POTUS: Fail

by anderson

This is a direct rebuttal to any argument presented that sees basis in a political pragmatism, one that is the elemental force of politics, and therefore one that should be not only heeded but embraced, and that therefore, Obama's actions and policy trajectories heretofore must be dismissed through an adherence to a purity of pragmatism.

As has oft been noted, and as history has recorded, change blooms from those who stake themselves on their ideals.

[This article was written several
days before President Obama's escalation speech at West Point, when it
was first leaked that 30,000+ troops would be newly(or now so newly)
bound for Afghanistan.  And for those under some delusion that "this is
what he said," that is plain and utter nonsense.  This will be Obama's
second troop surge  per se -- not including the 11,000 troops surge he
inherited from Bush, and with the full knowledge and compliance of
Obama's transition team.  Beyond troop numbers, Obama has numerously
surged -- is surging now -- in various parts of the spectrum in
Afghanistan and Pakistan and expanding into Baluchistan and Uzbekistan.
surging private contractors, surging targeted assassinations, surging a
monstrous embassy in Islamabad, and the best of all, surging Taliban
funding via Pentagon protection money.  Tom Engelhardt has tallied up nine (9) surges by Obama.









 I offer this as argument that in less than a year, the Obama
presidency is a failure, by his own campaign's definition.  I do so in
the hope of
being presented an argument that convincingly counters the evidence of
Obama's policy trajectories presented here.  And, as you will see,
Sottomayor and the stimulus bill do not serve a sufficient
counterweight to the general body of policy the Obama Administration
has so far evinced.









The psychology of previous investment proscribes humans from responding
rationally when conditions warrant or even demand.  If the investment
has been heavy enough, the psychology behind the investment will insist
that people hold on to it, no matter how badly the investment may
tank.  This occurs at all scales.  The American public's investment in
Barack Obama is tanking badly.  The question at this point becomes, how
much longer can the policy trend lines continue before the body of his
political support collapses altogether?]

***

President Obama has failed his mandate.

It's not a happy thing to
have to say.  Many won't agree, desperately fending off the obvious.The
campaign sloganeering, well, it turned out to be just that.  All the
worse that so many had hoped otherwise. Obama has been embarrassingly
supine in dealing with the know-nothings. The end game of which is
what, exactly?  Republicans will suddenly -- one day --apprehend their
misbegotten ways and cuddle the furry kitten? The GOP and their agents
continue the attacks, the lies, the filibusters -- a well funded font
of rancorous, racist, rancid bullshit.  Palin-Beck in 2012!  That's the
ticket.

The last straw was
escalation in Afghanistan.  And didn't he ever drag out the process of
doing what the military told him he should do weeks ago?  Perhaps that
was suppose to make him look steely-eyed and circumspect.  One wonders
what the point of all this review was meant to reveal when the end
product is to tap almost all the troops McChrystal wanted in the first
place.  In fact, we almost suspect that McChrystal may have high-balled
his numbers as a negotiation entry point.  Then again, maybe
not. Because McChrystal knows he is dealing with a Democrat, one who
seems especially smitten with getting along.  Which meant, of course,
that Obama would meet McChrystal's opening bid, with the necessary
appearance of due diligence of course, because, well, that's how
Democrats roll.  They are the party of looking like they're for "the
people."  The "review" at this point looks like mere window
dressing. Whether is was or was not is unimportant.  Certainly, it is
unimportant to those on the ground.

If this does go down with
plus-30,000 troops, Obama can kiss it good bye.  Here is the short of
it.  One way or another, Afghanistan will be the doom of
Obama. Withdrawal is conventionally seen as political suicide. It
matters not that the American and Afghan public would like to see this
happen. Obama will be "ravaged" by foes in Washington.  Just like LBJ
fretted. Once Afghanistan turns more deeply unpopular -- more than now
--political forces will then turn that against Obama, and it will
become his Vietnam.  If this escalation is a cave to military pressure
and political considerations (and really, what else could it be?), then
Obama may think he is staving off a near term political hit.  In
reality, he is only delaying political doom.  And worse, he is
consigning to their deaths, who knows how many more thousands, ravaging
the land and the lives of millions more.

Tellingly, the left
are squabbling about whether Obama is "worse than Bush." Really.  When one
finds oneself in a position of defending any president by trying
to demonstrate that they are "not worse than Bush," or even mentioning,
in a subjunctive clause, that Obama is not "worse than Bush," the
admission is plain: failure.

***

Obama has pathetically caved to most every Republican yowl on every
domestic bill, only to watch no Republicans even vote for the butchered
bill anyway.  The health care botch will be the same [see below].















Obama demands Israel halt building on the West Bank, only to watch Israel approve more building on the West Bank.









Obama shamefully and shamelessly pulled a complete one-eighty on the
odious FISA amendment.  To his great pleasure now, as he only balloons
the already expansive surveillance state [see below].  On the plus
side, he did this before he was president.









Obama has adopted all Bush era legal positions and then some -- even
asserting sovereign immunity -- in warrentless wiretap lawsuits and
beyond.









Obama has refused to investigate, in any meaningful way, the crimes of
the Bush administration, and continues to cover-up their crimes. 
Presently, there were or are three inquiries into Bush era crimes. 
Spanish judge  Garz�s investigating
White House lawyers responsible for legal opinions justifying the use
of torture; Kuala Lumpur hosted hearings on torture of Indonesian
citizens in Guantanamo; Britain is holding an inquest into British
government involvement in the origins of the Iraq War.  The British
inquest occurs in spite of the fact that Blairian Labour is still in
power (such as it is).  Obama has and will do nothing.















Obama has quietly backed renewal of the worst of the PATRIOT Act provisions, and doing so over the objections of fellow Democrats.















Obama has only escalated, atrociously
so given his "Si, se puede" campaign, immigration raids and harassment
across the country, the American Apparel episode especially
mean-spirited in a time of brutal recession.  Only recently, a
janitorial company "quietly let go" many
illegal immigrants, a move that is part of an Obama administration plan
to  "thin the ranks of illegal immigrants by going after the companies
that hire them."  Now, there's a plan.  All those homeless nurses and
accountants piling up in LA tent cities can go work as janitors now
that the illegals have been purged. 








Obama has
continued to assert the power to conduct extraordinary renditions,
or, as the Italian court that convicted 23 Americans (22 CIA) of just
such an operation called it, "kidnappings".















Obama has continued to assert the power to hold detainees indefinitely, without charge.  Apparently, he intends to do so.















Obama has continued to assert the power to conduct military tribunals in lieu of trial.  Apparently, he intends to do so.















Obama has continued to assert the power to spy on Americans.  Apparently, he intends to do so. With sovereign immunity.















Obama has continued to assert the power to torture and abuse detainees secretly, specifically within the confines of US SOC base at Bagram, and a similar facility at Balad Air Base in Iraq.









Obama has adopted a position on the Guantanamo detainees so arbitrarily
pendulous, it makes Bush look like a model of sober reason: no trials
for anyone. Say what you will about that, but it is consistent. Obama's
"position" is no position at all.  He's all over the map.  Particle and wave.  "Whatever works."  Yes, he really is a Democrat.









Obama will fail to close Guantanamo Bay as a detainee prison by his own
deadline and admission.  Obama fired the man who was trying to close it
according to Obama's own agenda [see below].  I predict this may go on
for years, as Obama attempts to keep the GOP from swatting him on the
issue.  And once again, petty domestic politics drive policy.















Obama has overseen the worsening of conditions at Guantanamo Bay.








Obama has only continued the escalation of the Pentagon budget, and emergency off-the-books contingency funds.


Obama has upped the US military footprint in South America by bumping
up military presence in Colombia, with the lapdog enthusiasm of a
visibly excited Uribe on full display.  Pissing off everyone else, of
course, but no matter.  Tensions are bound to escalate beyond those
already on the rise.









Obama displayed an unaccountable hypocrisy and equivocation regarding
the Honduran coup, even as his administration railed against Tehran for
election rigging.  Of course, the one-way outrage is not unaccountable
at all, and certainly not when one's own military base is quietly
involved.















Obama has continued to embrace
long standing US-resistance to treaties banning landmines and other
passive, deadly weapons, weapons that kill thousands of children every
year.  This, even as the world observed the 20 year anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the passing of which was notable only for the sole company the United States keeps in refusing ratification of that treaty: Somalia.















Obama has deployed private mercenaries in Somalia.








Obama has deployed US Special Forces in Yemen.









Obama has more currently deployed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than
Bush ever did.  And he is about to up that unhappy fact in Afghanistan
again.  Certainly, we will be assured there will be a time line for
withdrawal. And certainly, it will be a sham.









Obama is expanding the US "Embassy" in Islamabad to behemoth
proportions, in keeping with the model presented to the world in
Baghdad.  Pakistanis are fuming at this project, viewing it rightly as a "military and intelligence command outpost."















Obama has promoted, rather than denounced and fired, the commander of
JSOC, which oversaw extreme abuse and torture of detainees.  Under
McChrstyal's command, many subordinates were convicted of such
crimes. No one above of the rank of major was convicted, despite "the
documented role of more senior officers and civilian officials in
authorizing and then covering up these crimes."








Obama
intends that the "withdrawal" from Iraq will be as every bit as
farcical as has always been planned.  Major permanent military
bases (and a billion dollar embassy) holding 50-60,000 troops, scattered
hither and pointedly yon.  Oil contracts are in the works.















Obama is escalating a global missile defense shield, first actively begun by Reagan, mandated
by the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance and then later by the now
plowed-under Project for the New American Century.  The putative
suspension of the installations in Poland and Czech Republic was a
technical ruse. There will be missiles and radar in those places, and
elsewhere, Romania and Bulgaria included. Moldova is in the works.  Plans are afoot for footprints
in Georgia, Azerbaijan, with many already beyond the Caspian.








Obama has
escalated pipeline negotiations throughout Central Asia.  This may not
sound bad.  Did I mention that Blackwater and JSOC are conducting
military operations in Uzbekistan?  No? Not yet?  [see below.]















Obama has "dramatically" escalated
targeted assassinations via a humped-up drone war in Pakistan.  Blackwater appears to be fully
involved.  Of course, the whole damned debacle is illegal, but no
matter.








Obama continues to embrace the employment of
Blackwater, which is roaming wild in Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Uzbekistan, and elsewhere.  Yes, Uzbekistan.

In
addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al
Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the
Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside
Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

"That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don't know if
you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan," he
said. "So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?"

Obama has overseen a skyrocketing forty percent increase
in private contractors in Afghanistan between June and September of
this year.  There is some change here: no other president has over seen
a war employing more private contractor personnel than Obama.  Private
contractor personnel now comprise fifty-seven percent of all US personnel in Afghanistan.









Obama has coddled Wall Street beyond anyone's wildest fears.  He has
said not a word that I can discern about the bailout sham.  Is he sad
that the Wall Street brethren who dumped vast sums on his meteoric rise
to the White House behaved so badly before, during, and after the
bailout? His administration is more vested with Wall Street chums than
the Bush White House.  A ghastly embarrassment.















Obama got needlessly shabby on
Greg Craig.  Another embarrassment.  A gross performance and easily as
bad as anything Bush ever did.  But worse, because Craig was pushing
Obama's own agenda and got burned because Obama discovered some scary
things that make that ol' Constitution just as silly as Bush and Cheney
always said it was.















Obama is watching key supporters flee his administration, either forcibly or by choice: personal matters.















Obama is pushing the Congressional Black Caucus and the GOP together in refusing to address the concerns of the CBC regarding financial reform. 

"Waters suggested the CBC�s 43 members could vote with the GOP to scuttle a variety of Democratic bills if
Obama and Emanuel don�t address what she thinks is a lack of
understanding of the CBC�s wide-ranging goals of reducing urban
unemployment, home foreclosures and bank failures."

Obama continues to ignore the Don Siegelman miscarriage, and leaves Bush/Rove DoJ hacks in situ in Alabama.  Siegelman claims that
there has  been  "no substantial change in the heart of the Department
of Justice from the Bush-Rove Department of Justice."  The judge who
oversaw the travesty, Mark Fuller, is friends with all the DoJ Rovian
Canarys, and had a personal grudge against Siegleman. Fuller is in
ownership of a defense contracting company that fuels Air Force One.









Obama stood back on health care reform and watched the carnage from the
sidelines.  He stood nowhere, for nothing.  Congress made a hash of it,
as is their wont.  Who knows what it will actually do, but it will get
tens of millions of new customers for the insurance companies.  In all
likelihood, the bill will wind up being a shameless corporate crap
shoot, without the snake eyes.  The man who once said single payer was
the obvious solution, sat on hishands while a vestigial public option
was ravage further, and pernicious C Street amendments popped up like
ulcerous sores.  This continues to this very day. Not a word.  As we've recently seen, White House directives toward health care now amount to, "Drop whatever you've got to drop to get it done."  Obama will sign anything at this point and call it a "win."















Obama has ramped up the secret surveillance state beyond
mortal reckoning.  There are estimates, of course, wherein numbers drop
into the $50-100 Billion* bin. Under Obama, the NSA is building a giant
secret facility in Utah that will house a Yottabyte
archive. Surveillance state "Fusion Centers" are spreading like
wildfire.















Obama has thrown
out a trail balloon about cutting NASA's budget.  Yes, let's cut that
one half of one percent of the federal budget that goes to that wastrel
NASA.  All that fancy pants galavantin' about the solar system, and
�learnin' stuff.  Can't recall Bush threatening to cut the NASA
budget. He wanted to kill Hubble -- the certitude of that "billions of
years" talk shook his biblical bones -- but at least he wanted to go to
Mars or some crazy shit.  Now, NASA are talking to the Chinese about
partnering up.  Change!   Not exactly the change I was imagining.









The glamour of Obama's elegant curtain is wearing thin.  In fact, it's
threadbare.  The Chinese know it.  He's a pushover.  In this, the
investment cannot let go; he is so damned likable.









That is over.  Obama's plain failure is obvious.  Unlike the election
of 2000, 2008 was a known, vital cast, one the American public knew was
important.  No one really thought or knew what the stakes would become
in 2000 (except perhaps for those in on the fix).  Not so in 2008.  We
all knew it.  The wreckage is everywhere.















The above is not an agenda bent on fixing any of it, but reeks of acquiescence and inertia. It demonstrates that Santos knew, two years ago, what we know now.









Mr. Obama, if this truly is your path for the United States, you have
failed your mandate.  Not your Goldman Sachs mandate -- clearly not
-- but the one entrusted to you by the American public, one that is
desperate for a change of course.  One that still believed it was
actually possible.  This is not that change of course.  Though
admittedly persistent, as many a dead president may testify, this
course is a dead end.  Instead of doing or even attempting to take on
the necessary tasks at hand, you have folded across the board, and with
surprising haste.  Cowardice in the face of potent adversaries? or were
you in on this all along?

***

* Let's just note the institutional
proclivities here. Up to a $100 Billion per year slip into op tech to spy on
Americans is unremarkable, secret in fact, yet $80 Billion per year on
health care for American citizens redounds to gross public spectacle;
reason dragged through the shit strewn ditch, spat upon by clotpols with
guns fully strapped.  Because health care for Americans, well, that's
some dangerous stuff, there.

-----------------







/Resource extraction environment for this diatribe provided by Speijk./