The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

An important book about President Obama's role in continuing the American global wars. Perpetual war sadly seems to be the aim of US foreign policy. And, President Obama seems to have no problem continuing this evil agenda. This brilliant book explains why.

Editor of New Left Review, London-based Ali criticizes Barack Obama's obedience to the same corporate and military powers that controlled previous American administrations. What Ali sums up about a previous analysis of Obama speaks for Ali's own agenda: "A useful antidote to the gushing biographies." Ali's progressive stance confronts the illusions sold to voters in 2008 by a compliant media and capitalist firms who provided the vast majority of Obama's $900 million campaign funds. Goldman Sachs contributed nearly a million; who could claim surprise by their bailout?

His leftist presuppositions infuse this short series of what read more like related essays than a seamlessly constructed narrative. Ali admits a rush to print, preferring to provide a "preliminary report on the first 1000 days of the Obama presidency." However, with mention of the Gaza flotilla attack by Israel, the resignation of General McChrystal, and the BP oil spill, this is as current an overview as can be expected.

It begins energetically. The first "mixed-race" president reinvented himself as both white enough and black enough to win. "Little of what Obama actually said in a combination of blandishments, special pleading and specious arguments justified much optimism, but the manner of his speaking, the color of his skin and the constant invocation of the word `change' helped create a new spirit in the country--Obamania--that propelled him to the White House."

Ali cites African American scholars and activists among Obama's critics: "The emblematic significance of Obama's victory should not be underestimated, but did it ever move beyond symbols?" Ali doubts it did. After surveying the superficial gloss of Obama's campaign makeover, he turns to Obama's imperial aspirations, which extend those of his predecessors.

Surveying Iraqi and Afghani wars, Palestinian resistance, and Iranian and Pakistani dangers supposed by an Anglo-American military and multinational hegemony, Ali amasses more information akin to a current affairs journalist's approach than that of a political analyst.

This leftist reaction, in other contexts, typifies Ali's characteristic limitations. His progressive opposition leaves the reader wondering--in a world where no other superpower appears ready to take over America's role as carrier of the big stick--what viable alternatives might be.

As a weak response to such a crisis, Obama's "sonorous banality and armor-plated hypocrisy" earn derision. Ali exposes Obama's habitual lack of will. Rather than true reform for Wall Street, the healthcare system, or the Supreme Court, Obama capitulates to lobbyists and fundraisers who control politicians under a Democratic or Republican administration. Obama pretends that an audacity of hope leading to genuine advance will occur under his watch, but the "implication is always that the Washington system prevents any change that he could believe in."

One might argue that the Obama syndrome, no matter who inherits this affliction, may collapse as the parasite consumes the host. How can capitalism sustain itself in this self-devouring, environmentally threatened, and profit-driven world? Closing this collection, rather than appending an article on the failed Oakland health care system or the situation in Yemen, Ali could have addressed this dire scenario instead. One wonders about his solutions, two decades after the collapse of mass capitalist opposition, from his perspective in a London-based far-left.

Ali might have enriched this study. He could have articulated more often the fears and hopes of communities, grassroots organizations, and everyday folks who are entangled within their historical allegiance to Obama's own maker, the Democratic party machine. It dominates many cities and suburbs. No true radicals will get elected, even there. Few residents bother with whatever New Left Review encourages, when it comes to a disaffected American voter, or a non-voter majority. This lack of electoral choice prevents real change from occurring in a polarized, bipartisan, corporate-funded, unreformed campaigning system. The Democratic party's "leadership" will not support any more than the GOP a truly alternative candidate--no matter what his or her complexion--when it comes to perpetuating its own empire.

Anyone who can read and think and who has read the recent trio of books about America's dangerous empire building over the past decades will realize that more and more Americans see our so called "defense" spending has been quite the reverse.

Please forgive the facetious title I have given this review, but the author in this title obviously echos the feelings of a growing number of Americans who know they have been conned, now for decades by the greed of our military and those who make their armaments. Obama, in his failure to act decisively to stop this plunge to ultimate bankruptcy, deserves this label, as he is writing a will for a foul future.

For example, Chalmers Johnson, the author of The Blowback Trilogy, has just added "Dismantling The Empire: America's Last Hope" to this earlier wake up calls for us to cease our mad rush to dominate the planet. He notes that while we are not taking territory, our military has over 700 bases overseas.

A number of other writers have eloquently echoed Johnson's perspicacious prognostications about building our empire. For example, Andrew Bacevich in his book, Washington Rules: America's Path To Permanent War, describes the role of two key architects of that empire: Allen Dulles, who planned the Bay of Pigs disaster (which cost him his job), and General Curtis LeMay who drove the Strategic Air Command to obtain nuclear weapons could have blown the planet to smithereens many times over.

Another new offering, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Paperback), by Tom Engelhardt, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2010 represents a little heralded paperback masterpiece of only 216 pages should enlighten anyone who has not already come to the sad conclusion that the USA has turned into a dangerous empire.

Yes, we lost 3000 lives on 9/11, plus over 4,000 men and women in the current wars, but we killed 3 million in Vietnam, then hundreds of thousands in Cambodia and now hundreds of thousands in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, including many women and children. Such civilian losses are commonly referred to as "Collateral Damage" by our military.

While our Cold War excuses (Remember the Domino Theory and the Missle Gap?) may have had some validity at an earlier time, the claimed threats that prompted our continued military escalations and expansions clearly need reassessment now.

This new author adds with his title alone a chance to question present stategy. Since 1962 when our involvement in Vietnam began in ernest, US military expenditures have been $23 trillion. Does anyone think we got our money's worth or that these "defense" expenditures might have been put to better use at home?

Obama had been start heeding the voices of Americans other than those representing the Industrial Military Complex, which have exceeded Ike's warning by amounts of spending and influence which I am sure the late President could not have imagined.