By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
They
say that elections do matter, and that there are real differences
between Republican and Democratic presidents. But backing up the view to
30 years, that difference looks a lot more like continuity, both at
home and in America's global empire.
Is This Barack Obama's 2nd Term or Bill Clinton's 3rd Term, or Ronald Regan's 9th?
By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
The
answer is yes to all three. Ronald Reagan hasn't darkened the White
House door in decades. But his policy objectives have been what every
president, Democrat and Republican have pursued relentlessly ever since.
Barack Obama is only the latest and most successful of Reagan's
disciples.
Like the present era, the Reagan presidency marked a series of decisive rightward turns for US empire at home and abroad.
Reagan's
invasion of Grenada, along with his bloody contra wars in Central
America and southern Africa signaled the renewal of on and off the books
of US military interventions when and wherever the logic of empire
suggested, and regardless of namby-pamby concerns of human rights,
domestic or international law. But if being a Republican means you can
be a naked imperialist at home as well as abroad, being a Democrat like
Barack Obama means making sufficiently ambiguous noises war and empire
to enable corporate media and your own campaign to manufacture a false
narrative of actual and substantive difference between Democrats and
Republicans.
The
first president Bush invaded Panama, and landed US troops in Somalia, a
supposed “humanitarian” intervention. Bill Clinton massively increased
the shipment of US military hardware and training to more than 50 of
Africa's 54 nations, fueling the conflict in Congo which has taken 7
million lives to date. That's continuity of purpose and of policy.
In
Barack Obama's case all he had to say was that he wasn't necessarily
against wars, just against what he called “stupid wars.” Corporate media
and “liberal” shills morphed that lone statement into a false narrative
that Barack Obama opposed the war in Iraq, making him an instantly
viable presidential candidate at a time when the American people
overwhelmingly opposed that war. Once in office, Barack Obama strove
mightily to abrogate the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq which
would have allowed US forces to remain there indefinitely. But when the
Iraqi puppet government, faced with a near revolt on the part of what
remained of Iraqi civil society, dared not do his bidding, insisting
that uniformed US troops (but not the American and multinational
mercenaries we pay to remain there) stick to the withdrawal timetable
agreed upon under Bush, liberal shills and corporate media hailed the
withdrawal from Iraq as Obama's “victory.”
Barack
Obama doubled down on the invasion and occupation of large areas of
Afghanistan, and increased the size of the army and marines, which in
fact he pledged to do during his presidential campaign. Presidential
candidate Obama promised to end secret imprisonment and torture. The
best one can say about President Obama on this score is that he seems to
prefer murderous and indiscriminate drone attacks, in many cases, over
the Bush policy of international kidnapping secret imprisonment and
torture. The Obama administration's reliance on drones combined with US
penetration of the African continent, means that a Democratic,
ostensibly “antiwar” president has been able to openly deploy US troops
to every part of that continent in support of its drive to control the
oil, water, and other resources there.
The
objectives President Obama's Africa policies fulfill today were put
down on paper by the Bush administration, pursued by Bill Clinton before
that, and still earlier pursued by Ronald Reagan, when it funded
murderous contra armies of UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambque. It
was UNITA and RENAMO's campaigns, assisted by the apartheid regimes of
Israel and South Africa that pioneered the genocidal use of child
soldiers. Today, cruise missile liberals hail the Obama administration's
use of pit bull puppet regimes like Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, all of
which shot their way into power with child soldiers, to invade Somalia
and Congo, sometimes ostensibly to go after other bad actors on the
grounds that they are using child soldiers.
If
either George Bush, or if Ronald Reagan had openly deployed US troops
to Africa on anything like the scale President Obama has, black America
would be up in arms. They wanted to. They couldn't. It seems that now,
by giving us a black president, the empire can get just about whatever
it wants.
It
works the same way at home. Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush
would have liked to tamper with social security, but dared not. All
Reagan could do was tell welfare queen jokes, and despite Reagan's open
disdain of organized labor, NAFTA was a distant wet dream of
corporations and billionaires. The first president Bush proposed NAFTA
but could never get it through Congress. It took a Democratic president,
Bill Clinton, who marshaled a minority of Democrats in Congress to vote
with Republicans both to pass NAFTA and to eliminate welfare. It was
Bill Clinton who publicly embraced Republican myths about balancing the
US budget, while allowing liberals to imagine he would deliver a “peace
dividend.” The second president Bush openly trumpeted right wing lies
about the solvency of social security and the (lies which Barack Obama
happily repeats to this day) and tried more than once to privatize it.
Again, that's continuity across administrations and parties.
True
to form, Obama picked the ball up where his predecessors left it and
has run relentlessly righward ever since. Barack Obama uses the language
of the elites when he calls social security, Medicaid and Medicare and
other federal benefits “entitlements” and asserts that their growth must
be trimmed. He championed the formation of a deficit reduction
commission chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan
Simpson, both advocates of privatizing social security and drastic cuts
to Medicaid, Medicare and federal benefits and tried to fast-track their
recommendation through Congress. Fortunately that recommendation never
came.
Just
last week, Obama offered as his opening position in negotiations with
Republicans, the chaining of social security and all other federal
benefits to the consumer price index --- a monstrous betrayal that will
reduce social security benefits by as much as $100 monthly by a decade
from now. It wasn't anything he had been cornered into by Republicans.
It was the point from which Barack Obama decided to start. That's
continuity. Only a Republican president, like Richard Nixon, could go to
China in the 1970s. Only a black Democrat can break his promises to
labor on championing a card check law, refute his commitments to a just
and fair media with network neutrality, and do nothing to roll back the
prison state which has engulfed black and brown youth. Only a black
Democrat could deport more Latinos than all the last three Republicans
together, in his first term alone.
In
the game of advancing the interests of the American people, it seems,
Democrats and Republicans are not mutual opponents. They are a tag team,
each one pushing the ball further and further down the field in the
wrong direction. It's still winter in America, and the dead hand of
Ronald Reagan still guides this nation, decades after his exit from the
White House. Welcome to the 9th term of Ronald Reagan, in the person of Democrat Barack Hussein Obama.
One
could also argue, since we are in the grips of the greatest depression,
although we don't call them that any more, since the 1930s, and Obama's
economic policies bear more in common to Herbert Hoover than to
Franklin Roosevelt, that we're living through Herbert Hoover's third
term as well. But we'll save that for another day.
Bruce
A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and lives and works
near Marietta GA. He is a state committee member of the GA Green
Partyand can be reached via this site's contact page, or at
bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
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