An Appeal to Presidential Nominee Barack Obama

An Appeal to Presidential Nominee Barack Obama
Nick Egnatz | NW Indiana Veterans For Peace

While I am certainly not looking forward to a John McCain Administration, I have serious reservations that a Barack Obama Administration will offer the fundamental change necessary to end the concept of American Empire and Exceptionalism. Said concept is rooted in the belief that God somehow has showered the United States with additional blessings that other nations have not received and that U.S., as the savior of the world, has the duty and right to project our military and economic might across the globe as we see fit, without regard to international law or common morality.

Obama has recently said that we need to redeploy our troops from Iraq so that we can send more of them to Afghanistan and better concentrate on the 'War on Terror.'

Iraq

Yes it is certainly good to get our troops out of Iraq and the sooner the better. Obama's phased withdrawal plan is basically what the Bush Administration and the al Maliki government have just agreed upon. Bush agreed, because he had no other option and Maliki agreed because of political pressures in Iraq, if he continues to be perceived as America's man in Baghdad.

Oil

What Obama has not addressed at all in regard to Iraq is the oil. The proposed Iraqi Oil Law represents a 'benchmark' required by the 2007 war funding supplemental bill. Although Obama did vote against the final version of this bill because it did not provide a timetable for withdrawal, I can find no record of Obama's support or non support of this proposed law. What the oil law does is open up 80% of known Iraqi oil fields and 100% of unknown oil fields to the international oil companies through production sharing agreements (PSAs). The oil companies will then be able to control and pump the Iraqi oil for 30 years and pay the Iraqi people only12 ½ cents on the dollar for their oil. The British and U.S. oil companies who will be awarded these contracts stand to make well over $20 trillion in profit from these PSAs. This completely incomprehensible figure is more than twice the U.S. national debt. Why has our candidate for change not spoken out against this theft of Iraqi oil?

Iraqi Army

Further why does Iraq need an army? They need police to restore order in their society. Armies are for waging war. Al Qaeda isn't an army and an army is both not needed and ineffective in combating it. If the U.S. left Iraq tomorrow, al Qaeda would be thrown out of the country by both Sunnis and Shiites, regardless of whether they have an army or not. But if we leave Iraq with a functioning army, then that army may well be used against the Iraqi people to keep the government in power, regardless if the government truly represents the Iraqi people. The last thing Iraq needs is a U.S. sponsored army. Obama has fallen for the trap of supporting the Iraqi army. Afghanistan Obama's position is to shift troops from the 'bad war' in Iraq to the 'good war' in Afghanistan. More than 7 ½ years after we supported regime change against the Taliban and took the side of the Northern Alliance in what was then an unfinished civil war, how is it going? Progressively worse; in 2005 68% of Afghans rated U.S. efforts positively, in 2006 57% did and in 2007 that figure was down to just 42% positively rating our efforts and occupation in Afghanistan.

Taliban

Our justification to take arms against the Taliban was that they had given safe haven to bin Laden and al Qaeda who had attacked us. While this policy is certainly more justifiable than the clearly illegal Iraq invasion which followed, it certainly was a strategic disaster.
Neither Britain nor Russia could successfully occupy Afghanistan and why we would allow a rather simple minded President to lead us down the same path, is bewildering.

The Taliban government had offered to turn over bin Laden if we showed them proof of his guilt, but that wasn't good enough for the bluster in this President. We had already been bombing Afghanistan for eight days and the President said he would not stop the bombing unless the Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty".

al Qaeda

Of course, even after that sorry attempt at diplomatic negotiations by the Bush Administration failed, it was a mistake to take sides in their civil war. We should have simply gone after bin Laden and alQaeda and told everyone else to stand down or they would suffer the consequences of getting in the line of fire. Sure the Taliban were bad guys, but they had provided some semblance of normalcy in a country which had been in continual strife since the mid 1970s. Our support of the Northern Alliance vs. the Taliban could no more guarantee that we would be on the side of right and justice than past U.S. support of Ossama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could guarantee that they would be on the right side in the end.

Negotiations

What we did was support the warlords of the Northern Alliance and drive the Taliban from power. We basically ignored al Qaeda and bin Laden. Why does Obama support continuing this failed policy? Why not call for an immediate cease fire and negotiations which include the Taliban? They obviously have the support of a large number of the Afghan people, should they not have a seat at the table in forming a government?

Sonali Kolhatkar, author of "Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence" recently said on Democracy Now!:

"the Afghan central government, created and installed essentially by the United States, is really devastating the people of Afghanistan. There's rampant corruption. They're sucking away the aid. They're completely oppressing people. They're attacking journalists. Women are
being imprisoned in greater numbers than ever before, for the crime of escaping from home or having, quote-unquote, "sexual relations" — "illegal sexual relations." Most of these women are simply victims of rape. And so, you have all of these forces that are converging upon the Afghan people from different directions, and life for the ordinary—average ordinary Afghan has gone from bad to so much worse in a very short period of time."

"And it's true. You really can't solve the situation in Afghanistan by just throwing more troops at it, because over the last several years, tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan have not done—have not managed to do anything other than worsen the war. So, basically what the logic is, is that the war is going terribly; the more troops we have, the worse it's getting; so let's throw more troops to it? The predictable outcome of this policy — and, you know, I would love to get just half-a-minute of airtime with Obama and tell him — the predictable outcome of his policy is that you throw more troops at Afghanistan, and the war is just going to get worse. The violence is just going to escalate. It's not going to ramp down. How can you just—what is he planning to do? Kill every last terrorist? And then he's somehow going to win the war? What's the plan here? He doesn't even have a strategy. He isn't even looking at the central government. He is not looking at the corruption of the warlords. He is not looking at Hamid Karzai and what he has failed to do. He's not looking at how ordinary Afghans are struggling. He is not looking at the fact that the Taliban are actually becoming more and more popular, while the troops are becoming less and less popular." Blunt Instrument The conservative Rand Corporation has recently released a study saying that the military is
too blunt an instrument to use against terrorism and..."

"By analyzing a comprehensive roster of terrorist groups that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory. These findings suggest that the U.S. approach to countering al Qa'ida has focused far too much on the use of military force. Instead, policing and intelligence should be the backbone of U.S. efforts."

When bin Laden declared jihad against the U.S., long before the 9/11 attacks, he gave three reasons.
1. The presence of U.S. troops (infidels) in Saudi Arabia the Muslim holyland.
2. The U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq after the 1st Gulf War which had resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.
3. The abject failure of the U.S. to insist that our number one ally, Israel, reach a just peace with the Palestinian people.

Madeleine Albright

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

It's worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl--a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions.

Change

If we are to get true change from Obama, then we need him to be able to make an honest assessment of past U.S. policies.

Proud to be an American

When Michele Obama made her comment that for the first time in her adult life she was proud to be an American, what happened? After a withering attack from the right wing, she explained her statement in the context of being proud that more Americans had become involved in
the election process. How much better it would have been if both she and Barack would have stood side by side and said:

'Starting when we were children, the U.S. was involved in an illegal war in Vietnam against the Vietnamese people's desire to reunify their country. Our government lied to the American people about the reasons and justifications for that war, much like the present Bush Administration lied about the reasons for invading and occupying Iraq. Then we had the wars in Central America, in which the U.S. trained and sponsored death squads which kidnapped and killed civilians from their homes in the dead of night. After the 1st Gulf War, the U.S. urged the people of Iraq to depose their dictator and then stood by while they were massacred. We then imposed economic sanctions against Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of 500,000 children under the age of five. The 'War on Terror' followed in which we sent our armies to invade and occupy two countries, while the terrorists who sponsored the 9/11 attacks have been sipping tea in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Civil liberties have been shredded here at home with the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and presidential signing statements in which the President has taken it upon himself to rewrite, interpret and execute the laws of the land with absolutely no regard for the way such laws were written or the Constitution.

And we're just getting warmed up. This President has broken federal law by completely disregarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and refusing to procure from the FISA Court warrants for wiretapping U.S. citizens. He has suspended habeas corpus and imprisoned thousands, some for six years or more without filing charges against them. He has made torture the official policy of the U.S.

While it is true that the present Bush/Cheney Administration is ever so much worse than any that have proceeded it, let us all remember that their has been Democratic Party culpability for years with many of these policies.

How can any American say that they are proud of these despicable crimes? True patriotism is American citizens standing against the crimes of their government and demanding change."

If Michelle and Barack had chosen to make that statement, then we would know that we had a 'change' candidate.

Israel

On Israel he is on record, supporting their bombing and invasion of Lebanon in 2006. In the summer of 2006 Israel responded with great force to a border incident by shelling, bombing and sending troops into Lebanon to root out Hezbollah's rockets. While I am sure that the Israeli government felt justified in their offensive into Lebanon, I am also just as sure that Hezbollah felt equally justified in their actions at the border and the subsequent rocket attacks on Israeli cities as the bombs and artillery shells were raining down on Lebanese cities. A true change candidate would not automatically support the Israeli government's offensive into Lebanon, but would look for a peaceful resolution which gave equal weight to the claims of all the peoples concerned.

Clean Break

"Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" is a 1996 neocon policy paper drafted by Dick Cheney, Richard Pearle, Douglas Feith and
David and Meyrav Wurmser which calls for a clean break with the Oslo Accords and all past peace processes and for military action against, in order: Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah and Iran. In fact, there have been reports that President Bush agreed to the attack in Lebanon on Hezbollah during his May 23, 2006 summit with Prime Minister Olmert (seven weeks before the border incident occurred), even urging Olmert to attack Syria.

Uri Avnery

I prefer to take my counsel from Uri Avnery, a veteran of the 1948 Israel war of liberation, "There is no military solution." War was not the answer then and is not now. I guess I am naïve enough to think that Israel could sit down with its neighbors and work things out. That would mean giving up their settlements in the occupied territories, releasing political prisoners and allowing the Palestinians a true state of their own. Of course, Israel has been the target of terrorist attacks and has valid claims against those that would do harm to it. Do not the Lebanese and Palestinians, also have valid claims? Have they not been harmed, too? This is the perspective Mr. Obama should use when working for peace in the Mideast. The U.S. will always support Israel. That's a given. We just need to make sure that there is justice for the other side too.

New Cold War

The Bush/Cheney foreign policy of global hegemony is also now proving disastrous in our relations with Russia. In 2005 Steven Cohen wrote
in The Nation:

"The opportunities that Gorbachev created for international relations have also been missed, perhaps even lost--here, however, primarily because of the United States. Instead of embracing post-Soviet Russia as an equal partner in ending the cold war and the arms race, both the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations undertook a triumphalist winner-take-all policy of extracting unilateral concessions first from Yeltsin and then from Putin. They have included the eastward expansion of NATO (thereby breaking a promise the first President Bush made to Gorbachev); the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had discouraged a new nuclear arms race; the bogus nuclear weapons reduction treaty of 2002; and the ongoing military encirclement of Russia with US and NATO bases in former Soviet territories.

Those exceedingly unwise US policies, which in Moscow are understandably viewed as another attempt to isolate and "contain" Russia, are leading to a new cold war. They have already badly eroded the political basis for any pro-American orientation in Moscow and persuaded most Russian officials that their country's salvation lies in reverting to pre-perestroika governing traditions and finding strategic allies again in the East. Weak militarily and unstable financially, the Kremlin has also reacted by clinging to its uncertainly secure nuclear arsenal, even expanding instead of reducing it. The current Bush Administration has apparently decided, for other reasons, to do the same. A new nuclear arms race, that is, already looms."

Paul Craig Roberts comments on the neocon agenda in Counter Punch, "President Bush: will you please shut up?"

"President Reagan negotiated the end of the cold war with Soviet President Gorbachev. The neoconservatives, whom Reagan fired and drove from his administration, were furious. The neocons had hoped to win the cold war, thereby establishing American hegemony.

The Republican Establishment reestablished its hegemony under Bush 1st that it had lost to Ronald Reagan. With this feat, intelligence was driven from the Republican Party. The neocons engineered their comeback with the First Gulf War and their propaganda, pure lies, that Iraqi troops bayoneted Kuwait babies in hospitals.

The neocons made a further comeback with President Clinton, whom they convinced to bomb Serbia in order to permit separatist movements to become independent states dependent on America. With Bush 2nd, the neocons took over. Their agenda, American world hegemony, includes Israeli hegemony in the Middle East."

Caucasus

The neocon agenda which included NATO membership for Georgia has now come a cropper in the Caucasus. Georgia after being wisely refused admittance into NATO attacked South Ossetia killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, many of them Russian citizens, with no military target in sight. Russia responded with more force and the Georgian army, despite billions in U.S. foreign aid and U.S. military advisors, fled from the Russian advance. The U.S. and Russia have both behaved as bullies for years during the cold war. In Georgia neither has clean hands, nor does the U.S. puppet Georgia under Saakashvili. Bullies don't fight each other, but they do egg on their surrogates just as the Bush Administration did in Georgia, and they respond exactly as the Russians did, given the knowledge that it would be impossible for the U.S. or any one else to intervene. The irony is almost pathetic that it was the Bush Administration's own reckless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the threatened war with Iran that have largely contributed to the global run up in the price of oil and natural gas. This tremendous increase has fueled the recent change in Russian policy.

Iran

In 2003 Iran sent a letter via the Swiss to the U.S. offering to negotiate all differences, including recognition of Israel, the Iranian nuclear energy program and Iran's support of Palestinian terrorist groups. The Bush administration, flush with its "Mission Accomplished" victory in Iraq, completely ignored the offer. Incredulously, Condoleezza Rice has testified to Congress that she can't remember seeing the letter, although she does not deny its existence.

Now the Bush administration is once more beating the war drums, telling us that Iran is as big a threat as Iraq was back in 2003, when we invaded that country under false pretenses. And the pitiful Democratic Congress is doing nothing to stop the warmongering Republican neocons. Both Senate Resolution 580 and House Resolution 362 call for a complete halt to any petroleum products entering Iran. In addition to this being a collective punishment of the Iranian people and illegal under international law, it can only be done by a naval blockade, and that is an act of war. This is insanity! The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is leading the parade to war. AIPAC has so intimidated our meek public servants in Washington, Republican and Democratic alike, that it will take a massive outpouring of public indignation to avoid yet another immoral, illegal and strategically stupid war. AIPAC no more represents the Israeli people than these warmongers in Washington represent the American people. Millions of Israelis have called for negotiations and peace, just as millions of Americans have. Yet both governments pursue policies of peace through war. Economists of all stripes predict a worldwide depression if we attack Iran, since it will surely interrupt the flow of much of the world's oil. With the Mideast in flames and Americans unemployed, perhaps we will all then have the time and inclination to publicly protest the criminal Bush administration and its Democratic Party enablers. Where does Obama stand on Iran? It is true that he has spoken out for negotiations, but he has also failed to speak out and say no to either a U.S. or Israeli attack.

On August 25, 2008 campaigning in Iowa, he was asked about rumors that Israel had "green lighted" an attack on Iran before the November presidential election. He refused to comment on the rumors, either pro or con and said:

"I will tell you having visited Israel just a month and a half ago, their general attitude is, 'We will not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. My job as president would be to try to make sure we are tightening the screws diplomatically on Iran, that we mobilize the world community to go after Iran's nuclear program in a serious way. ... We have to do it before Israel feels its back is against the wall."

War on Terror

Obama has said that we need to concentrate on the central front of the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan. Obama is a very intelligent man. As president of the Harvard Law Review, it is arguable that he was the number one law student in the country. How much better would it be
for this man of intelligence and eloquence to take on the debate that the fundamental concept of a 'war on terror' is simply wrong. Wars are fought between nations and their armies. Terror is an emotion. Terrorism is a tactic. You cannot successfully fight or ever win a
war against either, no matter the bluster in your speech or the lack of main stream critics in the media or the Congress. War on American Empire and Exceptionalism If Obama wants to euphemistically declare war on something, how about a war on American Empire and Exceptionalism? Begin the debate over the neocon policy of global hegemony which empire and exceptionalism have spawned. Begin a public examination into the causes of terrorism. Perhaps he could then lead us all into a greater understanding of the effect of past and present American policies on our nation and the global community.

Impeachment

Obama opposes impeachment, the constitutional solution for a criminal Administration which presently has 39 Articles of Impeachment against it languishing in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

"I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president's authority...I believe if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction," he added. "We would once again, rather than attending to the people's business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, non-stop circus."

Yet, the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff Report 2005 referring to the lead up to the Iraq Invasion and Occupation reads:

"There is a prima facie case that these actions by the President, Vice President and other members of the Bush Administration violated a number of federal laws including:
(1) Committing a Fraud against the United States
(2) Making false statements to Congress
(3) The War Powers Resolution
(4) Misuse of government funds
(5) Federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
(6) Federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals
(7) Federal laws concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence"

The crimes and allegations against the Bush Administration are so serious and numerous, that listing them here would be too long a task. Supporting impeachment is not an optional duty, to be done if the politics are right. It is a Congressional duty which is required by the Constitution. "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Article II, Section 4

To not support proceeding with impeachment hearings is to say that there is no merit at all to the House Judiciary Committee's Staff Report of 2005 which stated there was a prima facie case the Bush Administration had broken seven federal and international laws. The
President himself admitted breaking the FISA law. He has also admitted that he was advised of the torture meetings his top staffers engaged in at the White House when "enhanced interrogation" techniques (torture) were approved in the White House basement.

World as it is and the World as it should be

At the DNC on August 25 Michelle Obama spoke of her husband's early days as a community organizer:

"Barack stood up that day, and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about "The world as it is" and "The world as it should be." And he said that all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and settle for the world as it is — even when it doesn't reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us that we know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves — to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be. And isn't that the great American story?"

A whole lot of Americans, especially the young and those who have ignored our flawed election process for years, got excited about the Obama candidacy. Now after many of them have compared "the world as it is" as explained by Obama and "the world as it should be" according
to their beliefs and principals, the chasm is much larger than they originally believed it was. These youth, these grassroots Democratic activists, these Americans without representation in our two-party system are now feeling left out by the Obama candidacy.
I ask the Democratic nominee to relook at the world through the prism he used as a community organizer; "the world as it is" and "the world as it should be". Afghanistan, Iraq, the War on Terror, Georgia/Russia, Iran, Impeachment? Is it possible that our candidate
is settling for "the world as it is" and not "the world as it should be"?

A man of Barack Obama's intelligence must be able to see that party politics in our two-party system have given us, despite all the
bluster, little choice between the two parties on true matters of substance.

For if there was an actual choice between the parties:

• at least one of the parties would not support the wars of aggression in the Mideast
• at least one of the parties would have offered a single payer national health care plan like every other industrial country in the
  world. 59% of doctors in the U.S. support single payer national health care for all

• at least one of the parties would have not tried to strangle Russia after the breakup of the USSR
• at least one of the parties would have supported a return to the rule of law under the Constitution via impeachment of both the President and Vice President

One final appeal to our Democratic nominee; help us break up the two-party system which is largely responsible for the state of the nation. The simple solution is Instant Run-Off Elections. This would allow third party candidates a place at the table. It would also necessitate that the major party candidates be more responsive to the views of the electorate. The present system plays on the fears of the voters that if they don't vote for a 'major' candidate, the worse choice will win. This absolutely strangles democracy. We are forced to vote against our hopes, dreams and aspirations, because we are afraid that if we do, the worse possible one running will win. There is something fundamentally wrong with this system.

Do you really want my vote because McCain is the worse candidate in the field and I am afraid that if I don't vote for you, McCain will
win? How much better to try and get my vote because I think you are the best candidate or if not the best, you would be my second place or
third place choice? If in fact my first two choices did not receive enough votes, my vote would move up the line to my second and then
third place candidates until someone finally gets over 50% of the votes cast.

Restore democracy in America with:
1. Instant Run-Off Voting
2. 100% federally financed elections
3. 100% paper ballot elections