BS: The Real Obama

Subject: RE: BS: The Real Obama
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 01:49 PM

Jack, I truly think that Bin Laden is inconsequential as anything but a huge propaganada tool to provide an fulltime ongoing excuse for fighting foreign wars in various places. He may even be dead already...but if he is, the system would not want people to know it, because they want their bearded bogeyman out there to justify various actions, and Bin Laden is still useful in that sense, just like Saddam Hussein was useful.

Likewise, Al Queda is largely (though not completely) a mythical bogeyman created in order to justify distant wars and increased domestic surveilance and reduction of civil rights on the homefront. Not that there isn't some real Al Queda out there...there is...but their presence and their strength has been blow totally out of proportion, again for propaganda purposes. The propaganda has been so effective that it has convinced thousands of young Muslims that there is something powerful out there for them to join up with...so the myth helps stoke its own existence merely by its own repetition.

This hunt to destroy "Al Queda" is about as silly, ultimately, as the search for the Holy Grail, and like the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth...Al Queda is never going to truly be found or eliminated. It will simply vanish into the sands of history presently when the world media decide to pick another official bogeyman to promote instead...and then young men who are angry at the great powers will attempt to join something else instead of "Al Queda"...because the media will tell them it's out there to join! Thus will the next conflict be neatly arranged by those who desire it.

Whether or not Al Queda ever existed, there are tremendous reasons why young Muslims would volunteer to fight against American and coalition occupying forces in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else they go...and those reasons are reasons of nationalism and anti-colonialism on the part of those young men.

They're fighting the USA because the USA is messing around in their societies and harming them...NOT because of "Al Queda".

You don't need to "get Bin Laden". In fact, getting him would be a big strategic loss to the PNAC's planners, because they would lose their wild goose...and then they'd have to find another similar one so they could continue the wild goose chase. They'd have to find or invent a new Bin Laden. And they would. I guarantee it. There's always another one.

You will NEVER deny "Al Queda" a safe haven. There will always be another safe haven somewhere, because "Al Queda" isn't the problem. The problem is that the USA, Britain, Canada, and Australia are promoting a huge quasi-colonial (corporate) effort in the world right now, are using their military force and financial power to do it, and are alienating and infuriating millions of Third World people (most of them Muslims) and some of those people are always going to be willing to get a gun or a bomb and fight back. They will fight us wherever we go with our armies and our corporate power. This war will be endless until the Anglo powers stop trying to dominate and rob a very large part of the world of its local strategic resources, particulary oil.

****

Faith-based initiatives? A tempest in a teapot. I agree with you there, Jack.

Subject: RE: BS: The Real Obama
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 01:47 PM

"3.    He has also caved in on the Telecoms."

I think that the Telecom isssue is not dead. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking, but something tells me we will hear more about it when Bush is out of office.

Lord, I hope so!

Subject: RE: BS: The Real Obama
From: Riginslinger
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 01:38 PM

I don't know how you'd figure out who "the real Obama" actually is.

Subject: RE: BS: The Real Obama
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 01:29 PM

Somewhere else, the point is made that "it is a politician that is elected". The way to lead is to get into office and for a politician election is the primary thing.

Regarding Afghan and Pakistan, my impression is that bin Laden and those who shelter and hide him are important figures to any new government. Bush at one time proclaimed his intention to "get bin Laden, whether dead or alive". Later, of course, Bush said, he had lost interest in him, "...didn't consider him to be of importance."

As for faith-based initiatives, it is possible to make a good case for that approach. By and large, it is the churches and the people affiliated with them who know the needs, and who have for a long time been serving the people with those needs. There are churches and denominations out there who make no sectarian demands on the people they serve. Which, to a certain degree, cannot be said of the human and social services. Everyone has an agenda.

"Perhaps the most telling area where Obama has stuck to a focused conception of U.S. national interests is Iraq. Despite the progress in Iraq, despite the possibility of establishing a democracy in the heart of the Arab world, Obama's position is steely—Iraq is a distraction, and the sooner America can reduce its exposure there, the better. I actually wish he were somewhat more sympathetic to the notion that a democratic Iraq would play a positive role in the struggle against Islamic extremism. But his view is certainly focused on America's core security interests and is recognizably realist. Walter Lippmann and George Kennan made similar arguments about Vietnam from the mid-1960s onward." Fareed Zakaria

Thanks for your reponse, Frank. I'm interested in dialogue and more information as well as conjecture. Conjecture is mostly what I've got. :)

Subject: RE: BS: The Real Obama
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 01:20 PM

1.    His preoccupation with military actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We need to get Bin Laden and deny Al Qaeda a safe haven.

2.    His continuation of "faith-based initiatives".

I don't think that this is a big deal either ideologically or in monetary terms. He says that his program participants will not be allowed to to use the money to preach or discriminate in hiring. So his program would be little change from they way it was before Bush.

3.    He has also caved in on the Telecoms.

That was disappointing to me as well. Ultimately it was the Bush administration's fault that the Telecoms were being sued. Hopefully, Obama, once elected will pursue the matter where it should be pursued, through the Justice Department.

Subject: RE: BS: The Real Obama
From: Stringsinger
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 12:58 PM

The problem Obama is going to have are three-fold.

1.    His preoccupation with military
actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan
2.    His continuation of "faith-based
initiatives".
3.    He has also caved in on the Telecoms.

His compromises in which he attempts to bring people of different political
and religious ideas together may be his undoing. You can't force people
to accept ideas that are obnoxious to them. For me, that would be paying
taxes for "faith-based initiatives" and prolonging a war in Afghanistan.
These are highly objectionable to me and I am not alone.

McCain's candidacy makes these point moot in this next election but not after
the election.

Subject: BS: The Real Obama
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 12:50 PM

Barack Obama may well be our next US President. I welcome that prospect and support the agendae I perceive him to hold. Any insights and information that anyone has I'd like to add to what I have gathered to this point. I am interested in knowing more about him, how he is perceived at home and abroad. (I haven't yet read more than excerpts and subsequent reviews from and about his two books; I definitely will.)

Obama seems to be a multi-faceted man and I think we are going to be frequently surprised at where his intellect and his ambitions take him.

We are well aware that the next administration, whoever it is, will be faced with tremendous, almost irresolvable problems, at least in the short term. I hope Americans, as well as the world stage recognizes that fact and are patient with results and alert to nuance and intent.

Here is a recent article that explores Obama:

"Obama never uses the soaring language of Bush's freedom agenda, preferring instead to talk about enhancing people's economic prospects, civil society and—his key word—"dignity." He rejects Bush's obsession with elections and political rights, and argues that people's aspirations are broader and more basic—including food, shelter, jobs. "Once these aspirations are met," he told The New York Times's James Traub, "it opens up space for the kind of democratic regimes we want." This is a view of democratic development that is slow, organic and incremental, usually held by conservatives."

Fareed Zakaria