President Obama and the Powers Behind the Throne

[Time for change]

I was very interested to read 27inCali’s recent DU post, “Someone needs to say it”, because this is a subject that I have thought and written about a great deal, especially in a post I titled “The GAME”.

The main theme of “Someone needs to say it” is that our country is largely controlled by powerful shadowy figures:

Obama doesn't really have the power to do a lot of the things we wish (and I'm sure he wishes) he could. He had to kiss a lot of rings to even get permission to run for President, let alone be ALLOWED to win…. The President doesn't run this country, international banks and a handful of super-rich families do…. We have to realize that our Democracy is fucked up to the point that the President really can't change the big injustices inherent in the system. The last one that tried got his head blown off in front of his wife in Texas….

In my post I said some similar things in different words, and I titled it “The GAME” to emphasize the fact that one of the main strategies of the powers in charge is to create an alternate reality for the American people to believe in. That is necessary because, as 27inCali put it, these people can’t simply say to us, “Hey! I want to rule the world, kneel before me!” Instead, in order to get us to accept the status quo, they need to fool us into accepting a story line that differs considerably from reality.


Questions

I have a lot more questions than answers about this subject, many which I posed in my previous post: What is the purpose of the GAME? When did it start? What are its rules and boundaries, and how have they changed over time? Who makes the rules? Who enforces the rules? How do they enforce the rules? Who are the insiders who know more about it than anyone else? What does the U.S. Congress know about it? What have our Presidents known about it?

The more important question with respect to this post is, What is President Obama’s relationship the shadowy powers that we speak of? Has he actually negotiated with them? Have they made it clear to him that his continuance in office depends on his satisfying their demands? Have they threatened him? I can’t answer any of those questions, and I very much doubt that there are many who could. But it certainly seems that he has done a lot to placate some very powerful people. Let’s take look at some of those things:


Some powerful interests that President Obama seems unwilling to challenge

The Bush administration war criminals
Prosecution of a U.S. President for war crimes or crimes against humanity would be a terrible thing… for those with a great interest in maintaining the status quo. It would qualify as an admission that there are grave faults in American society, and it could spur Americans to think about how we reached that state of affairs.

For the rest of us, failure to prosecute a President and those in his administration who committed grave crimes would greatly facilitate the dissolution of our democracy. Democracy cannot exist in a nation when those in power are allowed to commit crimes with impunity. Such a nation is more akin to a monarchy or other type of dictatorship than it is to a democracy.

That is now the state of our nation. The Bush administration waged an aggressive war under false pretenses, routinely tortured its prisoners, and abolished the writ of habeas corpus. All of these things violated our national and international laws and our Constitution. They constitute the same kind of crimes for which we led the prosecution of Nazis in the Nuremberg Trials following World War II.

Yet, President Obama has thus far refused to take any steps towards prosecuting or investigating these crimes. Jonathan Turley puts this matter in perspective:

You know, some people say, what do you need, a film? We actually had films of us torturing people. So this would be the shortest investigation in history. You have Bush officials who have said that we tortured people. We have interrogators who have said we tortured people. The Red Cross has said it. A host of international organizations have said it. What is President Obama waiting for? And I‘m afraid the answer is a convenient moment.

The Military Industrial Complex
President Obama’s latest plans for withdrawal from Iraq call for all “combat troops” to withdraw by August 31, 2010 (about 19 months after taking office), but leaving about 35,000 to 50,000 non-combat troops in Iraq. That plan is a little more hawkish than what Obama proposed during the campaign, which was withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months of taking office, while leaving some “residual” troops in place.

But why should it take 19 months to withdraw from Iraq? I have no special expertise in military matters, but for comparison purposes let’s take a look at the timeline for withdrawal from Vietnam, once the decision was made to leave:

January 27, 1973: The Paris Peace Accords are signed by all parties, officially ending U.S. involvement in the war.
January 27, 1973: The last American soldier dies in combat in Vietnam
March 29, 1973: The last remaining American troops withdraw from Vietnam

That plan was a whole lot swifter and more complete than President Obama’s plan for ending the war in Iraq. I don’t claim to know for certain that there is no legitimate reason, other than appeasement of the MIC, for our occupation of Iraq to be prolonged that long. But what legitimate reason could there be? All we’re told is that that’s how long it will take to “safely” withdraw from Iraq. Forty U.S. soldiers and unknown numbers of Iraqi civilians have died in 2009. What is our purpose in Iraq, now that we have decided to leave (except for 35,000 to 50,000 “non-combat” troops)?

Failing banks
All of the economists that I respect the most have the same opinion of the Obama administration’s plan to pay hundreds of billions of additional taxpayer dollars into the continuing effort to bail out failing banks. What kind of economists do I respect? I respect those who explain things in a way that I can understand and who seek economic results that benefit all Americans rather than just Wall Street, in the hope (or not) that those benefits will trickle down to the rest of us. Here is what those economists had to say about the Geithner bailout plan:

Paul Krugman:

This isn't really about letting markets work. It's just an indirect, disguised way to subsidize purchases of bad assets. If this plan fails – as it almost surely will – it's unlikely that he'll (Obama) be able to persuade Congress to come up with more funds to do what he should have done in the first place.

Joseph Stiglitz:

The U.S. government plan to rid banks of toxic assets will rob American taxpayers by exposing them to too much risk and is unlikely to work as long as the economy remains weak…. Quite frankly, this amounts to robbery of the American people.

Robert Reich:

In truth, the plan assumes trillions more from the Fed… The idea is to lure private investors into buying up the banks' toxic assets, by having the Fed limit their downside risks. If private investors pay too much, the Fed picks up the tab…. If the trillions of dollars the Fed has already committed and the trillions more it's about to commit can't be recouped, the federal debt explodes and you and I and other taxpayers are left holding the bag….

James Galbraith:

The plan is yet another massive, ineffective gift to banks and Wall Street. Taxpayers, of course, will take the hit… The banks don't want to take their share of those losses because doing so will wipe them out. So they, and Geithner, are doing everything they can to pawn the losses off on the taxpayer…. In Geithner's plan, this debt won't disappear. It will just be passed from banks to taxpayers

Dean Baker:

Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner's latest bank bailout plan is another Rube Goldberg contraption intended to funnel taxpayer dollars to bankrupt banks, without being overly transparent about the process.

The private health insurance industry
During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama promised a national health care plan in which the government would provide good quality health insurance to the American people.

But recently, Obama met with a group of right wing Republican U.S. Senators, who expressed concern over the damage to the health insurance industry that the Obama health care plan would likely cause:

Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an un-level playing field and inevitably doom true competition. Ultimately, we would be left with a single government-run program controlling all of the market.

In response, Obama assured the senators that he understood and would take seriously their concerns:

I recognize… that private insurance plans might end up feeling overwhelmed. So I recognize that there's that concern. I think it's a serious one and a real one. And we'll make sure that it gets addressed…

We don’t know for sure yet which way the President will go with this, but rescinding his promise to offer government sponsored health insurance to the American people, and subsidizing private health insurance companies instead will do grave damage to his health care plan. It will mean inferior health care for the American people, and it will have the effect of pouring vast sums of taxpayer money into the coffers of private insurance companies.

Presidential prerogatives in the “War on Terror”
Obama’s continuation of several Bush “War on Terror” policies is difficult to fathom. President Obama is continuing Bush policies on using the “state secrets” to shield criminals from criminal or civil law suits, abolishing the right to habeas corpus, and blurring the checks and balances of our Constitution regarding the separation of powers. David Cole discusses this in an article titled “Bush Law Continued” in The Nation:

Disturbingly, the Obama administration has continued the Bush administration's attempts to shield illegal exercises of executive authority from judicial review…

The bottom line is that executive wrongdoing in connection with the conflict with Al Qaeda should be shielded from judicial scrutiny…. because they involve "state secrets." On this theory, the executive can avoid any judicial review of criminal and unconstitutional wrongdoing simply by declaring its wrongs a secret.

The Obama administration has also adhered to the Bush administration's contention that the right of habeas corpus does not extend to detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan…. Should the executive branch be permitted to avoid accountability for its detentions simply by incarcerating them in Afghanistan rather than in Cuba?

And in a case seeking damages for torture and other abuse at Guantánamo, the Obama administration has argued that Guantánamo detainees have no constitutional rights to due process, so that even if they were tortured, no constitutional rights were violated. The Supreme Court's ruling last year that the constitutional right of habeas corpus extends to Guantánamo rested on its determination that there is nothing impracticable about extending such rights there. The same reasoning would fully support the extension of due process rights – yet the administration simply says no.

In the same lawsuit, the administration argues further that even if due process protects Guantánamo detainees, suits for damages against federal officials for violating detainees' rights should be dismissed because the suits involve matters of national security and foreign policy that are the "exclusive prerogative" of the political branches – as if the Supreme Court had not already decided three cases directly challenging the legality of Guantánamo detentions.

Ambivalent feelings towards Barack Obama

Many of us (including me) have a lot of ambivalent feelings towards Barack Obama. 27inCali expressed those ambivalent feeling like this:

You can like Obama as a person and still realize that he doesn't have the POWER, even if he'd like to… As much as you may love Obama, just realize that he is mostly a figure head, he can only do so much, the rest is up to us…. We also aren't doing anyone any favors if we channel our anger and distrust at him as opposed to the assholes who are really in charge.

I share many of those same feelings. But if it’s true, as 27inCali suggests, that Obama is mostly a figurehead, then is he doing us or our country any good by acting in that capacity? Perhaps. Maybe he’s waiting for an opening before making his big move.

William Greider seems to have many of the same feelings. On the one hand, he says “I’m a big fan of this President”. But then he goes on to discuss the folly of handing over hundreds of billions of dollars to failing banks, how our country has long favored the powerful over the powerless, and how if we continue down that road we will become a corporate (i.e. fascist) state. He reaches that conclusion reluctantly but firmly:

The handing out of government guarantees and capital to hedge funds… financial institutions founded on secrecy… They don't even pretend to be transparent…. We want reform, but we want it done right. And we want it done for the public interest, not for the old order…. And… everybody knows in this country that this has now been, for some years… mainly a top down society….

And this will sound extreme to some people, but I came to it reluctantly. I fear what they're doing, not intentionally, but in their design is setting the crown for a corporate state…. And by that I mean a rather small but very powerful circle of financial institutions the old Wall Street banks, famous names. But also some industrial corporations… Too big to fail. Yes, watched closely by the Federal Reserve and others in government, but also protected by them… The leading banks and corporations are sort of at the trough, ahead of everybody else in Washington, they will have the means to monopolize democracy. And I mean that literally. Some of my friends would say, hey, that already happened…. The corporate state is here…. The fact is, if the Congress goes down the road I see them going down, they will institutionalize the corporate state in a way that will be severely damaging to any possibility of restoring democracy.

So what can we do?

Ultimately, we can react only to what our elected leaders do – not to what we think of them as persons. In that regard, it doesn’t matter whether we love Barack Obama or hate him. If we disagree with his policies, then we have every right, even the obligation to make our opinions known – regardless what we think of him as a person. William Greider goes further than that:

And I want people to grab their pitch forks, yes, and be unruly. Get in the streets. Be as noisy and as nonviolently provocative as you can be. And stop the politicians from going down that road. And let me add a lot of politicians need that to be able to stand up. Our President needs that to be able to stand up.

Bill Moyers, in his interview with Greider, asks him:

You describe President Obama as quote "trapped between the governing elites who decide things and the people who are governed." When does he finally have to choose sides?

Greider answered by making an analogy to FDR’s handling of the Great Depression:

Here's my take on the New Deal and the history of what actually happened… People in the streets or churches or wherever found their voice and made it happen by agitating and informing the higher authorities. In the early '30s, Franklin Roosevelt had a set of things he thought he could do to right the ship of the Depression…. Meanwhile, organized labor, others, were all over the country lighting bonfires for bigger changes. Social security came out of that. Labor rights, the first attempt to give people the right to organize their own voices in a company came out of that. A whole bunch of other reforms that we now take for granted. And Roosevelt didn't stand athwart and try to stop them. But he let them roll him. And… what I hope for now. That people of every stripe will stand up and say, we love you Mr. President, but you don't have it right yet. And we're going to bang on your door until you get it right.