- As articles by John Pilger, Alexander Cockburn, and Uri
Avnery make clear, by groveling before the Israel Lobby Obama has dispelled
any hope that his presidency would make a difference.
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- Obama told the Lobby that in order to protect Israel
he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having
a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of
mass destruction," the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a
nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore,
there is no difference between Bush, McCain, Obama, and the Lobby with
regard to the Middle East.
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- As Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, and a
modern air force and missiles supplied by the US, the idea that Israel
needs American protection from Iran is a fantasy. All Israel needs to
do in order to be safe and to live in peace is to stop stealing the West
Bank and to drop its designs on southern Lebanon. Obama is too smart not
to know that US foreign policy has been Shanghaied by the Lobby not in
order to protect innocent Israel but to enable Israel's territorial expansion.
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- Obama has dispelled hope on the economic front as well.
Obama has appointed two leading apologists for jobs offshoring as
his economic advisors--Bill Clinton's Treasury Robert Rubin and Rubin associate
Jason Furman. These two are notorious for their justifications of policies
that benefit Wall Street, CEOs, and large retailers at the expense of the
economic well being and careers of millions of Americans.
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- As a result of offshoring, good jobs in America are disappearing.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics job figures make it totally clear that
the US economy has ceased creating net new middle class jobs in the private
economy in the 21st century.
-
- Stressing higher returns to shareholders, Wall Street
pressures corporations to move their operations abroad. Wal-Mart tells
its American suppliers to "meet the Chinese price" or else, a
price that US firms can meet only by offshoring their operations to China.
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- Every job and product that is offshored increases the
US trade deficit and lowers US GDP. It is a losing game for America that
rewards the overpaid elite of Wall Street and corporate America, while
dismantling the ladders of upward mobility.
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- By enlarging the trade deficit, offshoring erodes the
reserve currency role of the dollar, the real basis of US power. Now that
US imports exceed US industrial production, it is unlikely that the US
trade deficit can be closed except by a sharp reduction in US consumption,
which implies a drop in US living standards. If the dollar loses its reserve
currency status, the US government will not be able to finance its budget
and trade deficits.
- Where is the hope when Obama endorses a foreign policy
that benefits only Israeli territorial expansion and an economic policy
that benefits only multimillionaires and billionaires?
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- The answer is that Obama's election would signify the
electorate's rejection of Bush and the Republicans. Considering the cowardice
of the Democratic Congress and its reluctance to hold a criminal regime
accountable, electoral defeat is the only accountability that the Bush
Republicans are likely to experience.
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- It is not sufficient accountability, but at least it
is some accountability.
-
- If the Republicans win the election and escape accountability,
the damage Republicans have done to the US Constitution, civil liberty,
and a free society will be irreversible. The Bush Regime and its totalitarians
have openly violated US law against spying on Americans without warrants
and US and international laws against torture. The regime and its totalitarians
have violated the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold. Bush's attorney
general Gonzales even asserted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the
US Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to American citizens.
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- When federal courts acted to stop the regime's unconstitutional
practices and abuse of prisoners, the Republicans passed legislation to
overturn the court rulings. The Republican Party has shown beyond all doubt
that it holds the US Constitution in total contempt.
-
- Today the Republican Party stands for unaccountable executive
power.
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- To reelect such a party is to murder liberty in America.
-
- The June 12 Supreme Court decision pulled America back
from the abyss of tyranny. For years hundreds of innocent people have
been held by the Bush regime without charges, a handful of which were set
to be tried in a kangaroo military tribunal in which they could be convicted
on the basis of secret evidence and confession extracted by torture.
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- The Court ruled 5-4 that detainees have the right to
appeal to civilian courts for habeas corpus protection. The Bush Republicans
claiming "extraordinary times" had created a gestapo system in
which the government could accuse, without presenting any evidence, a person
of being a threat and on that basis alone imprison him indefinitely. Justice
Anthony Kennedy reminded the Republican Brownshirts that "The laws
and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary
times."
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- Bush's current attorney general, Michael Mukassey, said
he would proceed with his kangaroo trials.
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- President Bush indicated that he was inclined to again
seek to overturn the Court with a law.
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- Brownshirt Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he
would draft a constitutional amendment to restore the executive branch's
tyrannical power.
-
- Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that
the Supreme Court decision protecting habeas corpus "is one of the
worst decisions in the history of this country."
-
- The four Supreme Court justices (Alito, Roberts, Scalia,
and Thomas) who voted for tyranny in America are all Republicans. They
all came out of the Federalist Society, a highly subversive group of right-wing
lawyers who are determined to elevate the powers of the executive branch
above Congress and the Supreme Court.
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- The Republican Party has morphed into a Brownshirt Party.
The party worships "energy in the executive." If the Brownshirt
Republicans are reelected, they only need one more Supreme Court appointment
in order to destroy American liberty.
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- That is what is at stake in the November election. As
bad as Obama is on important issues, his election will signal rejection
of the tyranny to which the Republicans are committed.
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- Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is
coauthor of <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307396061/counterpunchmaga>The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: <mailto:PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com>PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
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