No longer the asshole of the universe?
The Top 5 list for things our gleaming new president
can do to prove to the world we aren’t imperial wankers
Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Barack Obama is “the goodest person we’ve ever had as a presidential candidate,” deemed Sarah Silverman. He is “our last hope of ending this country’s reputation as the asshole of the universe.”
And the U.S. populace is now in a drunken dance frenzy to a club remix of The Witch is Dead. That’s a good thing. Soak it up. Enjoy the moment. There’s a currently a collective sigh of relief heard around the world, even in places where people don’t expect large degrees of change. The achievement of an African American should be lauded.
I want the cynics among us to pause at least long enough to appreciate the historical significance of the incoming 44th president’s victory. I want the blind party-line enthusiasts to fess up how similar the candidates were to one another on most issues. And lastly, I want my independent-voting pals out there to honestly admit that while the differences were few, they translate into some clear divisions. And everyone should admit that they voted mostly because they were freaked out.
In 2004 I was hoping to watch the election from south of the border. A flash flood in California killed my car and cost me a bunch of money and put that dream to an end. I ended up cruising around the various election night parties of Olympia, WA, mooching free grub and brew as I went and watching people grow more and more drunk and depressed as Bush won another round. What a difference four years makes. I got to watch this election from abroad, living and working in the UK. Married, home-owning, kid having and wandering around with enough loose change to buy my own brews. And mostly I slept through the results.
Once the drunken glee fades and when the Democrat sheds the “elect” suffix from his title, we’re still see an American president in charge of a system in which 42 cents of every tax dollar goes toward war, trade inequality leads to poverty abroad, lop-sided policies on the Middle East contribute to most the leading conflicts there and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to cause civilian deaths.
As a single-issue (foreign policy) voter I did cast an absentee ballot from across the Atlantic for Barack Obama. The independent parties this election year were pathetic, but that’s a post for another time. Obama was an international contender against an isolationist agenda. While his positions on a number of issues don’t differe remarkably from those expressed by John McCain, I take the train of thought once expressed by Prof. Norman Finkelstein: There are differences between the candidates, potentially differing in the thousands of lives that could be lost depending on even slight differences in foreign policy.
So, how do we come up with a first term full of real “Change” promised by Campaign Obama? I don’t hold a lot of faith about these, but here are my top five. I was going to do four (one for each year), but I just like top five lists better, so one year will have to see two of these.
1. Fix your Middle East policy on Israel/Palestine
I’m more focused on this one because it’s my thing.
Yeah, Obama has stacked his advisers with zionists and their sympathizers up to and including his VP-elect Joe Biden. Most people I know who are interested in this issue are looking at these choices with growing disgust. Lefties are quick to point out the middle name of his choice for White House Chief of Staff much in the way Republicans enjoyed dropping “Hussein” between “Barack” and Obama.” But Rahm Israel Emanuel is just one more in a flock of an AIPAC dream team.
So what? Mr. Obama has had a topsy-turvy relationship with the question of Palestine. The guy who once accurately summarized that “no one has suffered more than the Palestinian people” with respect to the occupation has also more recently said, “I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-likud approach to Israel then you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.” Somewhere between these he seemed to insinuate that Jerusalem is not part of the West Bank but perhaps he’s seen a map since then.
So yeah, not exactly the fiery statement people have been waiting to hear from the White House on this issue. But being that the White House has been in lockstep with Likud policy on the issue going back several administrations, it’s something. Still, it offers an entry point. A “wedge” to use the strategic parlance of our time. It’s time to start the “friends don’t let friends build illegal settlements” push. Some entirely tepid, conservative steps Obama could take to show the world he has retained some sense of rationality on this issue:
A) Demand enforcement of the Arms Export Control Act as it currently stands across the board. Easy enough. The rules are there. Use them. Israel is using aid from the U.S. for offensive purposes, not defensive. Ronald Reagan suspended shipments to Israel of cluster munitions for six years due to their use in Lebanon. Section 23 of the Arms Export Control Act. Israel is using F-16 to terrorize Gazans in sonic-boom inducing low flyovers causing deafness in infants there and stress among the populace. It has and continues to use bulldozers for home demolitions and illegal settlement expansion. And it uses gadgetry from Motorola to fuse high-explosive bombs for use in Lebanon. Again, we can cite The Gipper.
So, we’ve got an already established law and we’ve got precedence from one of the Republican Party’s most favorite of former presidents. An easy one to build on.
B) Tie monetary aid to Israel to the halting of construction of all settlements outside of its internationally recognized boarders. So as the U.S. ties aid to Palestinians to the actions of Hamas, we can see some parity by tying Israel’s funding to its illegal actions outside its own borders. The instant appearance of parity.
C) Follow the UK example on trade. Bush’s talk on Israel towing the line of the road map was mostly a bluff. There were never any penalties for Israel for not doing so. Without wanting to call the UK, or Europe for that matter, touch on the issue, they have recently put some teeth behind their policies. Outside of calling for a stop to settlement expansion, the UK is also pressuring the EU to stop importing goods (mostly agricultural) which are produced in West Bank settlements. A safe move, targeting a financial source for an illegal enterprise.
D) Follow the UK example on extremists. We could all do with less of these, anyway. Again, we can apply a degree of parity. To quote Johan Hari slightly out of context: “No more bogus ‘respect’ for fundamentalism within open societies. If you literally follow an ancient Holy Text – whether it’s the Koran, the Bible or the Torah – you will hold disgusting views about women, and you should expect to have them criticised and mocked.”
Let’s just work with the “disgusting views” angle for a second. Moshe Feiglin, leader of the Likud’s Jewish Leadership faction, got a letter from my own MP, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, letting him know he was banned from coming to UK. The Border and Immigration Agency here concluded that Feiglin is “seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the U.K.” and cites his calls for a “holy war” against Arabs.
The new immigration rules that bar such extremists are across the board. Moshe’s name joins several fundamentalist Muslim clerics likely on “no entry” lists in the U.S. as well. Making that American list more equal-opportunity would go in lock-step with everything Obama has been saying about the U.S.’s supposed new direction. He may also want to consider adding John Hagee to the “no-fly” list. That would let people know we’re not playing evangelical favorites.
E) Let whoever becomes the next PM of Israel know that the old deals are off regarding attacks of Iran. There is a history of U.S. ties to Israeli military action. Aside from what Condoleeza Rice might have said, the U.S. can and has told Israel not to carry out attacks with a great amount of success. This makes one wonder what U.S. and Israeli officials really talk about when privately conferring on Gaza and the West Bank. More likely, her remark was aimed at conveying to Israel the Bush administration’s eagerness for it to strike when it became in the White House’s interest to do so.
The Democratic president should let Israel know that its sugar daddy is under new management and that previous deals are null and void.
2) Closing Guantanamo isn’t enough.
There are about 270 prisoners in Guantanamo prison right now, still awaiting a charge. Obama says he’s close ths place but we haven’t heard too much about what will happen to the people in this place. The smart bet says they vanish to some secret prison somewhere else. According to Clive Stafford Smith, lawyer for 50 Gitmo tenets, there are about 27,000 secret prisoners of the U.S., hidden in cells around the world. Ending the drama for one percent of these that are in Guantanamo may make a nice PR stunt, but it doesn’t really address the human rights issue that the U.S. will some day be facing at the Hague.
3) Instead of just Iraq, pull out of the War on Terror.
How U.S. imagery works: Remember those people jumping on the last helicopter out of Viet Nam? That was a success for U.S. foreign policy. Sure, better if the war had never been started but you only get to play the hand you’re dealt. A lot of people identify that image, and the internal backlash against the South Vietnamese that followed, with the presidency of Gerald Ford. The images were with him, but, really, the failure that is recalled in Oliver Stone films and popular memory is owned by Nixon and Johnson, the two that kept it going on.
No matter who pulls the U.S. out of Iraq is going to face a barrage of gory post-occupation coverage that will make imagery from Vietnam seem quaint. A similar thing will happen in Afghanistan, only plug in the Soviet comparison there. Much better would be to deride the whole War on Terror as a slight-of-hand way of dodging the actual issue and as a PR campaign to stir up hatred and justfiy other stupidities lke the “Axis of Evil.”
4) Join the rest of the world. Endorse an equal playing field and readjust who the “Us” and “Them” are. Those against “us” are those who refuse parity on these issues. Without exemption, Allow and encourage the U.S. to sign up to be subject to:
- The Kyoto Protocol
- The International Criminal Court
4) End all this unpleasantness around Cuba
Another easy win that’s been inflated over time into being an “issue.” Let’s scrap dumb embargoes and travel restrictions against this tiny island, which are out of sync from how we treat lots of places with much worse human rights records. Face it, they don’t want to do things our way. Who cares? A year later no one will even remember we had them except for a small group of pissed off people in Miami.
To reference the Wall Street Journal:
“Changing Cuba policy is a high-symbolic-value, low-political-cost way to show that [Mr. Obama] plans to conduct business differently in the world,” said Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban-American businessman in Miami and co-chairman of a group that advocates rethinking the embargo.
5) Reframe the United States’ entire policy around Africa
This is the place that under Sarah Palin’s recommendation as VP would become a country.
A) Advance the use generic drug schemes to lower the price of medical aid.
B) Eliminate the abstinence-first policy for birth control and aids education programs. Big duh, I know. But we’ve had Big Duh for two terms now and that’s translated into a lot of suffering around the world. In many parts of Africa the spigot for valid safe sex education was shut off in 2000 just as it barely started to trickle. The lame duck has continued his policy as late as October, “quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa.”
C) Forgive the debt. Obama recently endorsed a bailout for some of the richest people on the planet. Banks and financial institutions got Get out of Jail Free cards and their executives kept their bonuses and huge salaries for the most part. Banking institutions are to a large extent behind the continual bankruptcy of many African nations, and the lack of a chance to ever improve financially keeps many of these places in turmoil. So, while we’re in this season of giving and forgiving of the world’s most rich and powerful, let’s include a litttle somethin’ somethin’ that would actually help people leaving on the least. Quoting Africa Action:
Africa’s over $200 billion debt burden is the single biggest obstacle to the continent’s development. Most of this debt is illegitimate, having been incurred by despotic and unrepresentative regimes. African countries spend almost $14 billion annually on debt service, diverting resources from HIV/AIDS programs, education and other important needs. The U.S. and other rich countries have resisted calls to cancel this debt, instead proposing partial solutions that are inadequate and impose harsh economic policies on indebted countries. Africa Action’s Campaign to Cancel Africa’s Debt mobilizes pressure on the U.S. government to push for 100% debt cancellation for all impoverished African countries without harmful conditions.
$200 billion? That’s it? Compared to what we’ve given to the banks and to start a war in Iraq, that’s walking-around money.
That’s term one. I’m betting all these will still be unticked four years on. See you then.
The first thing we see as we travel around the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.
