Article from the Jerulsalem Post—promise tracker

The Obama Promise Tracker is an electronic tool with which to follow all the promises the new President has made – 895 by its inventor Todd Smiths count. Of these 895 promises, made between February 10 2007 – the day he announced his candidacy – and November 4 – the day he was announced President-elect – 14 are tagged under “Foreign Policy, Israel”.

The first, “I will bring to the White House an unshakable commitment to Israel’s security”, is a commitment hard to define. Obama also promised to make the peace process “a key diplomatic priority”. This is easier to check, and one Obama is evidently serious about. Proof: the appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy to the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Mitchell is not new to this contentious conflict. He was in the Middle East over eight years ago, appointed by President Bill Clinton, to report on the raging second intifada. The report was not very helpful. The intifada continued. One of his recommended measures was not well received by the Israeli government: to halt development in the settlements, including measures taken to meet the needs of “natural growth”.

“We can’t ask people not to have children. We can’t ask the children not to live with their families,” Israeli opponents claimed.

Mitchell is coming back to a different Middle East. In the past eight years Yasir Arafat died, the intifada was defeated, Israel evacuated Gaza and Hamas was elected. Mitchell will find a Palestinian leader who is willing but incapable and a new Israeli government that needs time to organize. A realistic, modest approach will have to be formulated. One thing can ignite some friction: the man who wanted a total settlement freeze cannot be expected to let Israel off on illegal outposts. The promise that Israel made to evacuate them will have to be executed. This might be possible for a government of the right-centre (more likely) or centre-left (less so, according to polls). It will be very difficult for a government of the right, headed by Likuds Binyamin Netanyahu and supported by right-wing parties only. Netanyahu knows that for his own good, he needs Labor, Kadima or both as part of his coalition.

But for most Israelis, Obama’s commitment will not be tested in Palestine, but rather in Iran. Smith’s Promise Tracker notes three promises: “incentives” for Iran to abandon its nuclear program; a promise to “tighten sanctions”; and “direct diplomacy, without preconditions”. This will be enough only if Iran agrees.

Obama has not always been consistent regarding Iran. Earlier this week, I sent Smith a quote from my May 2007 interview with Obama: “I don’t think it would be appropriate for us to engage in full-scale diplomatic discussions without some progress or some indication of good faith on the part of the Iranians,” the then senator said. “I do think the US needs to send a signal to Iran that if they change their behavior that they have avenues available to them for improved international relations.”

This assertion somewhat contradicts his later promise for unconditional high-level talks. Smith will add the quote to the next edition of the Obama Promise Tracker. This will present a dilemma to those following these promises: do they want the first promise to materialize, or the second?

Changing the tune…

Of the many remarkable words uttered by America’s new president during his inauguration Tuesday, perhaps the most exceptional were the first: “I, Barack Hussein Obama.”

There was a palpable catching of breaths among the masses of onlookers crammed in front of the towering white US Capitol when he spoke, and then tears of emotion and joy from supporters who knew they were witnessing a triumph of history at hearing that name adorned with the title of president of the United States.

For it encompasses a first name more easily pronounced by Israelis than Americans; a last name with a cadence in striking contrasts to the Johnsons and Adamses and Bushes that proceeded him; and a middle name shared with an arch-foe of America.

And thus, as the first black man to take over the White House, with a moniker that can’t conceal his otherness, he had only to recite his name while taking the oath of office to begin the change he made a central campaign slogan and promise.

And he did not stop there. He spent the 18.5 minutes of his inaugural address attempting to break with his immediate past by taking a different stance from his predecessor on issues, well packed in code terms, ranging from global warming to torture to Iraq. He spoke of the need to “begin again the work of remaking America” and that “we are ready to lead once more.”

Still, in the few policy prescriptions he offered Tuesday, there was little new. Instead, he echoed campaign promises of more international engagement and bold work to stabilize the economy, or further sketched out the moderate pragmatism demonstrated by his personnel choices, such as his promise to leave Iraq “responsibly” rather than immediately, despite a quick withdrawal’s being a central demand he heard on the campaign trail. Actually, the withdraw date of ‘combat’ troops had already been established by the previous administration.

 

In fact, despite the criticism Obama faced during those many months, that he would be a weak defender of America and abruptly change the way national security is approached, his inaugural address merely gave a softer version of his predecessor George W. Bush’s own articulation of America’s determination to prevail against its enemies. “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense,” he maintained. “For those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

SO, CONCEIVABLY, his freshest departure was the extent to which he laid the blame for these problems not at the door of the past administration or evil outsiders, but at the feet of the American public.

“Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age,” he said at one point, adding that “a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.”

At another, pushing Americans to move past “the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas” of politics as usual, he reminded them, “in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.”

If he staked out one specific theme in this address, it was his call for sacrifice and ownership of the challenges ahead. “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly.”

He struck a sober tone in comparison to the rhetorically soaring form that he honed on the campaign trail and brandished as a key weapon in the arsenal that allowed him, a largely unknown freshman senator, to slay the giants of his party and the dragons of the opposition.

SOME PUNDITS panned the address for failing to live up not only to the inaugural speeches of the greatest presidents who preceded him, but also to the campaign speeches of his own pen. But Obama is no longer looking to stir up Americans; he is seeking to sustain them.

While his words of being “in the midst of crisis” and of blame for Americans’ own role in their misfortune might have seemed a jarring notion for the candidate who made hope a centerpiece of his campaign, his focus on the “we,” on the shared obligations of the population, actually pointed to the real engine of change.

If the American people are the ones who need to effect change, rather than forces beyond anyone’s portfolio, it provides some degree of hope, because it offers a course for action to be taken.

“This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall,” he declared.

And the success of shaping that uncertain destiny will depend more on collective action than individual will, even when that individual is one Barack Hussein Obama. 

 

 

 

By SHMUEL ROSNER

Jerusalem Post

 

 

http://www.jpost.com/

We Don’t Torture… But We Let Torturers Run Free In America

Operation Itch’s Dennis Trainor, Jr (aka Davis Fleetwood on UTOOB), speaks for me (while showing his writing expertise) in regards to Obama’s turning back the torture clock, but allowing those who wound it up to live and flourish without accountability.

President Obama does not want to look backward and wants to focus forward, but, from experience sake, the future cannot go unimpeded without taking care of the past’s criminality. No one can “move on” when they have such a blight and horrible past that has gone on for so long. I am sorry, Mr President, but your stance is just wrong… and anyone thinking knows this. So, what is your motive?

Remember my letter about honor and integrity yesterday?

We are watching you…

And hope is dwindling…

MAYBE HE CAN! OBAMA REVERSES CRIMINAL POLICIES, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CRIMINALS?

Dennis Trainor, Jr • Operation Itch writer/ editor

Barack Obama went from becoming the first black president of the Harvard Law Review (1990) to becoming the first black president of the United States of America so quickly, that it is not a stretch to say that we have only known him as a candidate. His life, for the last eighteen years, has been one carefully modulated and expertly managed campaign. Even when he held such underachieving slacker status positions such as United States Senator, his votes, his appearances, his public statements- and even the shirtless beach photos – have all been part of the larger campaign. As a candidate, perhaps no one has ever been as good as Obama. He has been so good, in fact, expectations of his presidency are rivaled only by an Evangelical Christian’s expectation that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Like Christ, Obama is now a myth. The man will never walk in step with what we think of him, because we have projected so much onto him. Yes, it does speak well of his campaign that it was able to leverage the desperation of so many who were so horrified of our own inaction these past eight years. We needed a savior to rescue us from the shame brought on because we had, collectively speaking, done nothing after George Bush stole the 2000 election save for prop up a cottage industry that fed us a steady stream of clever anti-Bush t-shirts and bumper stickers for us to brandish on the sidelines as our President proceeded to treat the constitution as a pesky little obstacle in his way as he waged his comic book battle of good vs. evil, now let loose from the safe confines of his little village idiot of a head and leaving a trail of blood soaked deserts and unknown blowback in its wake.

There are some who will give Obama high grades for a longer than average honeymoon period simply because the man has replaced will be remembered by history as the worst president to ever hold the office. Alfred E. Newman would have been an improvement on Bush, the subliminal thinking will go, and Obama is surely better than Alfred E. Newman. But for many, the bar is set unreasonably high. Like Christ, many praise Obama as a revolutionary. I’m more inclined to agree with Ashley Sanders, former spokesperson for the Ralph Nader campaign, who described the change that Obama has sold us as

a hazy feeling that Obama (despite all evidence to the contrary) was the peace candidate, the environmental candidate, the Black candidate, the people’s candidate. The whole production borrowed ideas that were actually dangerous to Wall Street, gutted them of danger, and resold them as ideas that were dangerous to Wall Street. It used spectacle to create the illusion that an infinity of similar options was the same thing as a meaningful choice, as real change or authenticity. It was the triumph of ideology: getting people to vote against themselves in the name of themselves.

The whole thing smacked of buying punk clothes at Hot Topic.

As Americans, we know not where to get punk clothes but at Hot Topic, and are so entrenched in ad culture that we would not know a revolution unless it was being sold to us. Here is what is being sold to us in the first week of the Obama presidency: Obama has swept into town and takes swift action in reversing the criminal culture of torture and rendition and secret prisons by issuing an executive order to shut GITMO. This much is true.

However, in reversing the criminal policies, Obama is still reluctant to go after the criminals. The Obama faithful, like abused foster children in a new home, do not want to look back. They agree with Obama when he says, “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” One does not need their special superhero decoder ring to get the message that Obama is not going to rush in to investigate Bush, Cheney and company. And many on the left are out front supporting such an attitude that can best be summed up with the attitude of “ah- so what Bush lied to Congress lied to Congress, the American people, the U.N. and the result of those lies is an illegal, immoral and (no longer a footnote in these tight financial times) pornographically expensive war. And so what that as we wage this war we torture. We participate in secret renditions. So what! We elected a guy who walks on water, let’s just move on! (dismissive pun intentional)

To be fair, some approach it with a little more political savvy, couching their cowardice in Machiavellian political strategy. Dan Sweeny, blogging at the Huffington Post, sums up a persuasive argument for inaction. Listen closely, and you hear an argument that will be repeated, one way or another, in coffee shops, bars, and Hot Topics all throughout Obama nation:

What we know for certain is that the mushy middle of the country wants to move on. They want the cooperation and bipartisanship that Barack Obama has promised. And if the Democrats can show those people that they’re making every effort to reach across that aisle, even as they push a solidly progressive agenda, the Democrats have the opportunity to effect a seismic shift in voter trends. Karl Rove once boasted of creating a permanent Republican majority through his brand of slash-and-burn politics, so it’s particularly ironic that now, less than a decade later, the Democrats have the opportunity to do the same, mainly because of the utter failure of Rove’s methods.

The Democratic Party will only get one shot at killing the GOP with kindness. If it elects instead to put every ex-Bushie before a congressional committee, to investigate every alleged crime and misdeed of the Bush administration, the opportunity will be lost. We will return to the bomb-throwing, trench-warfare politics of the past several decades, and the huge gains that Obama has made for the Democratic Party’s image as the adults in Washington will be destroyed by the endless partisan battles that follow.

Even as Sweeney holds up the carrot of a bipartisan America, his endgame is rooted in crushing the Republican party. What can be more partisan than that? This is the very context that is strangling us. When judged against the intentions of the founding fathers, the current two party system fails. It was George Washington, in his farewell address, who warned against the two party system, saying “It serves to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration….agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one….against another….it opens the door to foreign influence and corruption…thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.” Arguments rooted in the left vs. right, or Olberman vs. O’Reilly, or Obama vs. McCain only distract us from a more accurate descriptor of how our system works: Corporatism. It was Mussolini said that Fascism should be called Corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power. Can anyone look at the handling of the bailout, or how we elect presidents for that matter, and tell me that we do not live under the stranglehold of Corporatism?

Trying to convince the Obama administration to investigate the Bush administration for war crimes is a noble cause, but it is not going to happen. Unless, that is, Obama is a Trojan horse. Thomas Friedman, ( in a January 20th Op-ed for the New York Times, wrote “…Indeed, dare I say, I hope Obama really has been palling around all these years with that old Chicago radical Bill Ayers. I hope Obama really is a closet radical. Not radical left or right, just a radical, because this is a radical moment…” If Obama is truly a radical, a kind of post modern, Trojan horse of a radical, he will shortly appoint Dennis Kucinich to a cabinet level position to establish a Department of Peace that will replace the Bush doctrine of preventative war with one of pro-active, preventive peace (image the peace core on steroids, with a budget even 1/10th of the pentagon). If Obama is a radical, he will instruct the Senate to pass HR676 this session and bring single payer universal healthcare for all to the United States. If Obama is a radical, he will stop using the word clean next to the word coal. Thomas Friedman knows, and you and I know, that Obama is not that type of radical. He is a “Hot Topic” kind of radical.

What needs to happen, if the past administration is to be held accountable for war crimes, was outlined recently by John Nichols, who pointed out:

A Founding Father seeking evidence of the checks and balances so carefully constructed to guard against executive tyranny would be hard-pressed to discover them in the Washington of 2009.

This is not Obama’s fault. He inherits executive powers so massively inflated by his predecessors George II and Prince Regent Dick that even he has said they must be diminished.

But presidents are not in the business of defining downward the authority vested in them. That is Congress’ job.

The work should begin immediately. Members of the House and Senate should assert that theirs is a co-equal branch of government. This need not be an affront to Obama. It is about identifying and condemning the excesses of the Bush era.

Lucky for us, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison has already drafted the Executive Accountability Act.  In addition to affirming that it is the sole legal right of Congress to declare war and restoring the writ of habeas corpus as an essential principle,  the act would also criminalize lying to Congress and the American people about the reasons for going to war.

That, in this age of corporatism, is the kind of radical you can’t get at Hot Topic.

Dennis Trainor, Jr is the host of Operation Itch. In addition to regular video commentator for THE UPTAKE, he was the the writer/ performer of The Hermit with Davis Fleetwood. He is currently at work on two books, My Progressive Dilemma (chronicling President Obama’s 1^st year in office) and a novel adapted from his play, I Coulda Been a Kennedy.