This article is an interesting mix of Democratic propaganda and bs about Obama and a nice analysis of the real situation with Iran. And, in many ways that illustrates the confusion that infects the Democratic left. The problem is that they still have this inherent belief that Obama is the great progressive saint that was the campaign image of the 2008 primaries.
That leads to long discussions about Obama's supposed flaws, of the sort that occupies much of this article. Obama's slow to act, and never jumps ahead of his opponents. Obama has personal flaws that make him less effective as a President.
The president has made no comment on the situation. He has let it heat up for three years now, while the public mind grows swollen with false facts, and while negotiations, to the extent that there are negotiations, proceed under cover and in secret. As if negotiation were a shameful thing. Time does not tell for Obama. He will always have time. That was his philosophy in drawing out the health care debate for twelve months as his popularity sank from 70% to 45%. It was his policy once again, in catastrophically misjudging the odds for an agreement on the debt ceiling. In that affair, Obama hung back. He left it all in the hands of William Daley before sacking Daley and heading out on the campaign trail.
Yet, all of this seems to stem from an inherent mis-understanding about who Obama is politically. Obama is wall street money. Obama is the Israeli lobby. Obama is the pro-war President who during the last general election campaign supported Dubya's drone strikes inside Pakistan, called Afghanistan the right war, and that all along promised an expansion of the Army, the Marines and the Special Forces, as well as of the alphabet soup of competing intelligence agencies. And what the Democratic Left is incapable of understanding is that the real goals of Obama's policy towards Iran are being achieved by what the Democratic Left calls Obama's flaws.
The article does an excellent job of pointing out the real actions that Obama has taken, such as putting a very pro-Israli operative in charge of his policy. Then Obama sits back and says little publicly.
The way to regime change in Iran (so the strategy dictates) must pass through the destruction of the Iranian economy and a mixture of violence and menace to provoke the Iranian government. The Likud and neoconservative hope is simply to reach a point (if possible, before November) where Iran hits out first against the powers that are choking its trade, undermining its industry, assassinating its citizens and serving up serial ultimatums.
Those who read enough history to know the steps America took against Japan in the year or so before Pearl Harbor will find that a very depressingly familiar scenario.
The problem the Democratic Left has is that they fail to fully understand and appreciate the real Obama. They fail to see that Obama was always the candidate of wall street money, vetted and approved by the various 'defense' industries, and also the candidate of the Israeli lobby.
Obama was the candidate who before the 2008 elections supported Dubya's drone strikes into Pakistan, called Afghanistan the 'right war', and promised to spend what money America would have in a collapsing economy on a bigger Army, Marine Corp and Special Forces and increasing defense budgets. This is precisely the electoral coalition that was the backbone of the Obama campaign.
Yet, the Democratic left seem to have an amazing ability to see that Obama. Instead, they head off into tortured descriptions of Obama's personality flaws. Since they still believe the primary campaign image of Obama as a progressive saint, they can't just accept that maybe Obama is actually a rather skilled craftsman who manages to achieve the policies that his backers desire while convincing the Democratic Left that he really wants the opposite to occur.
The Democrats now have their own versions of Orwell's famous contradictions from 1984. Obama is the President who put Wall Street in complete command of the economy by naming their people as the leading economic advisers, but he's still somehow the progressive who's on our side. Obama is the guy who took millions from big health care corporations and then passed a 'reform' bill that made them even richer at our expense, but who is portrayed as a health care reformer. Obama is the guy who's continued the path of Dubya's wars and started many other new wars, but he's still somehow the anti-war President.
Wall Street = Prosperity
Big Corporate Profits = Health
War still equals Peace.
So, thus you hear all the excuses from the Dems about bad tactics and how Obama's personality doesn't let him do what the mythical Obama supposedly wants. Unfortunately, the reality is that Obama is the guy who took millions from all of Dubya's backers in 2008 and who has realiably executed the policies they wanted all along. The reality is that as always the President and his team are some of the best political operatives in the country, and to constantly assume that they are inept and incapable of doing their jobs is to miss the fact that they do their jobs very well in service of the people who paid for the campaigns that put these people in the White House.
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