Why not Obama

Lots of people like Barack Obama. He’s now the frontrunner for the democratic nomination, and if he does get it, He’ll be hard to beat for McCain. He’s articulate, charismatic and black. This appeals to a lot of people, not just in the U.S. but it seems around the world and here in Sri Lanka. The 20-somethings I meet often are captivated by his persona, excited about his message of “Hope” and “Change” and optimistic about the prospect of an Obama Presidency.

Obama has been celebrated as a Liberal Reagan – the great communicator of the American Left (which btw, is not so ‘left’ compared to say, Sri Lanka). People have written essays claiming he’s a left-libertarian, a Civil-Libertarian, a principled guy, a generation’s hope, yada yada. He has lot of independents supporting him, and even some conservatives. That’s all great. What’s going for Obama is that he’s the new kid on the block, so he doesn’t have a lot of baggage. Couple this with the kind of romance that people have developed for him, it makes people want to cherry-pick facts and project him as whoever they want to. As others have noted, Obama as of now is whatever people want him to be. Infatuation can do that to people.

There was a time not so long ago I was idealistic enough for this kind of blind romance, but those days are gone. This romance is unhealthy, because it stops you from actually examining the issues.

Let’s take foreign policy. Now I oppose the Iraq war, and I agree with the fundamentals of his withdrawal plan. But Obama’s position on the Iraq isn’t necessarily principled as some would like it to be, it’s just populist. His call for a troop withdrawal in Iraq is not coming from a principled non-interventionist position, based on his assessment of ground realities or from a fundamental change in the way U.S. approaches foreign policy, it’s coming from an assessment of voter sentiment.

My biggest beef with Obama of course, is with his economics, I’m not going to talk much about specific U.S. domestic policy issues, but it’s safe to say that Obama offers no “change” from the standard liberal democrat rhetoric, except Obama’s whole game is based on rhetoric.

Where Obama suck is trade, his “fair trade” plan would not only have free-traders worried (that’s basically most economists on the planet – including Obama’s own advisors.) but his “Fair Trade” plan to protect American jobs and Open foreign markets will have Oxfam-type- Do-gooder Fair Traders scratching their heads. Obama wants to talk to Chaves, but wants to renegotiate NAFTA. In other words he wants to talk to their oil-dictator while screwing over the people of Latin America.

Having civil liberties for Americans doesn’t really matter for the rest of us, but trade and foreign policy, those are heavy impact areas. It’s time some of us stop being swept away by Obama speeches and really look into what policies Obama’s advocating. If you agree – if you think protecting American jobs at our cost is a good thing – fine enough. But otherwise, it’s time to stop being in love and grow up.

Will ‘they’ follow them home?

I was watching the Republican CNN/YouTube debate the other day, couldn’t help but be amused by this view that unless the US is in Iraq, the ‘terrorists follow us home’ subscribed to by almost all GOP candidates.

First of all, are the terrorists lost or something? They can’t find the way perhaps now? They have to wait till the US troops go home to follow them? That’s kind of idea people would have got they encountered the argument for the first time in that debate, the idea however is slightly (note slightly) more sophisticated. It’s this notion that if ‘extremists’ get hold of Iraq, they can use it as a base for attacking the US and other ‘moderate’ leadership in the region.

This is the dominant view among the Republican presidential candidates, all of them – except Ron Paul. Paul (of whom I’m a huge fan) advocates a strict non-interventionist foreign policy for the United States, and calls for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He claims that the extremists in the Arab (and the Muslim) world are motivated to attack the US because of its interventionist foreign policy towards the region, and particularly because of its troop deployments in the region.

Now, I don’t think that US should employ a strict by-the-book foreign policy, but I find it extraordinary that the NeoCons in media in the US and the rest of his colleagues running for president considers Paul’s views as some sort of a discredited conspiracy theory, when it's clearly not.

The 9/11 commission report for example, comprising of testimonies from experts on terrorism, the middle east and intelligence articulated exactly what Paul says.

Further the follow-home theory doesn’t have much currency from the experts either, the Foreign Policy Magazine reporting on its “terrorism index” which measures opinion of intelligence experts, military persons, and other academics as well as national security advisers, etc. on the US performance on the ‘War on Terror’ reports that experts find it unlikely.

Only 12 percent believe that terrorist attacks would occur in the United States as a direct result of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Eighty-eight percent of the experts said that either such a scenario was unlikely or that they see no connection between a troop withdrawal from Iraq and terrorist attacks inside the United States. This line of thinking was consistent across party lines, with 58 percent of conservatives saying they did not believe terrorist attacks would occur at home as a result of a military drawdown in Iraq. [Link]

It has also long being established that what’s going on Iraq now is more of an internal sectarian power struggle, and not an attack on the US or ‘American Values’.

Paul has surprised many with the success of his candidacy, partly because he’s right on many of the issues. Its highly unlikely though he’ll actually get the nomination (not that I’d have believed he could raise 4.3 million a day either) But if republicans are to win a anti-war majority who's just fed up of Iraq, I think its high time they start moderating a bit.

NeoCons aren’t cool anymore and besides whatever the mistakes Americans have made, no country deserves a Rodham presidency. Paul Save America.

Brith, Death and the resurrection of Saddam

It is said that President Bush is hailed by some as kind of a messiah, and it is alleged by some that ‘America’ likes to play god. They could be right, at least in the case of Saddam Hussein. When Saddam was handed down the death penalty I thought he, or the persona of ‘Saddam Hussein’ had been dead for a long time, the once majestic dictator appeared out of a rat hole looking like, to put kindly, a rather deprived Arabic version of Santa clause. After that incident those were the images that one associated Saddam Hussein, but not anymore. After his televised and youtubed hanging, Saddam has been proclaimed as a martyr.

The ‘America’ who created Saddam and who killed him has now, it seems have aided in his resurrection. His persona is now heroically celebrated all over the Sunni-Muslim world including here in Sri Lanka. The very event is hailed here as a moment of unity of all political parties, historic perhaps in its own right. The JVP has put out posters in support of this great man, and the likes of Asaad Sally are organizing bush-bashing, flag burning exercises in front of the U.S. Embassy. All’s well, freedom of expression (despite the Rajapakse administration) is still a constitutional right.

But perhaps everybody needs a reality check.

Saddam Hussein was a brute, a murderer and a ruthless dictator. He was no hero. This so called partisan unity on the issue is not coming from genuine sensitivity to Muslim sentiments here, but rather out of sheer necessity and a range of other ulterior motives. For the JVP, it’s a chance to poke at the Americans and play ‘hero’ after a while, for the UNP it’s a necessity, Muslims are its most consistent vote base, for the P.A. and the rest of them - well they got to be in the show somehow.

Lot of people, not just the Sri Lankan politicians seems to be using the Saddam hanging as an excuse to attack the U.S. and the opposition sometimes seems to stem from the general opposition to the Iraqi war. I think there are more genuine reasons to oppose the hanging, one is that Saddam never faced trial for all the crimes he committed, another is the trial process was flawed (although it’s difficult to see how he could not be found guilty had the trial been fair), and thirdly it would, as it has done now, would induce further sectarian divide Iraq.

Apart from that personally my opposition to the hanging also stems from my fundamental opposition to the death penalty but perhaps the real shocker for me was the fact that it was televised. That was just atrocious, any man, brute or not, deserved better treatment than that. Strangely enough, none of the newly united Sri Lankan politicos gave prominence to the video, that’s hardly surprising since we all remember how Wimal Weerawansa used his mobile phone camera to record Mervin Silva crunching the JHU monks’ testicles in parliament.