Barack Obama: Old package in a new wrapping

Kéllia Ramares
Online Journal
Friday February 15, 2008

He's young. He's black. And he's a great stump speaker. But if Barack Obama has you convinced that he represents change, he's pulled the wool over your eyes.

He's a change only on the shallow level of identity politics, just as Hillary is.

As the video, Barack to Hillary: I look forward to you advising me, illustrates, Barack Obama has many advisers from previous administrations, including the Clinton Administrations. Are these advisers going to advise any material change from the past? I don't think so.

If Obama truly represents change, he would not be recycling advisers from previous administrations.

One of his foreign policy advisers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who goes back to the Carter Administration. Zbig is as imperialist as they come. He is the author of a book called "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" (Basic Books, 1997). Here are a few choice excerpts

. . . it is correct to assert that America has become, as President Clinton put it, the world “indispensible nation.” . . . Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long, the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today's Eurasia but of the world more generally. [p. 195]

The last thing Zbig wants is what Peak Oil and climate change is now demanding: more political localism and local control of resources by the people of whose land they are a part. When this book was published in 1997, Big Oil thought it had discovered in the Caspian Sea basin oilfields that would be greater even than those of Saudi Arabia. However, soon thereafter, the oil companies found out that there was not nearly the amount of oil there that they thought and they canceled projects.

In the short run, it is in America's interest to consolidate and perpetuate the prevailing geopolitical pluralism on the map of Eurasia. That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy, not to mention the remote possibility of any one particular state doing so. . . . The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitrating role. [p. 198].
A genuinely populist democracy has never before attained international supremacy. The pursuit of power and especially the economic costs and human sacrifice that the exercise of such power often requires are not generally congenial to democratic instincts. Democratization is inimical to imperial mobilization. [p. 210, emphasis mine]

Last but not least:

Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat. [p. 211, emphasis mine]

People such as Zbig, at a minimum, would welcome an event such as 9-11 as an opportunity to extend American hegemony.

If it's true that you are known by the company you keep, what does it say about Barack Obama that Zbig is one of his foreign policy advisers? And I believe him when he says he looks forward to Hillary advising him, Bill, too. If you think Obama represents change, think again. And if you are excited about his candidacy because he's black, remember the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. " . . . not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

There are some pretty sorry characters running for president these days. I recently saw a question online: "How come we get to choose from over 50 candidates for Miss America, but only 2 for president?" Indeed, how come?