Tag Archives: obama

Political Rants

Hostage to history.

I’m going to rant about something that has really gotten under my skin this week, and I want to say up front that I am not raising this in defense of Obama’s foreign policy so much as in response to a thirty-five year hyper-nationalist obsession that shows no sign of abating. I’m referring to the recent stories about the $400 million transfer to Iran coinciding with the release of some key detainees, and the consequent hysterical response and cries of “ransom!” on the part of center-right pols and pundits. Even purported liberals have adopted some of the language of this crusade, pointing out apparent “linkage” between the payment and the release. Let me make just a few points in response.

Yes, it's been 37 years of this crapFirst, the $400 million is not our money; it is Iran’s money. It represents funds paid by the Iranian people for arms sold to the despotic Shah before his overthrow; the arms were never delivered, and with the application of sanctions, the money was frozen, like the proceeds from oil sales. As a component of the nuclear deal, the United States and its partners agreed to free up this money while keeping the bulk of the sanctions in place. Once the agreement was settled, the administration apparently reserved delivery of these funds – the $400 million in cash, since Iran still can’t use the international banking system – as some surety that the prisoner release (negotiated as a side agreement) would actually happen.

So let me put this as simply as possible. Giving people back their own money is not the same as paying them ransom. I know it’s fun to play with the word “ransom”, but it simply doesn’t apply here.

Ironically, many of those who are now calling it “ransom” are the same fuckers who complained during the nuclear negotiations that Obama’s administration was not working hard enough to release the prisoners. Clearly they were working on this. But the return of Teheran’s money was not payment for the release; it was compliance with the terms of the nuclear agreement.

Lastly, this is not like the Iran/Contra scandal; not at all. Reagan was trying to find off-the-books ways to fund his terror army in Nicaragua, since funding had been prohibited by Congress. He arranged a sale of arms to Iran (while in the midst of helping Saddam Hussein attack Iran) as a payment for release of prisoners captured in Lebanon, then funneled the proceeds of the sale to the Contras. There was a quid pro quo there – arms for hostages – but also the broader crime of illegal aid to the psycho killers attacking community centers and health clinics in Nicaragua.

None of this will appear in the media coverage. That’s because the war party in the U.S. – Democrats and Republicans alike – have had Iran derangement syndrome since 1979. Iran took something from us back then and we have never forgiven them for it – something very valuable, namely, Iran. That means endless demagoguery on this issue, regardless of the facts.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Memory’s minefield.

It’s always interesting when American Presidents in particular visit nations we have destroyed in past wars. This past week President Obama traveled to Hiroshima to deliver the resounding message that we are not sorry …  repeat, not sorry …  for using the most destructive weapons in the history of mankind on this unfortunate community. He also delivered some claptrap about reducing the number of nuclear weapons, even as his administration moves forward with an ambitious plan to engineer a highly destabilizing new generation of nuclear weapons.

U.S. to mankind: still not sorry.Empire means more than never having to say you’re sorry. It mostly means never even contemplating the concept of “sorry” – an imperial value not lost on the likes of NPR, whose Morning Edition host Renee Montagne reliably informed us that “in America – the view of the bombing – though everyone recognizes this as horrific – the view of the bombing is it was done because it had to be done.” So that’s what “the view” is, eh? Thanks, Renee. Up to your usual journalistic standards.

Obama’s previous stop was in Vietnam. No apologies there, either. Though the central thrust of his mission was to announce the lifting of an arms embargo on Vietnam that has been in place since the American war began, tightened under Reagan. Obama referred to this as a vestige of the Cold War, though the Cold War was not so cold in Vietnam, it bears reminding. Interestingly, the President’s aims in Vietnam are not dissimilar from the aims of the American war itself. One of the core objectives of U.S. policy in its Indochina wars was that of keeping the region from accommodating to China so that they would instead provide materials, markets, and cheap labor to Japan – an American version of the “co-prosperity sphere” imperial Japan aggressively sought to establish in the 1930s and ’40s.

Today, the goal is … well … to have Vietnam integrated into the American-led global economic order, via the TPP and other instruments, thereby containing what our government perceives as China’s expansionism. It is, in some respects, an effort to reclaim the maximal objective of the Vietnam war, which proved beyond our reach. (I tend to agree with Chomsky, however, that the U.S. did, in fact, essentially prevail in the Vietnam war by destroying three countries and ensuring that Indochina’s crippled post-war independence would serve as a model for no one.)

The coverage of this trip has been pretty abysmal. No surprise there. Once the mainstream media has worked out what “the view” is on a given topic, there’s no point in wasting any energy on actual reporting.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Before the fall.

It’s shaping up to be an election to remember. For one thing, the television coverage is so obsessive you couldn’t ignore it if you tried. But more importantly, I think, the selection is going to be … well … less than optimal, let’s say. All right – downright scary. Had to get that out there. The last group of northeastern states favored the front-runners pretty heavily, and it seems almost inevitable that we will be choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. That situation will set in motion some strange dynamics that will likely cut across the standard notions of what each party stands for. I can picture, for instance, Clinton attacking Trump from the right on some aspects of foreign policy. Hard to predict what the effect of that might be.

The man to beat.The most disconcerting part of this likely scenario is the prospect of living through one, maybe two terms of rule by either an egotistical man-child-billionaire or a corporatist Democrat. Of course, I far prefer the latter, mostly because there is some opportunity to push Clinton from the left, but either way we are likely to see a more bellicose stance towards issues of war and peace. Either way we will be moving to the right of Obama along certain political vectors. And Obama is not even a standard progressive; he is a centrist, and very cautious at that.

What are the options to mitigate this? Same as always. Organize, organize, organize. Bernie Sanders may still be the nominee, but win or lose, he has done a tremendous amount of ground work organizing around core progressive issues – policies he terms socialist but which are much more like liberal FDR Democrat material. Regardless, we need to keep Bernie-ism alive even if Bernie is not the nominee, and that means pulling together on the local level. That’s how you bring these issues to the fore nationally. We’ve got the skeleton of a national organization, and there’s more than a little sinew on the bones. We should keep it marching forward.

I don’t think I have to remind anyone that the Republicans need to be beaten this fall, whoever wins the Democratic nomination. We have to do it to save the Supreme Court and to safeguard the vulnerable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to make demands in a coordinated and effective way. This is the political revolution Bernie Sanders keeps talking about, it seems to me.

luv u,

jp