He held his cards close to his breast, this Barack Obama.\u00a0 Rather than talking program he talked Change and Together, and his incredible charisma did the rest.\u00a0 Now a nominee.<\/p>\n
But cards must be shown.\u00a0 Democracy is about transparency, including of what the candidates stand for.\u00a0 He is surrounded by advisors, there are leaks, and he is invited, meaning summoned, to very focused groups to tell them where he stands.<\/p>\n
Onesuch group is AIPAC, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee,also known as “the Jewish lobby”.\u00a0 And what Obama told them and other American Jewish groups is very far from Change and very close to conventional Together.<\/p>\n
If anywhere a change is needed it is in the USA-Israel connection.\u00a0 That Obama promises to stand by Israel militarily is understandable.\u00a0 A situation can arise where the viability, the very survival, is at stake.\u00a0 Alliances are for that purpose.<\/p>\n
Quite another matter is to back key political positions of the Israeli leadership, including “Undivided Jerusalem, Capital of Israel for all Eternity”.\u00a0 It is not.\u00a0 East Jerusalem is the seat of the Haram-al-Sharif with Mosque No. 3 in importance in the Muslim world,and home to Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Israel is the child of a biblical myth of the Promised Land for aChosen People, in 1620 copied by the Mayflower Pilgrims settling in today’s Massachusetts and set US policy on a track parallel to that of Israel with the same, compatible interests.<\/p>\n
Israel is also the child of a distant past reality, mainly under occupation, and of the Zionist dream of becoming a home for Jews everywhere.\u00a0 Today’s Israel of May 1948 does not have UN Security Council legitimacy, but the result of a unilateral declaration of independence, followed by an ethnic cleansing of 711,000 Palestinians,85% of the Palestinians in that Israel.<\/p>\n
The Zionist program stands today at 41% of world Jewry, and settlement and housing expansion continues.\u00a0 The present Prime Minister, Olmert, a follower of that evil genius Yabotinsky, their spiritual-political father, stands by the Zionist dream.<\/p>\n
Obama’s declaration draws no line, shows no new opening, no future beyond more of the same.\u00a0 And that was the end of the support form him in the Arab\/Muslim constituency, crucial for one who is de facto alsorunning for the world presidency.<\/p>\n
Savvy people volunteer their wisdom, don’t you se, he has to say that to win the elections, he cannot incur the risk of having the AIPAC machine mobilized against him, as effective as that other key lobby,the NRA (National Rifle Association), derailing candidates, unseating incumbents.\u00a0 Once in power, the wisdom goes, he’ll show his real cards.\u00a0 Nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n
Maybe.\u00a0 But also maybe not.\u00a0 Once said about Hitler, he won, and stuck to his words.\u00a0 True, FDR himself, Roosevelt, played this game, took the USA into the war he, like Wilson one world war before him, wanted to win in spite of his promise never to do so “unless we are attacked”.\u00a0Then that attack was provoked, 7 December 1941 on Pearl Harbor, a Day of Infamy, but also a Day of Deceit,\u00a0 The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, the title of the book by Robert B. Stinnett, telling the story.<\/p>\n
Can Obama play anything similar to such games and get away with it?\u00a0No, he is too much outside the general mold, too vulnerable.\u00a0 Roosevelt was arch-American, Obama is a deviant American now leaning over backwards to prove his normalcy.<\/p>\n
But there is still worse in his foreign policy.\u00a0 McCain wants a League of democracies, of like-minded nations that can respond to crises unimpeded by UN Security Council vetoes. An expanded NATO in other words, not crippling but killing the UN.\u00a0 This is what we would expect from McCain.\u00a0 But the idea has been supported by such key Obama foreign policy advisors as Ivo Daalder and Anthony Lake.\u00a0 Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary general warns very strongly against the idea in an article in The Guardian.\u00a0 Nothing is gained by isolating Russia and China, maybe also India, and the members and observers in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in general.\u00a0 The UN should be strengthened, not killed, and it may also be that those countries have important arguments.\u00a0 Why not listen, discuss, learn, teach, work together?<\/p>\n
But, a third point, the idea would fit with Obama’s oft-repeated idea of more war on terror, including the possibility of strikes inside Pakistan not asking Islamabad.\u00a0 Like for the Middle East there is nothing from Obama of analysis of the roots of the conflict underlying”terrorism” and what could possibly be done to solve it.\u00a0 One senses that what he has against the war in Iraq is that the USA does not win,whereupon he goes for something even more unwinnable.<\/p>\n