A couple of days ago, Barack Obama published an oped about his plans to “put pressure” on Iran.
From Obama’s website, here’s his rationale for “putting pressure”:
The decision to wage a misguided war in Iraq has substantially strengthened Iran, which now poses the greatest strategic challenge to U.S. interests in the Middle East in a generation. Iran supports violent groups and sectarian politics in Iraq, fuels terror and extremism across the Middle East and continues to make progress on its nuclear program in defiance of the international community. Meanwhile, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that Israel must be “wiped off the map.”
It’s all Neo-Con bullshit.
1) “Iran supports violent groups in Iraq” — yeah, and the NYT reports this morning that the US is funneling money to Sunni tribal forces. Link. The Iranian’s good buddies got elected the GOVERNMENT in Iraq in elections we imposed; not surprising they help them. We’re just mucking around in the Iraqi civil war.
The only suggestion that Iran is arming anyone is coming from the same US military flacks who want us to believe “the surge is working.”
2) State Department reports consistently said Iran had pretty much got out of the terror business — until the Cheney Administration started cooking the facts. Familiar? Even now, the definition of “supporting terrorism” is that they help Shi’a movements in the region. You might too if you were a bunch of Baptists caught in a sea of hostile Roman Catholics. Sorry, just trying to use a little imagination.
Israelis, and U.S. Neo-Cons, think Iranian assistance to Hezbollah is terrorism. Many Lebanese, including many Christians, think Iranian aid to Hezbollah has helped Shi’a, long excluded as “inferiors” from the Lebanese polity, find a voice. Depends where you are sitting.
- Mohamed ElBaradei of the United Nations says Iran is cooperating in showing that its nuclear development is peaceful. Remember ElBaradei? He’s the guy who insisted Iraq didn’t have WMD?
- Ahmadinejad is a bombastic asshole. And what do we have for a President? No way the Iranian president can accomplish the destruction of Israel — and some like Juan Cole have said that’s a mistranslation anyway.
Obama is playing the warmonger; on this point, he’s no better than the Neo-Cons.
Cross posted at Happening Here.
Talking about a nation as a threat does not amount to actually advocating for war with that nation. As I recall, Obama is in favor of sanctions, disbursement, bilateral talks, and other tools of diplomatic resolution.
You can say that pointing out that you think a nation is a threat is the same as declaring war, but there is a lot of clear water between calling for diplomatic negotiations and pressure and calling for bombs.
Obama is repeating the lying talking points used by those who want bombs. What better way to empower the warmongers? This serves even better than outright support because it cements a false notion of the situation coming from what the media portrays as “opposing sides of the debate.” He is very complicit indeed.
No wonder his percentages are falling.
This brings me far closer to Edwards, but he’s too close to the same neo-conmen, too.
I hope he’s not going to vet this idiocy.
Edwards has made the obligatory pilgrimages to AIPAC meetings, I believe, but as far as I know, he hasn’t yet aped their talking points 100%, the way Hillary and Obama have.
So at this point, I will vote neither for Hillary nor Obama if either is the nominee, but I would vote for Edwards.
Hillary and Obama would just run the Kerry campaign all over again: they can fight the war on terror more competently. Hillary would certainly lose, and it’s likely Obama would, too.
You just bought into the gobbltygook propaganda language. Is this the first year you’ve payed attention to politics? Politicians have been saying this kind of mealy-mouth stuff forever, they say slightly non-committal things like what Obama’s stating which gives them wiggle room later on when they let you think you misconstrued them. “Don’t quote me” quoting them.
Sorry to sound harsh, but don’t believe the hype!
that if we attack them, they can defend themselves. A serious threat indeed.
Quake in fear.
that we are no longer their enemy…by consistent action over a period of years…then they are and will remain OUR enemy.
We must not forget that.
And we must protect ouyrselves in SOME manner.
How?
Without further cementing the idea that we are out to rule the world?
Ay…there’s the rub!!!
AG
than Hillary Clinton.
Obama managed in less than 100 words to hit almost every neocon bullshit talking point proving he’s just as blindly ignorant as they are. If he can’t think clearly, reasonably and logically on the Mideast he has no business being president nor does anyone who spouts this garbage. More imperial thinking at it’s worst.
This makes me want to be Cher in Moonstruck where she slaps Nic Cage and says, ‘Snap out of it’…to everyone who repeats this stupidity.
His statement makes me wonder if Obama even gets that Iran is a Shiite-run country, and it makes sense that they would be supporting the Shiites in the civil war in Iraq. And the US put that all into place.
There is no solution in Iraq (political or otherwise, no matter how much the Dems want to pretend there is), and attacking Iran can only make the mess worse. Time for some of these candidates to start calling it for what it is, not for a wider war to drive the US further into debt and dishonor.
Where’s all this ‘hope’ he’s always talking about…sounds more like he’s hoping his tough talk will make him sound tough and decisive and preznitdential.
I posted this as a comment at a dKos thread boosting Obama. Hope you won’t mind.
I posted what, a year ago, saying that Obama is DLC 100%. He’s proof positive that the DLC is running 3 candidates, just to be sure they win: Hillary, Barack and John.
Freedom of choice. Hah!
Where’s the justice? Americans don’t have a conceptual or visceral grasp of what justice is. The Big Media candidates are one in the same. Do you get that America?
Look, even at the Huffington Post, a reputable website for news and views, Arianna, as astute as she is, has bought it. One of today’s front pages had the 3 top DLC choices as the only choices allowed the voting public, not Kucinich, no Gravel. With a headline titled “This Is It” as if we have no choice but those Arianna wants to show us. FUCK OFF ARIANNA, sorry to lose respect for you, you’ve been pretty good to us progressives.
See you in the prison camps . . .
It shouldn’t surprise one that Arianna has her limitations, given that she was once a Republican.
I wonder when, if ever, the rest of the Blogosphere will catch up to people like Arthur Silber:
Let the Mourning Bells Toll, for This Is How the Republic Ends…
It’s remarkable how even traces of the barest elements of radical thought have disappeared from progressive discourse, specifically the idea that the basic problem is that the system is rigged to reproduce the power structures that keep the ruling elite in control, as opposed to our leaders having good intentions, but not understanding our desires well enough, or sadly making the same political miscalculations again and again.
Five will get you a thousand that this speech was written by Obama’s DLC consultants to make him a liberal hawk and thus more theoretically palatable to “moderate and conservative” voters. It’s pure horse manure. It won’t win him any votes, nor will it help him with the punditocracy inside the Beltway. Besides which, most Americans do not want another war. All this does is enable Bush to pull the trigger.
We are in the hands of fools and opportunists.
…pandering fools…what’s worse- that he’s just saying this to make himself sound tough or worse if actually believes this crap-then we’re in even bigger trouble.
it just seems to confirm what I fear: That no one anywhere near or with a chance at high office intends to end the war, ever.
I am afraid we are looking at the logic of previous investment. Having screwed the pooch in Iraq, we are going to flee forward into Iran. It is not such a good strategy–consider how well it served the Germans in two World Wars–but for a government in the throws of war fever compounded by economic crisis it is surprisingly inevitable.
Or consider that RIGHT NOW Iran is a more difficult objective than Iraq, with better allies. We are moving from the foolish to the wildly desperate.
But the US has an affinity for tar babies. Look at how long it took to get out of Vietnam, where there was nothing (no strategic objective) at stake. There was no war easier to walk away from than that one, and yet it was nearly impossible.
The desperation of Bushco is easy to understand. However, it is now matched by a corresponding desperation at the top. Why? When the economic implosion (Greater Depression) sets in next year, the US will lose its ECONOMIC access to oil. Military access, with the debacle in Iraq, is endangered right now.
Desperation.
So the war won’t end, ever. What does that mean? It means we are on a death trip. Murder/suicide. It means that the war will not end while the US exists.
And that has implications. Everyone should be thinking a step ahead.
“So the war won’t end, ever. What does that mean? It means we are on a death trip. Murder/suicide. It means that the war will not end while the US exists.
Gaianne, it just seems that you are exactly correct in your observation. We know the “leaders” of our economic oligarchy here in the US are doing this to funnel tax dollars into their hands for little or no work on their part, war industries are very profitable (ask the 2 sisters in SC who billed over 20 million dollars for nuts, bolts and washers). But they are blindly insane. I’d gladly waste my tax dollars if we were building public transportation, zero-carbon renewable energy technology, or single-payer health care for all, but the “They” are not. They are threatening war and occupation, going to the lowest fear level in a human, and playing the strings with full strokes. They are INSANE. You want vast riches? Go Green! But no, it has to be war worship.
The future, if we somehow save our planet from pollution and overheating, will be a world of sharing resources, and efficiency.
Obama’s a fucking clown.
Joe Leiberman is his best buddy and mentor in the Senate and there is no way in hell you could get me to vote for that smarmy motherfucker.