b. traven
In desperation, Obama is working overtime to leave a legacy that he did not work for in his eight years in office. He is now trying, in just six weeks, to burnish a corporatist presidency and Democratic Party with the fantasy image of a caring group who worked tirelessly against great odds for peace, for the environment, for economic policies that benefited all and enriched none, and a foreign policy that promoted peace. He gave endless flows of cash to the big banks, while their leadership continued to ignore the masses and enrich themselves.
Obama and his State Department also led a Kabuki theater group, early in his presidency, that was to give the appearance to the world that the US was really interested in Israeli-Palestinian peace. That little charade lasted until it was shelved when Israel built more housing on contested land and no one in the administration had the cojones to condemn this affront. Despite Israeli PM Netanyahu publicly dissing him he continually turned his back on Israeli crimes against the Palestinians and rewarded this arrogant behavior on the PM’s part by signing a ten-year, multi-billion dollar military weapons deal that no other president had even considered. Thus losing what little leverage we had over Israeli misbegotten policies.
Now to cap this dismal performance off with a final bravado performance, Obama has capitulated to a folly of monumental proportions, the supposed interference of no less than Vladimir Putin, personally, in our presidential election.
By publicly using the CIA’s and FBI’s very suspect “analysis” of Russian interference in our recent election to back up his claim, one can not help but recall Bush’s use of the same sources to rationalize his catastrophic Iraq invasion that continues to reverberate through the region, and the world, fifteen years later. Let us be clear. These agencies do the Presidents bidding, right or wrong.
Let us look closely at what might really be Obama’s reasons for using this dicey “intelligence” to escalate confrontation with Russia that carries many downstream risks…
- On the legacy level it makes him look tough on foreign policy matters (and very Republican).
- It inadvertently reveals his revanchist neo-liberal support of “regime change” foreign policies.
- By featuring the idea that the Russians were responsible for how the election turned out, he allows the narrative to discount the content of the documents that showed the collusion of the Clinton campaign with the DNC to sabotage the Sander’s campaign.
- It is also a pathetic attempt to pull the rug out from under Trump’s only realistic foreign policy position, vis-a-vis Russia, to de-escalate tensions resulting from our neo-liberal participation in the overthrow of the previous Ukrainian government.
The Republicans in congress have delighted in Obama’s policy and their only criticism is that it does not go far enough. So it sets up a key divisive issue between congress and Trump. Trump, for his part is ready later this week with information that may pull the rug out from the CIA-FBI and Obama’s ploy.
Stay tuned for what could be the game changer between peace with Russia or continued confrontation. Putin is playing it cool.
The Contrary Perspective 
Yes, it’s interesting, traven, how Obama is now being applauded in the media for taking various actions “to save us from Trump.” Really? Where has he (Obama) been for the last eight years? All this time, I thought he was president, the most powerful leader in the world. But apparently his resolve has only been activated by the election of Trump.
Indeed, too little, too late.
I fundamentally believe that Obama’s main aim in jumping into this specious position was to give cover to the reactionary forces in the Democratic Party who want to obscure the role the party elite played in killing Bernie Sanders populist campaign ( which the leaked papers exposed) and setting it up if Clinton wants to make a 2020 run again ( which there are some indications that she may be already planning that). Problem is that 2016 may have been the last real election in this country for many years to come if the fascist republicans have their way.
Good gawd, I hope 2016 finally killed the Clintons’ monopolization of the Democratic political scene. I’m not sure what Trump is going to bring (early signs are not promising), but Clinton promised disaster. Greg Maybury put it well in this article earlier in 2016: http://poxamerikana.com/2016/05/09/hillary-clintons-house-of-cards/
The Dems are in serious need of fresh blood. Please, please, no more Clintons!
Oh joy, Bill and Hillary (maybe Chelsea as well?) have promised they will appear at Trump’s inauguration!! But of course! This simply re-confirms my thesis that the Clintons sincerely believe the world will cease spinning on its axis if they are not seen in the public spotlight! I think dementia will prevent a Hillary run in 2020. I don’t know when Chelsea will turn 35, but she’s likely the only Clinton who will try for the presidency again.
traven.
You’ve tagged the wrong party with the “facist” label. My proof: “Reactionary forces in the Democratic Party.” If this past election showed anything, it showed there are a lot of those.
Thank you, “traven,” for saying what needed to be said. The key storyline in the Obama presidency has been GOP obstructionism, at every turn, of the details of any attempted initiative. This is an undeniable fact, including the unprecedented refusal to consider any nominee to fill a vacant SCOTUS seat. But the sad truth, for those now trying to paint Obama as some kind of martyred saint because his soon to be seated replacement is so repugnant, is that this president had no overarching vision for addressing the world’s grave problems. (Hey, shouldn’t those problems be addressed by the UN? Unfortunately, that international body has become virtually worthless. And by claiming “American exceptionalism” Obama himself implies that the USA should, indeed, be the Savior of a world awash in climate crisis and regional barbaric violence.) And the performance of failed-POTUS-candidate John Kerry as Secretary of State has been an abomination. The dance in the Kabuki Theater play “traven” likes to use as metaphor continues, with Kerry and Netanyahu recently exchanging heated verbal volleys. But words is all they are!! Not a single penny of US military assistance to the aggressive Zionist regime in Tel Aviv has been threatened with being sequestered. Peace in the Middle East is apparently the LEAST desired outcome of US foreign policy, and now comes Trump encouraging his pal ‘Bibi’ to do as he pleases on the illegally occupied territories of Jordan, Syria and Egypt. This WILL bring more “blowback” to the so-called Western democracies that sit on their hands as Israel defies all UN resolutions, mark my words. There will be more terrorism, more retaliation, and more war. Happy 2017!
The expatriate Russian engineer, Dmitry Orlov, has a pretty good term for the last eight years in American political life. He calls it “Obama’s ridiculous caretaker presidency.” Sounds about right to me. I submit that “Deputy Dubya’s third and fourth terms” might also qualify as a post-mortem description of Barack Obama’s tepid time at the top of the greasy pole. But leaving the lamest of lame ducks to his pathetic quacking at the Russians and their President Vladimir Putin, we Americans have to confront what looms before us: namely, the human practical joke, Donald Trump, poised to take “command” of the debt-ridden, bankrupt “superpower.” As Dmitry Orlov points out: Who else but a real-estate salesman and con artist (but I repeat myself) could possibly know How to Make America Great Again with Other People’s Money. Who indeed? And what “other people” have any money left for America to loot?
Yet another “intelligence” report came out recently, sponsored by the outgoing administration of Barack “Putin Screwed Me Again” Obama claiming that the Russians — by means of a long-distance Vulcan mind-meld — made the American people vote for Donald Trump instead of You-Know-Her. America’s “top spies” offered no new evidence to back up these scurrilous allegations, of course, but they did offer a boilerplate-jargon defense of their fact-free presentation. You see, they can’t tell us what they know and how they know it because “revealing how U.S. spies know what they know could endanger U.S. spy operations.”
Yeah, sure. More likely, the U.S. spies don’t know doodley squat and public awareness of their ignorance and incompetence might terminate their careers. Obviously, by the U.S. spooks’ own implicit admission, they failed utterly to defend the U.S. election from this alleged tampering. Given this demonstrated uselessness, why should the American taxpaying citizen continue to employ these worthless parasites? To ask these questions, pretty much answers them.
And the United States “only” has 17 separate spook agencies!! That we know of, that is [wink, wink]!
My memories of U.S. military and CIA foul-ups go back to U-2 pilot Frances Gary Powers, the Bay of Pigs, the Gulf of Tongkin, pretty much anything and everything to do with Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), etc. Too many fuck-ups to mention. I especially recall when the CIA gave bombing co-ordinates of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade to President Bill Clinton. Oops! Almost immediately, the late night comedians started claiming that the initials CIA meant “Can’t Identify Anything.”
I’d say that designation pretty much covers our so-called and self-styled “Intelligence Community.” Not much intelligence and not much of a community. If President Trump doesn’t send everyone at Langley, Virginia, on an extended, four-year, overseas assignment to someplace no one ever heard of, then he will have passed up the chance of a lifetime. I can’t believe these pooch screwing parasites still think they can get away with “Trust us, because we know some secret stuff that we can’t tell you about.” How lame.