6.15.2008

john pilger: "in the grand tradition, obama is a hawk"

While debating the significance - or, in my opinion, lack thereof - of the death of Tim Russert, I was amazed to hear Russert referred to as a great journalist. I can barely apply the word "journalism" to what Russert did and what the rest of the TV talking-head crowd do.

Great journalists of our time? Seymour Hersh. Naomi Klein. Robert Fisk. Amy Goodman. Barbara Ehrenreich. Christopher Hedges.

Those are just a few off the top of my head.

What's that you say? They're all on the left end of the political spectrum? That's no coincidence: it's where real journalism leads.

The right doesn't want journalism. Journalism is the relentless press for truth, wherever it leads. It involves nuance, contradiction, and often painful revelations. The right deals in simple images, duality, blind loyalty, bigotry, fear.

Another truly extraordinary journalist is John Pilger. If you don't know Pilger, check out the website; it speaks for itself.

Here's his latest column, with thanks to Allan.
In the great tradition, Obama is a hawk
by John Pilger

In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." What has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor have passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W Bush finally steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest of humanity will diminish.

The foregone nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, "marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US history", is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as bullshit on a grand scale. Race, gender, appearance, body language, rictal spouses and offspring, even bursts of tragic grandeur, are all subsumed by marketing and "image-making", now magnified by "virtual" technology. Thanks to an undemocratic electoral college system (or, in Bush's case, tampered voting machines) only those who both control and obey the system can win.

For example, since I compared Obama with Robert Kennedy in these pages, he has made two important statements, the implications of which have not been allowed to intrude on the celebrations. The first was at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the Zionist lobby, which, as Ian Williams has pointed out, "will get you accused of anti-Semitism if you quote its own website about its power". Obama had already offered his genuflection, but on 4 June went further. He promised to support an "undivided Jerusalem" as Israel's capital. Not a single government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem, including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN resolution designating Jerusalem an international city.

His second statement, largely ignored, was made in Miami on 23 May. Speaking to the expatriate Cuban community – which over the years has faithfully produced terrorists, assassins and drug runners for US administrations – Obama promised to continue a 47-year crippling embargo on Cuba that has been declared illegal by the UN year after year.

Again, Obama went further than Bush. He said the United States had "lost Latin America". He described the democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as a "vacuum" to be filled. He raised the nonsense of Iranian influence in Latin America, and he endorsed Colombia's "right to strike terrorists who seek safe-havens across its borders". Translated, this means the "right" of a regime, whose president and leading politicians are linked to death squads, to invade its neighbours on behalf of Washington. He also endorsed the so-called Merida Initiative, which Amnesty International and others have condemned as the US bringing the "Colombian solution" to Mexico. He did not stop there. "We must press further south as well," he said. Not even Bush has said that.

It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates. Obama's difference may be that he feels an even greater need to show how tough he is. However much the colour of his skin draws out both racists and supporters, it is otherwise irrelevant to the great power game. The "truly exciting and historic moment in US history" will only occur when the game itself is challenged.

I do think a US president who is not a white male would be historic. And I'd be damn glad to see it, both for its own sake, and because it would mean (I think) the election was not cancelled or fixed.

But let's be reasonable about how much change one can expect, especially on foreign policy. The constantly repeated statement that Obama was always against the invasion of Iraq is certainly questionable. (That source, Joseph Cannon, despises Obama in a way I definitely do not, and his writing style is shrill, but his work is solid, and everything is sourced.) And has Obama changed his position on Iran?

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