the central issue here, that a kind of ideological consensus has been built under Bush. Now, yes, Obama has been voted in, but will that vote, will that—will a new president transcend the—this ideological machine?

"Look, in answer to your question, I think he has to—in order to show that he is in any way different, he has to start dismantling this machine, for example, going against his promise to continue the embargo on Cuba, to drop that; to reach out to the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia and Ecuador, each of which is under attack, subversive attack by the United States; to face the reality that Afghanistan is a colonial war; and to not let the so-called withdrawal from Iraq be a sham, that it leaves these so-called enduring bases. That, any one of those, any change in one of those, would indicate that Obama is truly different.


MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, I think John Pilger has given a good account of the limits within which Obama will operate. And perhaps I should talk about the possibilities within those limits.

"When the Cold War ended, the losing power in the Cold War, the Soviet Union, began a process of reform. The US never did begin a process of reform. Instead, it embarked on a war on terror after 9/11, in order to build on the military machine inherited from the Cold War. And the war on terror, we know, has been mainly an advertising campaign, a lethal advertising campaign.

"So I agree with Pilger that Obama's first task is going to be to cut through this ideological sham and to bring the American people to face realities.

"The most that Obama can contribute, within the context of being the president of an imperial power, is to recognize the changing world situation, to recognize that this is the end of the era of a single superpower, that the US will operate amongst several powers, that the US has to learn to live in the world rather than simply to occupy it.

"And I think there are several indications from the campaign—I mean, the campaign was full of extreme and contradictory promises and provocations. But if you look on the side of the promises, there are indications that this is within the realm of the possible. There is the discussion of the need to speak to the president of Iran without any preconditions. There is that remarkable primary debate with Hillary and Edwards, where a reporter asked the three of them who would Martin Luther King support on this day, and Hillary and Edwards responded by convincing the audience why King would have supported them. And Obama responded by saying King would not have supported anybody, that King would have organized his movement to push the winning candidate to pursue the objectives. Well, that's the real question now in the US today.

"Will America recognize, as I believe South Africa has after the election of Mandela, that the election of Mandela was not change, but an opportunity to change?

And whether that opportunity is realized and transformed into a program of social justice within the country and peace abroad will depend on the movement that pushes Obama and gives him the opportunity to respond to it.

Lots More

We shall see what we shall see. But it's going to take time. Lots of it. There are some people who, with the first disappointment - and there will be many - will write off the whole effort. They will be missing the point.