A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen FordClick the flash player above to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary
The arrival of the Obama administration has crippled the U.S. anti-war movement, which has neither the fortitude nor political depth to confront imperialism with a Black face. The Out of Iraq caucus on Capitol Hill might as well call itself the Out of Action caucus, since it can’t figure out a way to respond to President Obama’s expanding military budgets and wars. National anti-war organizations cling to the fiction that Obama is really seeking a military withdrawal from Iraq. “The anti-war movement has hit rock-bottom because of its failure to challenge this particular president, an imperialist with charm, a warmonger with a winning smile.
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First Black President Defeats U.S. Antiwar Movement
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Obama pretends he wants peace, and anti-war members of Congress pretend to believe him.”
In the streets, on the2009campuses and on Capitol Hill, the anti-war movement is no longer moving anywhere. It has been crippled by the Obama Effect, the deep and wide delusion that imperialism with a Black face is somehow – something else. When a movement disbands itself without coming even close to achieving its objective, that is a defeat. We can now definitively state that, for the time being, the U.S. anti-war movement has been defeated – not by Republicans, but by Barack Obama’s Democratic Party.
A recent article in
The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, relates a meeting among staffers for Out of Iraq caucus leaders Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey. They were supposed to come up with a response to President Obama’s announcement that he would immediately send 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, with lots more to come. Obama is determined to leave at least 50,000 troops in Iraq for an open-ended period of time under the guise of “training” the Iraqis, and is rapidly merging Afghanistan and Pakistan into one theater of war, called Af-Pak. Clearly, the Obama administration is expanding its war in Af-Pak, and has no intention of ending the U.S. military presence in Iraq – ever. The staffers for the Out of Iraq caucus leaders spent two hours trying to come up with a position. They failed.
For all intents and purposes, the Out of Iraq caucus has ceased to function. Black Congresswomen Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters have at times shown great courage in the face of stupendous odds. But they will not confront Barack Obama, even when he expands the arenas of war, claims that combat soldiers are merely trainers and advisers, and pushes through a war budget that is bigger than any of George Bush’s war budgets. Obama pretends he wants peace, and anti-war members of Congress pretend to believe him.
“The anti-war movement has hit rock-bottom because of its failure to challenge this particular president.”
Another Capitol Hill publication, the
Congressional Quarterly, recently ran an article on the low demonstration turn-out and money woes of the anti-war movement. A March 21
st rally at the Pentagon drew pitiful numbers of demonstrators, only 3,000 according to police. Organizers claim they can’t raise money these days, and have been forced to cut staff. A spokesperson for ANSWER, the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition, said the peace movement is seeing the impact of the “promises the Obama campaign made.” Outgoing United for Peace and Justice leader Leslie Cagan says her money people aren’t giving because “It’s enough for many of them that Obama has a plan to end the war and that things are moving in the right direction.”
But Obama has no plans or intention to end his wars except on imperialism’s own terms – which means never-ending war, just like under Bush – a basic truth that United for Peace and Justice refuses to recognize or admit. ANSWER organizers also fail to confront the Obama White House head-on. The Congressional Quarterly article concludes that the anti-war movement is suffering from the results of “its own success.” That’s absolute nonsense. The anti-war movement has hit rock-bottom because of its failure to challenge this particular president, an imperialist with charm, a warmonger with a winning smile. Obama has whipped them, but good. And they will stay whipped, until they stand up like men, like women, like leaders. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to
www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
by michael hureaux perezThe name on the door, and the family in the White House has changed. We have a president who speaks in complete, grammatically correct sentences. But with more than 800 US military bases around the planet, and spending more on things military than the other 95% of the globe’s population combined, America is the same old arrogant bully. Dr. King once said that a nation which spends more on things military than on human uplift is doomed. If he were alive today he might add, no matter the skin color of its leaders.
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Eshu’s blues: The Black President of the American Empire
by michael hureaux perez
The man who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news.—Bertolt Brecht
President Obama has now been to Baghdad and the great white way of U.S. leftism is busy choking up over the footage of the Prez with “our troops.” For those of you out there who don’t understand what an imperialist doggie the new president is just yet, here he is in living color, boots on, Clint Eastwood bravado at the ready. If you are still “feeling” Obama, you must accept the fact that this man went into Baghdad, waded through the wreckage from a civil war our U.S. foreign policy deliberately created, and grins Kool-aid smiles when asked about the agony this “civilization” we live with has caused. According to the president, this mayhem he celebrates is “success beyond our wildest dreams.” Why, not even Meyer Lansky could have put that better.
One point two million people dead, four million displaced, the infrastructure of an autonomous people destroyed. Four thousand U.S. troops dead. Thousands more troops maimed physically and psychically. Billions and billions more dollars to be spent on an ongoing, residual occupation that has no purpose or moral base other than the sheer exercise of raw, naked power, the crime for which people were convicted at Nuremburg. The imperial project is pursued regardless of how the waste of material resource affects our people here in the United States in a time of great economic crisis. We’re told there’s not enough jobs, there’s not enough money to fund the further education of people who need jobs. There’s not enough money for public health. There’s not enough resource for mental health. Housing is in short supply while undersold housing stands vacant and tent cities abound.
“The occupation has no purpose or moral base other than the sheer exercise of raw, naked power.”
But there’s enough money for the corporate software military establishment, the bankers and arms manufacturers who profit off of this bloody empire, these software barons of international piracy. This piracy that runs the world, this piracy that wants to roar with outrage at the teeny, tiny gaggle of piracy off the coast of Somalia, wants to steal, and kill, and maim and irradiate both children and veterans with depleted uranium shell casings, and lecture the world on responsibility and morality. And we let them do it. We let them get away with it. In the words of Dalton Trumbo, in the introduction to his classic
Johnny Got His Gun, instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast.
Barack Obama says it’s time for the Iraqi people to take responsibility for their future. Barack Obama does this as leader of the United States, which has gone out of its way to destroy any autonomous future Iraq was inching towards for itself. In taking such a stance, he has joined a violent, arrogant and Eurocentric chorus led by war criminals like the Clinton and Bush dynasties. Barack Obama knows full well that the U.S. conducted this atrocity for no reason apart from imperial venture, and at this moment, he declares it to have been a sacrifice made for the honor of our so-called civilization. Barack Obama rises to tasks demanded of him by the Warlords of the Empire, their eyes glinting with the malicious demand of the self-satisfied mercenary that their victim rise to the moment and assume responsibility for a bloodying that the victim never asked for. This is success beyond their wildest dreams. This is the world that capitalism wants to have.
“Barack Obama rises to tasks demanded of him by the Warlords of the Empire.”
2600 years after the defeat of Greek democracy by the Spartans, the democratic impulse which western capital claims to defend can’t find its ass with both hands in the great capitalist center. Five centuries after the early days of the capitalist
system, with no global threat that compels the development of an imperial order, western capital still chooses imperialism. Western capital chooses imperialism over its own financial solvency. Western capital chooses imperialism over the tattered remnants of its own democratic integrity.
We’re dealing with spoiled children with high tech toys of destruction, and it is time for any anti-war movement worth a damn in this country to begin to figure out how we can make the political culture that exists in this country learn to live with the rest of the world, whatever it costs the imperial order to forfeit the empire, and whatever it costs we who speak out in opposition to that order. We have to pledge, as the Declaration of Independence put it so eloquently, “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” We have to form a new independent political movement, based in the organizations that still exist at the behest of the working class majority in this country and their allies among critical and revolutionary thinking entrepreneurs, a movement that is willing to fight, and even die if necessary, in a battle for the revolutionary promise of democracy.
For all the flowery rhetoric of themselves or their charming Golden Child in the White House, the Obamians are not up to this needful task.
“House slaves like Powell, Rice, and Obama have been “skinnin’ and grinnin’ for a long time.”
You can tell because many of them are shocked at Obama’s decision to defend the CIA’s right to spy on the people of this country. The Obamians feel “betrayed.” The truth is that they lied to themselves about who Obama and the “democrats” are, and many of them are lying still. They believe that if a man allowed to rise within the ranks of the imperial order is black, that the system is more just. The experience of Colin Powell’s miserable lies at the UN six years ago taught them nothing. The brutal farce led by the U.S. State Department under the tutelage of the mercenary Condoleezza Rice taught them nothing. The hard cold fact is that house slaves are allowed a larger role in the global plantation that the imperial order forces upon the so-called “underdeveloped world,” and house slaves like Powell, Rice, and Obama have been “skinnin’ and grinnin’ for a long time. Many more will be outed as the struggle against the imperial order takes larger shape.
The question of anti-imperialism is decisive in this political battle in the United States and internationally. The question of anti-imperialism is decisive, because it is the question of race and class writ large. Capital will not forego the so-called rights of the nations at the center of the world’s economy to live at the expense of those at the bottom of the world economy, most of whom are impoverished and exhausted peoples of color. Capital cannot and will not exist without imperialism. And the dreams of the so-called anti-war movement in this country, the geniuses at MoveOn, the deluded individuals at United for Peace and Justice, who believe that Obama offers “a different approach to imperialism,” and the Center for American Progress, all of these people believe they can ride the tiger’s back. They will wind up on the inside of the beast. No wild thing ever voluntarily cuts its claws.
“All of these people believe they can ride the tiger’s back. They will wind up on the inside of the beast.”
The rest of the world knows. The imperial leadership of the United States is sowing the dragon’s teeth of global terror. It may claim otherwise, but its actions belie its words. People in Pakistan, who at this moment are evading President Obama’s Predator drone attacks; people of Iran, who have seen Barack Obama’s current “good cop, bad cop” routine come from many a U.S. president; people on the Gaza Strip, who watched family members die as the president-elect solemnly declared during the Israeli siege that “there is only one president at a time.”
It is a terrible thing when a man as intelligent as Barack Obama, and the people who support his imperial policies choose to use cunning over critical reason. It is a terrible thing when legions of people believe that words measured in political expediency are the only available form of political discourse acceptable in a country that supposedly upholds a democratic tradition of expression. It is a terror that so many have eyes but will not see. Terror is terror. If humanity survives this period, history will record that United States politics were overtaken by a layer of what used to be called “good Germans,” or people who denied the terrifying evidence provided by their own senses in the years during the holocaust directed against the Jews of Europe. The game is the same, but the name is changed.
But, oh, as the poet said, the shark has pearly teeth, dear. And they’re there for all to see.
BAR columnist michael hureaux perez is a writer, musician and teacher who lives in southwest Seattle, Washington. He is a longtime contributor to small and alternative presses around the country and performs his work frequently. Email to: tricksterbirdboy@yahoo.com
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
This weekend’s pitifully small peace demonstration in the nation’s capitol reveals a near-totally demobilized U.S. Left mired in such timidity and delusion, activists fear to mention Barack Obama’s name when denouncing the wars he so aggressively prosecutes. "The new president, who makes no secret of his intention to continue the previous administration’s war of terror, escaped serious scrutiny and the condemnation he deserves." Forgetting that power concedes nothing without a demand, the Left shrinks from making real demands of the actual president in power.
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Freedom Rider: Opposing Obama
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“Anti-war activists are loathe to speak Obama’s name, even as they condemn the endless warfare that he advocates."
Six years ago, on March 20, 2003, the United States began its invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since that date more than one million Iraqis have died, four million are refugees, and 4,200 American soldiers have lost their lives. America committed a terrible crime against the Iraqi people and against all of humanity, a crime that continues until the present day.
The occupation is ongoing, despite the election and inauguration of a new president. President Barack Obama always made it clear that he would never end the war, instead choosing to draw down the number of troops and always reserving the right to leave a “residual force.”
In spite of his clear declaration of continuing war and occupation, Obama was able to claim the mantle of an anti-war candidate. The anti-war movement was already demoralized by Democratic Party betrayal, and repeated corporate media lies about the true nature of America’s military aggression. The Obama fundraising and marketing juggernaut, in conjunction with hatred of the Bush regime, allowed the damning with faint praise adulation and the making of a phony hero for peace.
“Obama always made it clear that he would never end the war,”
This delusion has made an already failing progressive movement nearly useless. So much so that anti-war activists are loathe to speak Obama’s name, even as they condemn the endless warfare that he advocates. The recent March on the Pentagon, sponsored by the Answer Coalition, is a case in point. Speaker after speaker condemned the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by referring to “the government” or “the United States” without saying the name of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The march displayed both good news and bad. It is good that appeals to shun Answer by capitulationist factions were ignored. It is always good when citizens openly oppose their government’s aggression. Yet there was an insufficient willingness to name the current war criminal in chief, Barack Obama, as the promoter of state sponsored terrorism.
At the March on the Pentagon, t-shirts and placards urged the impeachment and/or arrest of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The new president, who makes no secret of his intention to continue the previous administration’s war of terror, escaped serious scrutiny and the condemnation he deserves. What should have been pointed attacks on Obama policy were instead mealy mouthed apologies. Instead of being educated about the rights and obligations of a conscious citizenry, the crowd was told to encourage Obama, to help him make the right decisions. Former attorney Lynne Stewart was a rare exception, excoriating Obama by name for continuing warfare and for withdrawing from the upcoming United Nations conference on racism and dismissing any discussion of reparations for slavery.
“They conveniently forget that power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Some activists hope against all logic and the lessons of history that Obama will behave in a way that politicians never do. They expect him to defy the dictates of the true rulers who put him and all other politicians in power. They conveniently forget that power concedes nothing without a demand. They forget that meaningful change has come about only when an active and engaged movement makes demands on people who never want to serious consider changing the agendas set by their benefactors.
While not altogether successful, this first mass action of the Obama administration may be an important beginning for peace activists. The numbers of truly conscious people willing to take on Obama may be small now, but continued confrontation will soon be seen as a possibility and then as necessity, not as a departure from misguided notions of political etiquette.
“The numbers of truly conscious people willing to take on Obama may be small now, but continued confrontation will soon be seen as a possibility and then as necessity.”
This administration must be taken to task over numerous issues. Obama has already said that he will consider taxing health benefits and make unspecified changes to the entitlement system, our only safety net. Americans should take to the streets because of the prison industrial complex, they should take to the streets to demand single payer health care and they should take to the streets about a military budget that is larger than that of every other nation on earth combined. If they did, they would save themselves as individuals and save their nation too.
The stakes are that high. Being patient, giving the brother a chance, or being seen as racist are poor excuses for silence. Timidity will mean the death of what little good is left in this country.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com.
