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The following two paragraphs were excerpted from an article by Paul Street in today's ZNET.
They explain why supporting Obama because of his skin color is hypocritical and very bad for the anti-war movement.
Those people who think he's a minor god will owe the dead from Obama's wars an explanation and an apology for their stupidity.
"...........This dark suspicion was born out by the retreat of the contemporary “antiwar movement” after the election of the militantly imperialist Democratic president Barack Obama. As Cindy Sheehan noted in 2009, thinking of all the liberals she could no longer interest in opposing Washington’s imperial policies, “Wars that were wrong under Bush become acceptable under Obama.” Alexander Cockburn chimed with the observation that numerous supposedly left and liberal Americans who opposed criminal wiretappings, immoral and illegal wars, plutocratic bankers’ bailouts and other vile policies when they were implemented in the name of a white Republican moron from West Texas but who became all too strangely silent when those same policies were enacted under the portrait of an eloquent black Democrat from Chicago. Democrats can be very dangerous.
There is some new evidence on just how bad this problem was and remains. Consistent with Sheehan and Cockburn’s complaint and my own voluminous warnings on what Tariq Ali calls “the Obama syndrome,” a recent major study by University of Michigan political scientist Michael Heany and his colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University finds that the antiwar movement in the United States “demobilized” as Democrats withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, first with Congress in 2006 and then with the presidency in 2008. Democrats had been sparked to participate in antiwar activities when the war (the invasion and occupation of Iraq) they purported to oppose was being conducted by a Republican president. "As president,” Heany notes, “Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war inAfghanistan...The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama's 'betrayal' and reinvigorated its protest activity. Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions." 3
source:
http://www.zcommunications.org/were-the-...-by-paul-street
They explain why supporting Obama because of his skin color is hypocritical and very bad for the anti-war movement.
Those people who think he's a minor god will owe the dead from Obama's wars an explanation and an apology for their stupidity.
"...........This dark suspicion was born out by the retreat of the contemporary “antiwar movement” after the election of the militantly imperialist Democratic president Barack Obama. As Cindy Sheehan noted in 2009, thinking of all the liberals she could no longer interest in opposing Washington’s imperial policies, “Wars that were wrong under Bush become acceptable under Obama.” Alexander Cockburn chimed with the observation that numerous supposedly left and liberal Americans who opposed criminal wiretappings, immoral and illegal wars, plutocratic bankers’ bailouts and other vile policies when they were implemented in the name of a white Republican moron from West Texas but who became all too strangely silent when those same policies were enacted under the portrait of an eloquent black Democrat from Chicago. Democrats can be very dangerous.
There is some new evidence on just how bad this problem was and remains. Consistent with Sheehan and Cockburn’s complaint and my own voluminous warnings on what Tariq Ali calls “the Obama syndrome,” a recent major study by University of Michigan political scientist Michael Heany and his colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University finds that the antiwar movement in the United States “demobilized” as Democrats withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, first with Congress in 2006 and then with the presidency in 2008. Democrats had been sparked to participate in antiwar activities when the war (the invasion and occupation of Iraq) they purported to oppose was being conducted by a Republican president. "As president,” Heany notes, “Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war inAfghanistan...The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama's 'betrayal' and reinvigorated its protest activity. Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions." 3
source:
http://www.zcommunications.org/were-the-...-by-paul-street
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