Topic: Barack Obama
Barr on Obama (I): Iraq

"Senator Obama, despite his eloquent call for reform, has demonstrated that he, like other politicians, is ever ready to trim his sails to gain a few votes." - Bob Barr
by George Dance
(libertarian)
Friday, November 28, 2008

Since Election Day, there has been a deluge of articles looking forward at Barack Obama's presidency. One of the first off the mark, but sadly overlooked at the time (both because it came out during the last hectic days of the election campaign) was that of Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr.

Barr called the vote for Obama two weeks before Election Day, on October 22 (1) -- and his look forward appeared in the widely-read (5 million visitors/month) online magazine Huffington Post a week later, on October 29 (where he again flatly declared, "Barack Obama is going to win the presidency"). (2)

Barr starts with the good news: "the end of the current era of Republican mismanagement may be good news in many respects". However, he warns that Obama's election "is no cause for complacency for anyone concerned about American liberty and America's place in the world."

Barr sees danger from two sources. One is the historical fact of ever-expanding presidental power: of each new administration using its predecessor's powers as a floor. In Obama's case (as in Bush's, and Clinton's before him), there "will be voices advising him to use the executive powers so freely expanded by his predecessor. Will he be strong enough to resist this Siren's Song? No one knows."

The second source of danger lies in Obama himself. "Senator Obama, despite his eloquent call for reform, has demonstrated that he, like other politicians, is ever ready to trim his sails to gain a few votes."

Barr's verdict: "If freed from the limiting forces of public awareness and involvement, President Obama would follow a long line of presidents who talk of enhanced individual liberty, but practice a policy of increased government power."

Barack on Iraq

Barr dwells on two examples of Barack Obama's willingness "to trim his sails to gain a few votes" that occurred during the just-concluded campaign; the first being Obama's abandonment of his originally professed anti-war beliefs

As an Illinois state legislator, Obama had shot to national prominence on October 2, 2002. On that day -- the same day that President Bush and Congress agreed on the wording of the Iraq use-of-force resolution -- Obama gave his now-famous speech, "Against Going to War in Iraq," at an anti-war rally in Chicago. Niranjan Ramakrishnan later noted that

Obama would have been just another presidential wannabe if he had not given that single speech against the Iraq War in 2002. That speech has been milked as a permanent political ATM; it was this address that gave Obama his initial spurt when he launched his campaign, coinciding with a time when there were about a 100 Americans getting killed each month in Iraq. (3)

"However," Ramakrishnan observed, "it would seem that to Obama, this was just a bullet point (no pun intended) on his resume, not a cause."

As Barr reminds the reader, "the Senator who showed genuine foresight and courage in opposing the Iraq war spent most of the primary season edging away from his initial tough stand." At various points in the primaries, Obama declared that he would:

keep as many as 80,000 American troops in Iraq, while redeploying the rest to Kuwait as a regional strike force;
maintain the 140,000-strong American mercenary force in Iraq;
implement a troop "surge" in Afghanistan;
send American forces into Pakistan, even without that country's permission;
and, of course, keep the military option against Iran on the table.

By July, Kevin Zeese of Voters for Peace was warning that, "where all these policy pronouncements by Obama become reality -- continued war in Iraq, with Kuwait drawn into the conflict, escalation in Afghanistan, strike forces attacking Pakistan and a military attack on Iran -- the picture is of an enlarged mid-east war. No wonder Obama has called for 92,000 more troops, at a cost of tens of billions annually; he may need them..." (4)

It was even revealed during the primaries (though not much remarked on) that this edging away had begun long before, at least from when Obama had first been elected to Congress. For example, Republican presidential contender Ron Paul told CNN in March: "If you look at Obama's voting record, he's voted not to end the war. He's voted to finance the war.... I think it's a fraud what he's talking about when he [says he] wants to really get out of Iraq. I think that's politics." (5) Even earlier,

Bill Clinton pointed out an inconvenient fact, namely, that Obama's record on Iraq once he got to the US Senate was exactly the same as Hillary Clinton's, whose flawed judgment on Iraq was one of Obama's main planks. Bill Clinton termed this notion of Obama being a serious opponent of the war in Iraq a 'fairy tale' (only to be reviled as a racist -- he was not calling the candidacy a fairy tale, only Obama's ongoing stands on Iraq, but by then he had lost the media which had commenced its ballroom dance with Barack). (3) [stress added]

So, asks Barr, just what will Obama do in the mideast: "Will he order the troops to exit Iraq? Will he bring them all home, or simply shift them from Iraq to another foreign country?" Will the end result be peace, or (as Zeese fears) more war?

Unfortunately, these questions cannot be answered at this time; there is no telling which way the Obama administration will turn. "Such," as Black Agenda Report put it in July, "is the endless elasticity of terms like 'peace' and 'withdrawal' when mouthed by Barack Obama, a master of bait-and-switch, a game he apparently believes he can play indefinitely on the people of the United States and the planet." (4)

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Sources

(1) George Dance, "Barr vs. McCain (II):The Wasted Vote," Nolan Chart, Nov. 3, 2008.
http://www.nolanchart.com/article5379.html

(2) All quotations in italics are from:
Bob Barr, "The Liberal Case for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party," Oct. 29, 2008.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-barr/the-liberal-case-for-bob_b_139067.html

(3) Niranjan Ramakrishnan, "The Obaminations Of Barack," Countercurrents, Oct. 26, 2008.
http://www.countercurrents.org/rama261008.htm

(4) George Dance, "Obama warned not to take peace vote for granted," Nolan Chart, July 26, 2008. http://www.nolanchart.com/article4342.html

(5) Jake Morphonios, "Ron Paul Attacks Obama on CNN," Nolan Chart, Mar. 10, 2008. http://www.nolanchart.com/article3123.html

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Please watch:

Bill on Obama: "Big Fairy Tale"

ABC News, Jan. 8, 2008. http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4102345

Bob Barr on Iraq and Afghanistan

Glassbooth.org, YouTube, Nov. 3, 2008. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=juAUNhmc_Y0

Also read:

Barr on Obama (II): FISA

http://www.nolanchart.com/article5569.html

The views expressed in this article are those of George Dance only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. George Dance is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.