An Imperially "Usable Past": Obama's Historical Airbrush
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OBAMA has never been willing to acknowledge that Bush II's invasion of Iraq was a moral and legal crime. He has only been willing to criticize it as a mistake - a "strategic blunder" that was motivated, Obama feels, by the best of democratic intentions. At one noxious moment among many in his campaign, Obama said the following to autoworkers assembled at the General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin on February 13, 2008, just before that state's Democratic primary: "It's time to stop spending billions of dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together and start spending the money putting America back together."[7] For those who knew the depth and degree of the destruction inflicted on Iraq by two invasions, one ongoing, and more than a decade of deadly economic sanctions (embargo), this statement was nothing short of obscene. I had a hard time determining which of the candidate's assumptions was more nauseating: (a) the notion that the U.S. was trying to repair Iraq and (b) the assumption that we don't actually owe Iraq massive reparations for damages inflicted not only since 2003 but since 1991 at least.
Meanwhile, Obama is increasing the level of imperial violence in Afghanistan and in nuclear Pakistan. He brushed off Afghanistan president Karzai's plea for the U.S. to stop killing Afghans and for the U.S. to propose some sort of timeline for ending our illegal occupation of that country. Karzai's minimal assertions of national independence have irked Obama, who is increasing the U.S. force presence in Afghanistan, a legendary graveyard of empires.
Pakistan is added on to Afghanistan by Obama like Cambodia was added on to its neighbor Vietnam by President Nixon. This time however, the dangerous territorial expansion is openly acknowledged with Obama merging the two nations "into one theater of war, called Af-Pak" (Glen Ford).
Throughout the presidential campaign, Obama balanced his tepid criticism of the "ideological" Iraq invasion - an action he has never opposed on principled grounds - with saber-rattling calls for increasing U.S. investment in Bush II's supposed "good" and "appropriate" (and "not ideological") war on Afghanistan. Never mind that that colonial assault is just as illegal as the Iraq invasion and has killed far more innocent Afghani civilians than the number of Americans killed in the 2001 jetliner attacks for which the U.S. war on Afghanistan is hideously misplaced and monumentally criminal retribution.
No Blame for U.S. Slaughter in Western Afghanistan
Just yesterday (I wm writing this article on the morning of Thursday, May 7, 2009), Obama and his Hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to accept U.S. blame for the deaths of dozens of civilian noncombatants killed last Sunday by U.S. bombers in western Afghanistan. Obama expressed "deep U.S. regret" for this latest slaughter of Southwest Asian innocents. But taking responsibility was out of the question, apparently. The new "peace president" prsumably sees doing so as inconsistent with his doctrinal claim that "we" are "the last, best hope on earth" and unquestionably "a force for good in the world."
Those in global power who fail to acknowledge the imperial crimes of the past are certain to repeat them.
4. Paul Street "Obama's Audacious Deference to Power: A Critical Review of ‘The Audacity of Hope,'" ZNet Magazine (January 24, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11936; Paul Street, "Imperial Temptations: John Edwards, Barack Obama, and the Myth of Post-World War II United States Benevolence," ZNet Magazine (May 28, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12928; Paul Street, Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder, CO; Paradigm, 2008), p. 156
5. Barack Obama, "The American Moment: Remarks to Chicago Council on Global Affairs" (April 23, 2007), read at www.thechicagocouncil.org/dynamic_page.php?id=64.
6. John Caruso, "Historic Suspicions," A Tiny Revolution (May 1, 2009), read at http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002943.html
7. WIFR Television, CBS 23, Rockford, Illinois, "Obama Speaks at General Motors in Janesville," February 13, 2008, read at http://www.wifr.com/morningshow/headlines/15618592.html
Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com) is a veteran radical historian, political commentator, and author in Iowa City, IA. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm, 2004); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Routledge, 2005); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (Rowman & Littlefied, 2007), and Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm, 2008).
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