Barack Obama has been likening Hillary 'The Hawk' Clinton (above) to George Bush. On NBC tv he said, a propos of Clinton's threat to "obliterate" Iran,
"It's not the language that we need right now, and I think it's language that's reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and sabre-rattling and tough talk, and in the meantime we make a series of strategic decisions that actually strengthen Iran."
Obama is absolutely right to liken Clinton to Bush. And he's also right to say that neoconservative policy in the Middle East has actually strengthened Iran: it's a great irony that the very same people who are beating the drum so loudly for war against Iran today were the very same people who told us that Iraq was the biggest threat to world peace five years ago. Iran's strengthened position today is a lot to do with the US foreign policy of the last five years: and it beggars belief that those who told such porkies over Iraq have the nerve to make any public statements on Iran whatsoever.
For American voters the choice is clear. As far as foreign policy goes there is not a cigarette paper's width between Hillary the Hawk and George Bush. Nor for that matter is there much difference between John 'Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran' McCain and George Bush, (indeed McCain is, if anything, even more of a warmonger than the present incumbent of the White House, incredible though it sounds).
If Americans really do want something different from the last eight years they should vote for Obama. And if they want something very different, they should vote for this man.
Meanwhile it seems the smears against Obama are getting more and more ridiculous. What will they come up with next I wonder? News that Obama once broke wind at college? Or that his former girlfrend's friend's cousin's best friend's brother-in-law once said that he thought Malcolm X had a point?
7 comments:
Jeremiah Wright swiping the wife of one of the members of his church, while despicable, is no big deal for me with regards to Senator Obama.
Jeremiah Wright, while a great raving racist loony, actually believes what he says, and went a mile and a half out of his way to prove it.
In Obama's talks on the subject, (the "More Perfect Union" speech, one press conference), there has been a lot of spin, where in the press conference he explained that he really didn't mean what he said in the speech.
However, the photograph of Senator Obama's friend and fellow board member William Ayers wiping his shoes on the flag isn't winning Senator Obama any friends.
Again, I don't like the people Senator Obama has surrounded himself with in the course of his adult life. I don't like Tony Rezko. I don't like Jeremiah Wright, I don't like Raila Odinga, I don't like William Ayers, and I don't like Bernadine Dohrn.
I don't like his Senate voting record either, but his acquaintances and companions provide more information than his voting record.
It's almost as ridiculous as that with Obama - last week they were examining footage of him scratching his face and wondering if he was giving the finger!
What fascinates me is (a) the elasticity of the word 'friend' when it comes to securing guilt by association for Senator Obama. I have sat on boards and received assistance from people who, subsequently, sadly, were found to have broken the law. However, they were not my friends even in the most elastic, extrovert sense, simply colleagues, part of a broad social network; and, (b) presumably Senator Obama has many friends, many of whom are no doubt upstanding citizens, who bake cakes for the Girl Guides, campaign on Darfur and look after elderly aunts but we never hear about them. It makes you rather despair of human nature...this dive to the barrel's bottom.
P.S. Jeremiah Wright is a (former?) friend and mentor of Obama's ; and, while we can repudiate some of his beliefs about race, we can try to understand where his 'conspiracy theory' mythologising comes from: a bitter history of exclusion that continues to be reinforced by economic inequality, coupled with a sense of communal fragmentation which cannot simply all be blamed on 'white' America: actual injustice linked to a sense of guilty failure is a potent mixture.
Clinton has pledged to nuke Iran if it threatens Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates, which first alone has given the Clintons eighteen million dollars and counting. Yet these are the countries that are holding the West to ransom by means of oil prices.
Where nuclear matters are concerned, our response to them should be our own civil nuclear power programme, not providing them with a shield of nuclear weapons against a country which not only has none of its own, but has no cause or desire to attack Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. Clinton is despicably putting into people's heads the idea that Iran might wish to do such a thing, on absolutely no basis whatever.
Obama has serious flaws. But Americans, if Clinton is the nominee, then please vote for McCain.
Anyone see 'Mars attacks'? Remember the scene where one martian stands on another's shoulders in a long gown, and they bluff their way into the White House, disguised as a glamorous women with and incredibly fixed grimace of a face - the spitting image of Hillary in that photo.
Lot was said about Jeremiah Wright and his speeches. But, what I miss is a calm analysis of what he said and what is so outrageous about his statements. He spoke openly on the issues that are either inconvenient or not understood by general public. Inflammatory? But that's what is needed for the masses to wake up.
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