While the liberal intelligentsia was swooning
over Barack Obama during his presidential
campaign, I counseled “prepare to be
disappointed.” His record as a Illinois state
and U.S. Senator, together with the many
progressive and long overdue courses of action
he opposed during his campaign, rendered such a
prediction unfortunate but obvious.
The signs are amassing that Barack Obama
put a political con job over on the
American people. He is now daily buying
into the entrenched military-industrial
complex that President Eisenhower warned
Americans about in his farewell address.
Now this same intelligentsia is beginning to
howl over Obama’s transition team and early
choices to run his Administration. Having
defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in the
Democratic Primaries, he now is busily
installing Bill Clinton’s old guard. Thirty one
out of forty seven people that he has named so
far for transition or appointments have ties to
the Clinton Administration, according to
Politico. One Clintonite is quoted in the
Washington Post as saying – “This isn’t lightly
flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons,
all the time.”
Obama’s “foreign policy team is now dominated by
the Hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990,”
writes Jeremy Scahill. Obama’s transition team
reviewing intelligence agencies and recommending
appointments is headed by John Brennan and Jami
Miscik, who worked under George Tenet when the
CIA was involved in politicizing intelligence
for, among other officials, Secretary of State
Colin Powell’s erroneous address before the
United Nations calling for war against Iraq.
Mr. Brennan, as a government official, supported
warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary
rendition to torturing countries. National
Public Radio reported that Obama’s reversal when
he voted for the revised FISA this year relied
on John Brennan’s advise.
For more detail on these two advisers and others
recruited by Obama from the dark old days, see
Democracy Now, November 17, 2008 and Jeremy
Scahill, AlterNet, Nov. 20, 2008 “This is
Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to
Watch for in Obama’s White House.”
The top choice as White House chief of staff is
Rahm Emanuel—the ultimate hard-nosed corporate
Democrat, military-foreign policy hawk and
Clinton White House promoter of corporate
globalization, as in NAFTA and the World Trade
Organization.
Now, recall Obama’s words during the bucolic
“hope and change” campaign months: “The American
people…understand the real gamble is having the
same old folks doing things over and over and
over again and somehow expecting a different
result.” Thunderous applause followed these
remarks.
“This is more ‘Groundhog Day’ then a fresh
start,” asserted Peter Wehner, a former Bush
adviser who is now at the Ethics and Public
Policy Center.
The signs are amassing that Barack Obama put a
political con job over on the American people.
He is now daily buying into the entrenched
military-industrial complex that President
Eisenhower warned Americans about in his
farewell address.
With Robert Rubin on his side during his first
photo opportunity after the election, he
signaled to Wall Street that his vote for the
$750 billion bailout of those speculators and
crooks was no fluke (Rubin was Clinton’s
financial deregulation architect in 1999 as
Secretary of the Treasury before he became one
of the hugely paid co-directors tanking
Citigroup.)
Obama’s apologists say that his picks show he
wants to get things done, so he wants people who
know their way around Washington. Moreover, they
say, the change comes only from the president
who sets the priorities and the courses of
action, not from his subordinates. This
explanation assumes that a president’s
appointments are not mirror images of the boss’s
expected directions but only functionaries to
carry out the Obama changes.
If you are inclined to
believe this improbable scenario, perhaps you
may wish to review Obama’s record compiled by
Matt Gonzalez at
Counterpunch.
