Another excellent article by Eric Margolis, who writes in Canada but is
an American and is, or at least was, a registered Republican. It is a
good summary of the things President elect Obama needs to restore
respect for the United States of America, restore some fiscal sanity to
Washington and to end the war mongering of the Bush-Cheney regime.
Published across Canada in the Conservative Sun Newspaper chain.
Ed CorriganAmericans did not `liberate’ Iraq, but they certainly liberated their
own nation last week by sweeping the Republican Party from power. One
prays America’s long nightmare of foreign aggressions, fear, religious
extremism, and flirting with neo-fascism is finally at an end.
The humiliated Republican Party appears to be marching off to
richly-deserved irrelevance in the backwoods of rural America. The image
it leaves behind it, as this column has been saying since 2001, is one
of blind arrogance and transcendent stupidity. The party’s dimwitted
leaders became tools of the military-industrial-petroleum complex and
scheming neoconservatives whose primary political and emotional
loyalties lay in the Mideast, not North America.
A forward-looking Democratic Party that represents America’s
increasingly mixed racial future is triumphant. While other Democrats
could also have won the election – at a time when the Republicans were
detested and mocked – Obama ran a brilliant, flawless campaign.
As a senior Republican rightly remarked, `Obama has run the best
moderate Republican campaign since Dwight Eisenhower!’ Democrats
occupied the political center while the Republicans were left with the
wilder fringes of the right and far right.
President-elect Barack Obama, formerly the `skinny little kid from
Hawaii with the funny name,’ has shown the world that America, for all
its many faults and problems, is indeed a nation of opportunity,
justice, and human decency. Eighty percent of Americans are white but
they elected a man of color, or mulatto, because of his patent
intelligence and vision. Obama’s victory does much to ease the national
historical disgrace of slavery.
People around the planet are applauding America’s re-engagement with the
rest of the civilized world. Interestingly, the only nations lamenting
Sen. John McCain’s loss were Israel, Georgia and the Philippines.
But Obama’s honeymoon will be brief. He faces the extraordinary
challenge of dealing with a nation that has plunged into bankruptcy and
exported financial crises around the globe due to a reckless orgy of
borrowing and outright criminal fraud on Wall Street.
The new president-elect must also face a daunting number of challenges
abroad that will weight heavily on his first term. His rapid appointment
of Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff sent out tremors of concern,
both among thinking Democrats and across the Mideast. Emanuel is a
hard-line neocon with strong sympathies for Israel and a reputation for
sharp elbows.
Obama’s smashing electoral victory, and the Democrat’s command of both
House and Senate, provides Obama with a unique opportunity to resolve
some of the nation’s most vexing and persistent foreign policy problems.
The first key step is to demilitarize US foreign policy by stopping the
Pentagon and CIA from making policy and return its formulation and
conduct to the professionals at the State Department.
RUSSIA. President Dimitri Medvedev lost no time in greeting Obama’s
victory with growls of anger over Georgia and Ukraine, and a dramatic
announcement Moscow was deploying short-ranged `Iskander’ missiles in
its Kaliningrad enclave to counter the Bush administration’s deployment
of an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
America’s most important national security challenge is not Osama bin
Laden or Iraq, but how to deal with Russia which has thousands of
nuclear warheads targeted at the US. President George W. Bush and his
mentor Dick Cheney went out of their way to antagonize, provoke, and
humiliate Russia with their daft anti-missile plan and their backing of
Georgia’s incredibly foolish attack on South Ossetia, a provocation
Moscow believed was designed to boost the electoral chances of `I know
how to win wars’ John McCain.
Obama should move swiftly to terminate the anti-missile program, only
184 km from Russia’s border, which is supposedly designed against
Iranian nuclear-armed missiles which do not even exist. The foolhardy
Georgians must be told to settle down and stop provoking Russia before
it ignites an East-West clash, or worse. NATO had better think three
times before agreeing to go to war for Poti, Georgia; Luhansk, Ukraine;
or Riga. Just such reckless and indefensible treaty commitments dragged
Britain into two ruinous world wars.
One also hopes Obama might renew President Dwight Eisenhower’s call for
international nuclear disarmament. He should move swiftly to end Bush’s
daft program of engineering a whole new generation of nuclear weapons.
Ukraine is the next looming crisis, and an explosive one. Washington and
Moscow have got to work out an agreement over Ukraine that guarantees
its continued independence but avoids it becoming a NATO spear pointed
at Russia’s heart.
The US/NATO eastward move to Russia’s borders was a strategic and
historic mistake that has provoked anti-western forces in Russia and
stoked its traditional xenophobia. The US and its allies should agree to
a pullback of NATO forces in exchange for ironclad guarantees from
Moscow that the independence of the ex-satellites will be respected.
CHINA – Dealing with China’s emergence as a rival to America will be the
second most important US foreign policy issue after keeping normal
relations with Russia. The Republican Party idea of setting up China as
a potential foe is wrong-headed. Washington must accept a diminution of
US influence in eastern Asia in exchange for a peaceful emergence of
China as the regional superpower. There are no basic strategic
antagonisms between the two nations.
THE `WAR ON TERROR’ - Re-name it `attacks by anti-American groups’ and
stop mislabeling it a `war’ to be waged by the ham-handed Pentagon.
Every village bombed in Iraq or Afghanistan, every suspect tortured,
every assassination from the air adds more recruits to anti-American forces.
While the Bush administration was obsessed by its fruitless hunt for
Osama bin Laden, the real threat to US national security was not in the
Hindu Kush mountains, but on Wall Street, where the Forty Financial
Thieves were creating a worldwide economic meltdown.
IRAQ – Obama should accelerate his pledge to remove US troops – all of
them – from Iraq and let the Arab League assume security responsibility
for that strife-torn nation. Bush’s attempt to conquer and plunder
Iraq’s oil was worthy of Mussolini. Bankrupt Washington can no longer
afford a $10 billion monthly occupation of Iraq. Hopefully, Obama will
put an end to Bush-Cheney-neocon dreams of an American Mideast Raj.
ISRAEL/PALESTINE - This conflict lies at the heart of much of the
anti-Western violence coming from the Muslim world. The men who crashed
airliners into New York and Washington on 9/11 made it clear their
primary motivation was to revenge the suffering of 5.5 million
Palestinians. Obama now has an opportunity to end the Bush-Cheney
crusade against the Muslim world and sharply reduce what we call terrorism.
Obama could throw his weight behind Israel’s center and left parties who
support a genuine land for peace deal. Such an agreement would go far to
ending the Muslim world’s hostility to the US and attacks on the West.
Equally important, the new president could also announce the US will
gradually cease supporting dictatorial rulers across the Muslim world –
which this writer holds is the primary cause of what we call `terrorism’
– and really begin cultivating democracy in the region.
But Obama has already come under intense pressure from the US Israel
lobby, which speaks for Israel’s hard line right wing, and was forced to
support its goals at the recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee
convention. Israel’s right rejects ceding any land to Palestinians and
will only tolerate a Palestinian tribal reservation, or `Bantustan.’
Still, there are tantalizing hints of more openness on Israel’s center
and left to a real peace deal. But none will happen without direct US
intervention and pressure. On the other hand, the hard-line Likud Party
may well win Israel’s next general election.
Continued American support for dictatorships in the Muslim world means
it will continue to bedevil US foreign policy and threaten national
security.
AFGHANISTAN – Obama has failed to understand the deep tribal and
historical complexities of the struggle in Afghanistan. He has vowed to
send 15,000 more troops and even attack inside Pakistan. Obama should
listen to the Secretary General of NATO and senior officers who say no
military solution to the conflict is possible. The way out of the Afghan
quagmire is through negotiations that include Taliban and its allies.
Ending this unnecessary war is urgent. The longer it continues, the
greater the threat that nuclear-armed Pakistan will explode and
destabilize the entire region.
President-elect Obama, there is no such thing as a `good war,’ as you
termed Afghanistan.
IRAN and NORTH KOREA – Obama’s calls for direct talks with these two
problem nations was wise and appropriate. Both are eagerly awaiting a
show of respect and moderation from the United States, and assurances it
will not attack them. Their limited nuclear ambitions are primarily for
self-defense.
EUROPE - All Europe is joyous over Obama’s victory and eagerly expecting
improved relations. It is time for Washington to start treating the EU
as an equal and seeking its counsel. The US has a lot to learn from the
EU, which is far ahead of America in human rights, environmental and
consumer protection, transportation, and effective governance.
An Obama administration should be able to improve problematic relations
with Latin America and hopefully end the shameful blockade of Cuba.
Black Africa is now in America’s camp. India, which is developing ICBM’s
and nuclear submarines, will be a future challenge to US world power.
But that is down the road.
Many of these hopes for more sensible, mature US foreign policy may turn
to ashes as Washington’s mighty special interests begin to squeeze Obama
and the Democrats. Do not under-estimate the power of the
military-industrial-petroleum complex, big finance, the Israel lobby,
big pharma, and the farm lobby, to name a few. President Obama must
tackle all these major issues while wrestling with the financial crisis
of 08.
The new president, the repository of the hopes of a majority of
Americans and people around the globe, must move swiftly and decisively
before the weight of politics and powerful interests weighs him down
with chains. But not since the ebullient days of new president, John F.
Kennedy, has the world’s heart been so open and filled with good
feelings for the United States of America.
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