(Crossposted at My Left Wing.)
One of my favorite bloggers Real History Lisa recently put up a piece here about Jann Wenner’s Obama endorsement.
Rolling Stone’s Endorsement of Obama
It is a typically optimistic article about the undeniably inspiring Barack Obama, but it is written by someone who has a deep and broad understanding regarding the covert history of the PermaGov and its various police forces. In it she quotes Mr. Wenner as having referred to Barack Obama as a “walking hope machine”. I can only chalk it up…this article, Mr, Wenner’s endorsement and the many other pro-Obama encomiums that we see daily on the leftiness blogs…to a bad case of romantic love.
I recognize the symptoms. Been there, done that. On any NUMBER of levels.
But not any more.
Read on for my reasons, if you so desire.
In a manner of speaking JFK, RFK, MLK Jr., Gene McCarthy, Malcolm X, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Paul Wellstone, Mario Cuomo, Bill Bradley, Jerry Brown, Russ Feingold (Lemme see, have I missed any…???) and a number of other Dems have been to one degree or another “walking hope machines” as well.
What makes you think that the PermaGov imperium will allow Obama any more leeway than they did those others?
Here is a lovely, highly instructive read from the wonderful Chris Floyd that went up today on Counterpunch. It is not about Obama. Not directly, at least. It is about our so-called “anti-Iran War” capo di tutti capi in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon.
Admiral Fallon and His Empire
A few excerpts should suffice to make my point.
Fallon himself has long denied the hearsay evidence that he had declared, upon taking over Central Command, that a war on Iran “isn’t going to happen on my watch.” And in fact, the article itself depicts Fallon’s true attitude toward the idea of an attack on Iran right up front, in his own words. After noting Fallon’s concerns about focusing too much on Iran to the exclusion of the other “pots boiling over” in the region, Barnett [The flack who wrote the piece in question in the execrable faux liberal clotheshorse rag Esquire.] presses the point and asks: And if it comes to war? Fallon replies with stark, brutal clarity:
” ‘Get serious,’ the admiral says. ‘These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them.’ “
Nice, eh?
The most remarkable fact about the Esquire article is not its laughable portrayal of the man in charge of mass slaughter and military aggression across a broad swathe of the globe as a shining knight holding back the dogs of war. Nor is it the delusion on the part of Barnett — and much of the commentariat as well – that Bush would ever appoint some kind of secret peacenik as the main commander of his Terror War. (Although it could well be that Fallon will be fired in the end for not groveling obsequiously enough to the Leader, in the required Petraeus-Franks manner. Or indeed, that he might even resign rather than commit what he sees as the tactical error of crushing the Iranian ants at this particular time. But so what? If he quits, someone else who would be happy to do the stomping will be appointed in his place. If Bush decides to attack Iran, then Iran will be attacked. There is no one standing in the way. It’s as simple as that.)
No, what is most noteworthy about the article is that Barnett has given us, unwittingly, one of the clearest pictures yet of the true nature of the American system today. And that system is openly, unequivocally and unapologetically imperial, in every sense of the word, and in every sinew of its structure. For what is Fallon’s actual position? We see him commanding vast armies, both his own and those of local proxies, waging battles to bend nations, regions and peoples to the will of a superpower. We see him meeting with the heads of client kingdoms in his purview, in Cairo, Kabul, Baghdad, Dushanbe: advising, cajoling, demanding, threatening, wading deeply into the internal affairs of the dominated lands, seeking to determine their politics, their economic development, their military structure and foreign policies.
What we are seeing, quite simply, is an imperial proconsul in action. There is no difference whatsoever between Fallon’s role and that of the proconsuls sent out by the Roman emperors to deal with the wars and tribes and client kingdoms of the empire’s far-flung provinces. There too, the emperor could not simply snap his fingers and bend every event to his will; there had to be some cajoling, compromise, occasional setbacks. But behind everything lurked the threat of Roman military power and the promise of ruin and death if Rome’s interests were not accommodated in the end. It is the same with America’s pro-consuls today.
Now let me ask you…by what stretch of a magical reality-dominated imagination can anyone POSSIBLY think that such a treacherously and casually murderous empire will allow a “walking hope machine” to screw up its plans?
An empire that is willing to run THIS game:
Last year, in a similarly gung-ho, brass-awed piece on Washington’s latest imperial satrapy, the Africa Command, Barnett revealed that the Bush Administration was using an American death squad in Somalia to “clean up” areas after a bombing or missile strike. As I wrote in June 2007:
The Esquire piece, by Thomas Barnett, is a mostly glowing portrait of the Africa Command, which, we are told, is designed to wed military, diplomatic, and development prowess in a seamless package, a whole new way of projecting American power: “pre-emptive nation-building instead of pre-emptive regime change,” or as Barnett describes it at another point, “Iraq done right.” Although Barnett’s glib, jargony, insider piece — told entirely from the point of view of U.S. military officials — does contain bits of critical analysis, it is in no way an expose. The new details he presents on the post-invasion slaughter are thus even more chilling, as they are offered simply as an acceptable, ordinary aspect of this laudable new enterprise.
Barnett reveals that the gunship attacks on refugees were just the first part of the secret U.S. mission that was “Africa Command’s” debut on the imperial stage. Soon after the attacks, “Task Force 88, a very secret American special-operations unit,” was helicoptered into the strike area. As Barnett puts it: “The 88’s job was simple: Kill anyone still alive and leave no unidentified bodies behind.”
Some 70,000 people fled their homes in the first wave of the Ethiopian invasion. (More than 400,000 fled the brutal consolidation of the invasion in Mogadishu last spring.) Tens of thousands of these initial refugees headed toward the Kenyan border, where the American gunships struck. When the secret operation was leaked, Bush Administration officials said that American planes were trying to hit three alleged al Qaeda operatives who had allegedly been given sanctuary by the Islamic Councils government decapitated by the Ethiopians. But Barnett’s insiders told him that the actual plan was to wipe out thousands of “foreign fighters” whom Pentagon officials believed had joined the Islamic Courts forces. “Honestly, nobody had any idea just how many there really were,” Barnett was told. “But we wanted to get them all.”
Thus the Kenyan border area — where tens of thousands of civilians were fleeing — was meant to be “a killing zone,” Barnett writes:
America’s first AC-130 gunship went wheels-up on January 7 from that secret Ethiopian airstrip. After each strike, anybody left alive was to be wiped out by successive waves of Ethiopian commandos and Task Force 88, operating out of Manda Bay. The plan was to rinse and repeat ‘until no more bad guys, as one officer put it.
At this point, Barnett — or his sources — turn coy. We know there were multiple gunship strikes; and from Barnett’s account, we know that the “88s” did go in at least once after the initial gunship attack to “kill anyone still alive and leave no unidentified bodies behind.” But Barnett’s story seems to suggest that once active American participation in the war was leaked, the “killing zone” was abandoned at some point. So there is no way of knowing at this point how many survivors of the American attacks were then killed by the “very special secret special-operations unit,” or how many “rinse-and-repeat” cycles the “88s” were able to carry out in what Barnett called “a good plan.”
Nor do we know just who the “88s” killed. As noted, the vast majority of refugees were civilians, just as the majority of the victims killed by the American gunship raids were civilians. Did the “88s” move in on the nomadic tribesmen decimated by the air attack and “kill everyone still alive”? Or did they restrict themselves to killing any non-Somalis they found among the refugees?
I am sorry, Lisa.
All of the Jann Wenners…and indeed, all of the Barack Obamas if indeed he is the real thing…in the world will not suffice to put this Humpty Dumpty together again.
This is a time lapsed photo of an AC-130 gunship flying a circular pattern over Afghanistan, with cannons and guns blazing. The shells are large, every fifth one is a tracer, so you can imagine how many are raining down on the enemy. No one wants to be under this.
If it is willing to crush literally hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent “ants”in its quest to retain imperial power, how can you folks believe that it will not take WHATEVER STEPS ARE NECESSARY to maintain its position at home?
Please.
Let’s get real here.
If Obama is allowed to win…right on up to the Presidency…allowed to (at least appear to) effectively oppose the economic imperialist policies of the corporate-owned PermaGov, and allowed to survive that attempt…then he is not what or who he seems.
I personally believe that he IS largely what he seems.
And I further believe that The PermaGov is in the process of trying to make Hillary Clinton the Dem winner because she has proven…and here’s that lovely experience meme again…she has proven through years of high level service that she will only rock the boat so far and no further.
Clinton vs. McCain?
Win/win for them.
Obama vs. McCain?
UH oh!!!
If Obama wins…and the same forces that are fighting to install Senator Clinton will fight against Obama even harder in a Presidential election, bet on it…but if he wins the Presidency?
Then Plan B comes into effect.
Block and resist, in the hope that he can be taken down Carter-style before he gets too much done. Remember…the Dems in Congress are owned, too. Even if Obama were to win a landslide victory and get a so-called Dream Congress in on his coattails, of who and of what would that Congress consist, really? Joe Lieberman IS a “good” Democrat in that context. Lieberman simply had to come out of his centrist/right closet because that was the job that he was given by the PermaGov forces who really run the game. Do you think that Reid and Pelosi are any different? Not. They just have different PermaGov-assigned tasks that they must perform.
And if that doesn’t work? If Obama actually gains some traction?
You don’t even want to hear about Plan C.
Them ant-killers is nastay!!!
There it is Lisa.
And you know it.
You of ALL people.
What is the real possibility?
Compromise.
Or death/exile. And…where would exile be safe from the same eventual conditions in this Brave New World?
Really.
People wonder why someone as…I don’t want to use the word “radical” because it has been so devalued and distorted over the last few decades… why someone with my generally negative views of what America has become could possibly be “supporting” Hillary Clinton on the leftiness blogs.
I have NOT been supporting her. I have been considering her as the best compromise possible given the situation as I see it.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Which in her heart of hearts appears to me to be exactly what SHE has been thinking.
Since her Wellesley paper on Saul Alinsky 40+ years ago.
In the end, she judged that Alinsky’s “power/conflict model is rendered inapplicable by existing social conflicts” — overriding national issues such as racial tension and segregation. Alinsky had no success in forming an effective national movement, she said, referring dismissively to “the anachronistic nature of small autonomous conflict.”
Putting Alinsky’s Rochester symphony threat into academic language, Rodham found that the conflict approach to power is limited. “Alinsky’s conclusion that the `ventilation’ of hostilities is healthy in certain situations is valid, but across-the-board `social catharsis’ cannot be prescribed,” she wrote.
Interestingly enough, the same article about that paper clarified for me the concept behind her political style of battle as well:
But Alinsky was no mere showman. He was a sometimes brutal seeker of power for others, schooling radicals with maxims such as “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.”
Hmmmmm….
Sound familiar?
I’ll bet it does to Senator Obama.
And it will to Senator McCain as well.
Bet on it.
So there we are, Lisa.
REAL real history.
I have seen the imperium crush dreams for all of my adult life.
Ruthlessly, as if they too were mere ants.
And I expect nothing less this time.
The definition of insanity?
Continuing to expect a particular result to stem from a given set of actions even after it has been conclusively proven that said result never, EVER happens in that situation.
You want real change?
The system will have to collapse first.
Totally and absolutely.
Be careful what you wish for.
You may indeed get it.
Pandora awaits just beyond the lid of that box.
Bet on it.
Clinton/Obama in ’08.
An END to childish dreams.
And a beginning of the possibility for gradual change.
Too gradual?
Could be.
I just don’t like the other options very much.
So it goes.
Later…
AG
