by Bob Fitrakis
The Columbus Free Press (February 28 2010)
The American people voted out the policies of George W Bush’s
administration. Voters turned their back on W’s war policies and torture;
repudiated his Orwellian anti-environmentalism and demanded green jobs;
and rejected his bailout of the big investment bankers that destroyed our
economy.
Then, in came the political savior – a seemingly untainted junior
first-term senator from Illinois.
The shiny knight was distinguished from other Democratic candidates like
Hillary Clinton and John Kerry because as a state senator he had made “the
speech” opposing the illegal attack on Iraq.
But did he ride in on a Trojan horse?
It’s now clear Obama favors the same failed policies as the Bushites.
Obama embraces the same “the surge is working” mantra, simply shifting the
location from Iraq to Afghanistan. He echoes W’s nonsensical rhetoric that
the massive US forces in Iraq and being dispensed to Afghanistan are
“fighting for our freedom”.
To make his presidency even more absurd, his war-fo- oil policies are
compounded by a bold initiative for building nukes throughout the United
States. Eerily reminiscent of Bill Clinton and the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the supposedly eco-friendly “green” Obama, once
firmly embraced by progressive Democrats, decides to go full metal nuclear.
As Free Press Senior Editor Harvey Wasserman writes, the Obama plan is to
spend $645 million in lipstick for a dead radioactive pig.
Meanwhile, the New York Times tells us that there actually is a Green New
Deal – in China. The Times notes that “China bolted past competitors in
Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the United States last year to become the
world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even
further this year”.
Moreover, “China has also leap-frogged the West in the last two years to
emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels”, the Times
writes. The Times concludes that “… the West may someday trade its
dependence on oil from the Mideast for reliance of solar panels, wind
turbines, and other gear manufactured in China”.
While the Chinese “dominate renewable energy technologies”, according to
the Times, Obama is coddling back CEOs and cutting billion of dollars in
checks to the financiers.
Obama pushed the largest corporate bailout plan in US history to further
reward his supporters at Goldman Sachs. Opensecrets.org documents that
Goldman Sachs employees were the second largest cash donors to Obama’s
election campaign coffers. It’s easy to understand why. They had plenty of
money to corrupt change and hope and turn it into the Bush status quo,
supporting robber barons.
The Sunday, February 7 2010 New York Times details how Goldman Sachs
helped tank the US economy. As the Times notes: “Goldman stood to gain
from the housing markets’ implosion because in late 2006, the firm had
begun to make huge trades that would pay off if the mortgage market
soured”. Those bets were insured by AIG, now the recipient of $180 billion
subsidy courtesy of US taxpayers. Mainly, AIG served as little more than a
conduit for the casino capitalists at Goldman Sachs who bet heavy on
sinking the US housing market and the dreams of homeownership and equity
for millions of Americans.
In the same way Bill Clinton sold US working people and their deluded
union leaders down the road during the 1992 election by shipping jobs to
Mexico and China, Obama has done little to relocalize an American
industrial base and re-hire laid off American workers. Obama continues the
Reagan-era policies of so-called “free trade” that sees American
manufacturing as a dirty word. The only manufacturing job is seen as a Red
job.
The majority of Americans voted for Roosevelt, but instead got the third
Bush administration. This has caused some journalists, like Wayne Madsen,
to explore Obama’s CIA connections through Business International
Corporation (BIC), a company generally regarded as a CIA proprietary.
Obama spent a year after graduation from Columbia University working fro
BIC. Madsen reports that Obama wrote for two BIC publications, Financing
Foreign Operations and Business International Money Report, the latter a
weekly newsletter.
Obama’s early ties to the CIA help to explain the reprising of the second
Bush administration. Take for example the recent decision by Obama Justice
Department attorneys not to recommend punishment for infamous Bush
administration lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee.
The initial Justice Department investigation correctly found that Yoo and
Bybee had committed “professional misconduct” in issuing their notorious
series of torture memos dating from August 2002. Their bizarre
reinterpretation of torture that allowed anything short of acts leading to
eminent death due to failure of major body organs has tainted the US
reputation throughout the world.
Yoo and Bybee’s roles in conspiring with the Bush administration to cover
up torture and provide legal cover for Bush and Cheney to say their
torture techniques were “sanctioned by law”, or at least “counsel”, were
all part of a fundamental sea change in American history.
If an attorney told you that it was all right to punch your spouse,
waterboard your mother-in-law, and rip out your children’s fingernails
because it’s not going to kill them – you would realize it was
unacceptable legal advice and that your attorney was violating
professional ethics and advising you that criminal action is allowed.
Obama signaled, prior to taking office, that he didn’t think anyone in the
Bush administration should be criminally prosecuted for the “enhanced
interrogation” program.
Obama’s first year in office has served notice on the American people that
the policies and precedents set by George W Bush will continue. Obama sees
himself as the great compromiser. In reality, he’s the great continuation
- the Trojan horse.
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