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Obama: Regime Rotation
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
The Cutting Edge
Sunday, Feb 1, 2009
The arrival of the Obama administration will not fundamentally alter the course of military expansion accelerated during the Bush era. The origins of these policies do not lie uniquely in neoconservative ideology. While the election of President Obama may offer new opportunities for progressive forces to delimit the damage, their space for movement will ultimately be constrained by deep-seated structural pressures that will attempt to exploit Obama to rehabilitate American imperial hegemony, rather than transform it.
Indeed, the radicalization of Anglo-American political ideology represented by the rise of neoconservative principles and the militarization processes of the ‘War on Terror’, constituted a strategic response to global systemic crises supported by the American business classes. The same classes, recognizing the extent to which the Bush era has discredited this response, have rallied around Obama. Therefore, as global crises intensify, this militarization response is likely to undergo further radicalization, rather than a meaningful change in course. The key differences will be in language and method, not substance.
Obama and National Security: “It’s the Oil, Stupid!”
This became increasingly clear as Barack Obama’s administration appointees became known – individuals whose political and ideological positions are largely commensurate with neoconservative ideals particularly on security matters, and whose social and intellectual connections link them to neo-conservative think-tanks and policy-makers.
A glance through Obama’s national security team also raises eyebrows, but we should focus on his selection of former Marine General Jim Jones as his National Security Advisor. Jones was previously appointed to the NATO post of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and Commander of the US European Command (COMUSEUCOM) under the Bush administration. The thrust of Jones’ imperial vision of US national security can be seen from a UPI article describing his work in 2005:
“NATO’s top military commander is seeking an important new security role for private industry and business leaders as part of a new security strategy that will focus on the economic vulnerabilities of the 26-country alliance. Two immediate and priority projects for NATO officials to develop with private industry are to secure the pipelines bringing Russian oil and gas to Europe… to secure ports and merchant shipping, the alliance Supreme Commander, Gen. James Jones of the USMarine Corps said Wednesday… A further area of NATO interest to secure energy supplies could be the Gulf of Guinea off the West African coast, Jones noted… Oil companies were already spending more than a billion dollars a year on security in the region, he noted, pointing to the need for NATO and business to confer on the common security concern.”
In summary, Jones’ national security strategy privileges US military control over regions containing substantial underexploited oil and natural gas reserves, in Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, the Black and Caspian Seas, and the Persian Gulf. This drive also allows the US to consolidate European dependence for its energy security on NATO, thus solidifying EU support of the wider US geostrategy to control global energy resources and transportation routes.
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Obama and the Economy: Déjà vu?
As for Obama’s ambitions for tackling the financial crisis, even a scathing New York Times editorial noted that President Obama’s economic team, put together to tackle the economic and financial crisis, consisted of the very same people who had “played central roles in policies that helped provoke today’s financial crisis.” These include Tim Geithner who as president of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York “helped shape the Bush administration’s erratic and often inscrutable responses to the current financial meltdown, up to and including this past weekend’s multibillion-dollar bailout of Citigroup”; and former World Bank chief, Larry Summers, who “championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the financial instruments – aka toxic assets – that have spread the financial losses from reckless lending around the globe.”
Obama and the Transnational American Business Class
One needs to look beyond the rhetoric to get an idea of what Obama really means for the world. Analysis of Federal Election Commission data on the largest financial donors to both the McCain and Obama presidential campaigns reveals that they were almost entirely sponsored by the same banks, financial institutions and corporations (except Obama received significantly more corporate financing than his rival McCain). This suggests that US policies have, and will continue to, broadly represent the insecurities and interests of Anglo-American capital – and further, that American business classes actually favoured Obama and provided him the finances and expertise to produce a power-house media and publicity campaign.
Obama Shuts Down ‘War on Terror’… Not
So what should we make of Obama’s opening measures, almost as soon as he was inaugurated as President, to close Guantanamo Bay, de-legitimize torture and challenge CIA practices of extraordinary rendition? Firstly, we should of course welcome any such public condemnations of these practices, particularly by the new American President. But this should not blind us from critically examining what Obama’s Executive Orders actually meant.
While around the world, Obama’s measures were interpreted as completely reversing the Bush administration policies of torture, extraordinary rendition and secret prisons – starting with the declaration of the complete closure of Guantanamo Bay – deeper inspection of the details of his Executive Orders suggests, unfortunately, that cries of joy are slightly premature.
First, it should be understood that regardless of what elected US governments have said or left unsaid about the practice of torture by military intelligence services, torture is, and always has been, endemic and officially sanctioned at the highest levels. Declassified CIA training manuals from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, prove that the CIA has consistently practiced torture long before the Bush administration attempted to legitimize the practice publicly. This means that what made the Bush era distinctive was not the systematic practice of torture by US military intelligence agencies, but rather the US government’s open and widely known endorsement of such practices, and insistence either on their obvious legality, or otherwise of the irrelevance of law in the context of fighting terrorism.
This means that Obama’s public disavowals of torture do not actually represent the end of the systemic practice of the CIA’s traditional interrogation techniques, conducted without public scrutiny for decades. Rather, they portend a sheepish return to secrecy – or in other words, a return to the obvious recognition that open declarations of covert US practices such as torture as official policy are detrimental, not conducive, to US hegemony.
Closer scrutiny of President Obama’s first Executive Orders reveals that they were designed less to transform illegal US military intelligence practices, than to allow them to continue in secret without legal obstruction, by redefining their character (while retaining their substance):
1) While Obama demanded the harmonization of interrogations in line with a purportedly Geneva Conventions-compliant US Army Field Manual, unaddressed revisions to that manual in 2006 – “in particular, a ten-page appendix known as Appendix M” – “go beyond the Geneva-based restrictions of the original field manual.” Indeed, the Manual accepted 19 forms of interrogation and the practice of extraordinary rendition. Further, retired Admiral Dennis Blair, Obama’s director of national intelligence, told a Senate confirmation hearing that the Army Field Manual would itself be changed, potentially allowing new forms of harsh interrogation, but that such changes would remain classified.
2) Obama’s supposed banning of the CIA’s secret rendition programmes did not actually prevent the CIA from extra-judicially apprehending and detaining innocent civilians without evidence or due process, but only emphasized, in the words of one White House official: “There is not going to be rendition to any country that engages in torture.” The problem here is that rendered detainees have already been sent to countries across the EU that do not officially sanction torture, where they were nevertheless tortured. Secret CIA detention facilities have been hosted in, for instance, Poland, and were previously justified by the Bush administration’s State Department under exactly the same notion that Poland did not engage in torture. Even Obama’s own counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, had insisted that rendition is “absolutely vital.”
3) Finally, while purportedly banning the CIA’s use of secret prisons, the prohibitions “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.” Yet without specifying an actual time-limit clearly defining the meaning of “short-term” and “transitory”, Obama’s injunctions effectively still permitted indefinite detention, as long as the CIA would officially re-classify the period of detention as designed to be short-term and transitory.
The end result was a successful re-configuration of the public presentation of US military intelligence practices, coupled with nominal legal caveats permitting them to continue relatively unimpeded – essentially a giant PR exercise. Meanwhile, the vast post-9/11 domestic national security apparatus denying habeas corpus, undermining due process, and facilitating mass surveillance as well as intrusive social control powers brought in by the Bush administration was not repudiated, but retained.
Not One to Waste Time
Abroad, the Obama administration began its first days in office by committing more troops to Afghanistan, intensifying military pressure on Pakistan, stepping-up covert warfare on Iran, and deepening military-political penetration of Central Asia and West Africa. The overarching motivations for these policies are US domination of energy reserves and transportation routes, exemplified in the appointment of oil-obsessed ex-NATO Marine Gen. James Jones as Obama’s national security czar. Rather than reversing the pattern of attempting to intensify state power, these policies will severely exacerbate the potential for geopolitical competition and violent conflict.
Regime Rotation: Hegemony Rehabilitation, Systemic Stabilization
After the Bush administration’s record of essentially trampling on any semblance of half-decent PR, leading to the very concept of US world leadership being vehemently opposed or incredulously ridiculed around the world, the arrival of Obama is set to rehabilitate American hegemony and restore some sense of credibility and even respectability to US military and financial power. After Obama’s powerful inauguration speech, enough to make even a grown non-American man such as myself (nearly) weep (ok I’m exaggerating, but you get the drift…), Americans and even the entire world, can for the first time in perhaps a decade feel proud and satisfied that all is going to be taken care of.
Yet this sense of jubiliation is symptomatic of the fact that the Obama administration will pursue (and has already pursued) policies of hegemony rehabilitation and systemic stabilization. This will not involve a meaningful change of course, but rather a perpetuation of existing structures in the global political economy. In other words, not changing the system, but protecting it – violently if necessary, but this time with greater attention to PR.
So there will also be sharp ostensible differences with Obama’s predecessors, for instance, greater concern for a multilateralist approach; avowing respect for international law and institutions; reliance on more covert methods of extending influence rather than overt military confrontrations with all those who are “not with us” and therefore de facto “against us”; etc. -thus allowing the US to return to the moral high ground so completely eroded by the Bush administration’s open policies of unilateralism, endorsement of torture, and unabashed violations of international law. In effect, this will involve removing, relabeling or simply concealing practices that have served to undermine US authority in the eyes of its allies, and the world.
The outcome has already been disturbing: while neutralizing and thoroughly confusing progressive social and anti-war movements in and outside the West, the arrival of Obama has allowed the US government to rally unprecedented popular support behind it, for whatever it intends to do.
We will see, in this respect, a marked shift in the language and rhetoric of foreign policy, a return to more diplomatic strategies, as well as military policies couched in the discourse of humanitarian intervention and aid. Unfortunately, for a while, this shift will seem more convincing coming from Obama, as opposed to Bush. More than ever, therefore, progressive movements will need to up their game in understanding and accurately critiquing the new administration’s policies, if they are to prevent processes of imperial militarization from intensifying.
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30 Responses to “Obama: Regime Rotation”
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February 1st, 2009 at 6:18 am
Illegal President
Anything he says or does has no basis in law and the Constitution of the Republic
Listen to Ron Paul and bring back all the troops from around the world and save a trillion dollars a year
Oh yea enjoy the super bowl just like the Romans did as their empire collapsed all around them starting from the inside
Time is growing short citizens of the Republic
WAKE UP before it is to late
“Remember Always The Truth Will Set You Free”
free documentaries Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 10:44 am
Watch free documentaries online @ http://www.documentarywire.com
February 1st, 2009 at 6:44 am
Excellent observations, Nafeez.
February 1st, 2009 at 6:51 am
is it me or is this truth movement turning more into a crock of shit everyday
me Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 6:59 am
its not you
will hale Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 5:53 pm
please explain the statement
using swear words to express yourself is poor communication.
the truth movement has no leaders or base to work from so its a loose connection (via internet) of concerned citizens.
yes there are loose ends so what
you think the government hasnt got nutjobs in its ranks?
mate the pursuit of truth is in itself a noble undertaking
so to answer your rhetorical question
its you !
February 1st, 2009 at 7:32 am
you stupid americano’s are so fucked…
i laugh when i see your empire turn to dust.
we laugh, we dance, we do not shed one tear
bye bye americano dream
Beavis Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 8:19 am
Yo have a nice day buttt…….
will hale Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
i am sure he means the oppressive government policies of the last 60 years.
i travel to america all the time
you have wonderful people
just wish they would be as concerned about their government as they are about watching desparate houswives
or the superbowl
is it the flouride that makes you compliant?
i wonder what happen to the protests of the 60;s
its had 40 years to dumb down an entire population
birdman Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 8:59 am
Its not just America in the firing line, it is the entire would. So it dosent matter where you are from, which country you live in or what god you believe.
It is a global melt down and unfortunately there is only one planet. Protect and keep your families safe, Brace yourself for one hell of a roller coaster ride.
Forced Freedom Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 5:31 pm
It’s NOT just the “Americans” that are fucked!
Remember, this thing is called “The New WORLD Order”, so no matter where you are you will take part in it’s evil at some point in time.
Oh the IRONY of it all! Does the truth hurt? Welcome to hell!
February 1st, 2009 at 10:32 am
Survival is the key because storming the gates of the castle will only result in boiling oil
being poured on our heads. Get everything you’re going to need to protect and feed
your family. When the crap hits the fan the city might not be the best place to lay low.
When cops, army, misguided militia, civilian army, and starving hoards begin to sweep
the streets a safe retreat might be your only defense. Even starving in the woods can
be better than dying on the streets or worse starving in a FEMA camp.
February 1st, 2009 at 10:55 am
i dont really have a problem with the whole ”new world order” concept. it would certainly result in more peace and harmony internationally. it’d be a global brotherhood and we’d begin to see one another as equals. plus, this would result in wealth distribution globally. the poorer nations would finally get their fair share and we’d lose some (which we deserve to).
i’m hoping the north american works out well. hopefully by 2020 we’ll be a thriving global community! this is what humanity has always kinda hoped for.
Mike in Michigan Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 12:07 pm
You’re in la la land.
Jack Washington Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Seems since Obla Obla got in – The Morons ABOUND. You hired to type this dribble? Or are you just that damned stupid?
Forced Freedom Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Reality has OBVIOUSLY escaped you! I hope you encounter this thing called “Reality” inside a Fema camp where you will receive the crash course.
February 1st, 2009 at 11:55 am
Everyone here needs to stop shitting on the American Public’s head. We are just average citizens, we are just human beings. You can same the same about any average citizen of any country, take your pick. There is no country on Earth that their entire populous is completely willing to die for everything and anything. I don’t see any of you storming the White House on my T.V. I have heard maybe 3 good ideas out of the the posts and articles I’ve read on this site that could actually come to fruition.
All the terrible fear-mongering this site does almost makes one want to give up on reaching ones’ goals in life. If we aren’t being poisoned, tased, killed by police, thrown into “fema camps” or some ludicrous project bluebeam bull……sorry now I am on a tangent. Point is most of the stuff on here is a steaming pile and I really don’t think people should be worrying themselves with all this. No, I’m not a sheep, I am an individual like all of you. Most posts I see here are so anti-christian, anti semetic, anti islam, anti gay, pro gay, anti green, pro green, etc. This website is full of more contradictions than any of you would like to point out. Hypocrites.
All any of you can REALLY do is take care of yourself and those around you and try to live life. You’re going to make it past 2012 and even further beyond that date and wouldn’t it be sad if you missed out on something huge in life?
Planet nibiru, space lightships, reptilians? C’mon guys, who’s drinking the cool aid now and just feeding into trends, albeit not mainstream ones.
Oh and just FYI most mayan history buffs are disgusted with the 2012 phenomenon.
February 1st, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I totally support the New World Order and currently work on this project. You guys need to relax: humanity has no choice but to work together and to come together. All I see here is ‘jews. jews, jews’ and ‘get yall gun and run to the woods!’. Relax, and let the NWO wash over you: we live in the best of times, where things are becoming more stable and prosperous.
transPhat Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Trank
When Paul Newman died, they said how great he was but they failed to mention he considered himself Jewish (born half-Jewish). When the woman (Helen Suzman) who helped Nelson Mandela died last week, they said how great she was but they failed to mention she was Jewish.
When Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Martha Stewart, Randy Cunningham, Gov Edwards, Conrad Black, Senator Keating, Gov Ryan, and Gov Begoivich messed up, no one told me what religion or denomination they were — because they were not Jewish.
When Ivan Boesky or Andrew Fastow or Bernie Madoff committed fraud, almost every article mentioned they were Jewish.
A famous Einstein quote: In 1921, Albert Einstein presented a paper on his then-infant Theory of Relativity at the Sorbonne, the prestigious French university. “If I am proved correct,” he said, “the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.”
Forced Freedom Reply:
February 1st, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Is your idea of becoming more prosperous coming from the idea that the NWO can create this new order out of pure chaos?
When it comes down to it this whole idea of order out of chaos defies reality! I don’t expect you to understand since you have been COMPLETELY desensitized to reality and have been quite literally brainwashed into accepting this authoritarian system of Government.
Freedom to you people is NOT true freedom! Your form of freedom dictates your entire life from birth to death and you are NOT allowed to express freedom of choice, opinions, health, wealth and life.
It is NOT freedom to have cameras monitor your every move, there is no freedom in having microchips implanted in your body, no freedom in allowing others to dictate your entire life. What planet are you from where this freedom is accepted?
They will dictate who lives and who dies, is that freedom?
If they let me live on an island somewhere during this freedom movement of the NWO, I would be quite content with this. Just give me a Fat woman, Barley and Hops, and I will live like a king without your cameras and control.
February 1st, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Frank,im sure thats not your real name of course,as this is not mine,I had so many when I was a kid I almost forgot mine.Your ideas are flawed because human nature is flawed ,one world government will only serve those ruthless enough to rise to the top of the food chain devouring the very decent and idealistic types of people who need to be there for checks and balances of power to protect the common person.History has proven time and time again that that total power absolutely corrupts,and the more centralized a power structure becomes the more wicked it will be.Flush out your headgear and think for yourself and remember that history dictates the future. This will fail and countless needless lives will be lost if it is not stopped .Try to think of it this way,the whole world has had the power for years to end the suffering in Africa but the massive effort has only served to make things worse.Now these wonderful sweet people are used for medical experiments while the world at large turns a blind eye.I welcome your response.
February 1st, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Hey Buttt,as far as im concerned you underestimate the american people ,we are slow to act that is true, but the wave is building and when it breaks dont be on the beach.
February 1st, 2009 at 3:07 pm
http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Fo.....amp;sr=1-1
The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law (Hardcover)
by Howard Grief (Author)
Product Description
“The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law” offers a comprehensive and systematic legal treatment of Jewish national and political rights to all of the Land of Israel. The author, Howard Grief, is the originator of the thesis that de jure sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel and Palestine was vested in the Jewish People as a result of the San Remo Resolution adopted at the San Remo Peace Conference on April 24, 1920. Yuval Ne’eman, a former Israeli government minister said: “For about 400 years, the Ottoman Empire ruled over all the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa. The struggle for the liberation of those areas began in the Balkan lands at the beginning of the 19th century and ended in 1913. In the First World War, the job [of liberation] was completed and Turkey was reduced to the Anatolian Peninsula. All of this was contained in the San Remo Agreement of April 1920. The fact that it was precisely at that place and time that Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the states of the Arabian Peninsula obtained [thanks to the victory of the Principal Allied Powers over the Central Powers] the very same liberation from the Ottoman yoke, strengthens the approach of Grief who presents the proof for the inclusion of Palestine [i.e., the Jewish People] in the list of beneficiaries in regard to the “settlement [or disposition] of the inheritance of the Ottoman Empire.” Dr. Ya’akov Meron, former Adviser on the Law of Arab Countries at the Ministry of Justice, Jerusalem, Israel and Professor of Moslem Law in the Faculties of Law of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv wrote: “The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law” is a forceful and erudite pleading for the respecting of the letter and spirit of the law, not only Israeli law but also the international law that came into existence in the wake of World War I. This law, now largely forgotten or neglected, is still relevant today in regard to the status and borders of the Land of Israel. The author makes a thorough analysis of the international documents which recognized the rights of the Jewish People to the land of their ancestors, most significantly the San Remo Resolution on Palestine, agreed to by the victorious Allies at the Peace Conference of April 1920.
February 1st, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Hey Dudes; ????????
I have been trying to find out why North America is going to a digital TV format. Where did this idea come from and why are our respective Governments pushing this.
To date I have not been able to get a straight answer from anyone in “authority”. If there is anyone out there that can give me the info. on this I would be greatful. This whole thing is creeping me out.
February 1st, 2009 at 4:26 pm
I would rather die fighting than starve in the woods hiding.
February 1st, 2009 at 4:59 pm
If it’s true that Obama is in office ILLEGALLY, this would mean that the ENTIRE Government as it stands right now is ILLEGAL, which means that ultimately, we really have NO LEGITIMATE Government, which means that ANY law, order, directive or legislation cannot stand and is NOT valid since right now the entire Government is a SHAM.
Legally, Obama and his ENTIRE Administration and ANY person appointed, has ABSOLUTELY no authority over the entire nation since his lack of citizenship makes him an illegal president, he cannot appoint or direct ANYTHING because of this fact.
The only MAJOR problem I see with this is the idea that if Obama has no authority in his position as Commander in Thief, can ANY person direct the Government if the Current Administration has no Authority?
This would really be bizarre because this means that the Muslims have just successfully exercised the most silent coup of the US Government without a sound from around the world.
This is HISTORY!
Your Government has been taken over by MUSLIMS and YOU allowed it to happen and STILL you are quiet as a mouse.
This should be the basis of your push to return truth to America, EVERY legal battle MUST prove that Obama has ANY Authority in this land before any court can move against ANY person of this land.
They MUST prove he is legal before going one step further with ANYTHING!
Ultimately, this means that the NWO can waltz right in at ANYTIME and take over our current system and there is NOTHING we can do about it.
There must be a MASSIVE push for Obama to PROVE legitimacy NOW or we face being transitioned to a Fascist Dictatorship this year.
God Bless all truth seeking sovereigns.
February 1st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
THERE is an old world order [its the same as the new world order]
we have formed our own order [the now order] its a freedom movment, based on ‘robs cunning plan’… forming together into a global society of freemen
its the movment of freemen moving together in peace and harmony to re create the freeman movment’s solution to the same old disorder, think free to be free, it begins by watching the movie [robs cunning plan]… were just freemen doing what freemen do
simply watch the movie
http://www.worldfreemansociety.org/
no one can set you free, but you, its not done for you, you do it for yourself..now not new
February 1st, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Just imagine you’re alone in a closed room with one of these elitists of your choice. I’d really like to choose bush or cheney but I know they’re just slaves to the jews. So i’d go higher up on the food chain. Could you imagine the fear they would feel. A young patriot face to face with one of these scum. They are nothing but cowards and when a real revolt happens global or just u.s it doesn’t matter. They will cry like babies.
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:30 am
[quote] Hey Buttt,as far as im concerned you underestimate the american people ,we are slow to act that is true, but the wave is building and when it breaks dont be on the beach.–powerslave[/quote]
what you said is inevitable.
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:51 am
Most dems take the same pay for play as the neocons do.