Hopefully I am mistaken!

I read with astonishment weekend news agency reports on the internal politics of the United States, where a systematic debilitation of President Barack Obama’s influence is evident. His surprising electoral victory would not have been possible without the profound political and economic crisis of that country. American soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq, the scandal of torture and secret prisons, the loss of homes and jobs, had shaken U.S. society. The economic crisis was extending throughout the world, increasing poverty and hunger in Third World nations.

Those circumstances made possible Obama’s nomination and subsequent election within a traditionally racist society. No less than 90% of the African-American population, discriminated against and poor, the majority of voters of Latin American origin and a broad middle and working class white minority, particularly young people, voted for him.

It was logical that many hopes would be aroused among U.S. citizens who supported him. After eight years of adventurism, demagogy and lies during which thousands of U.S. soldiers and close to one million Iraqis died in a war of conquest for the oil of that Muslim country, which had nothing to do with the atrocious attack on the Twin Towers, the people of the United States were weary and ashamed.

Many people in Africa and other parts of the world were enthused with the idea that there would be changes in U.S. foreign policy.

However, an elemental knowledge of reality should have sufficed for not falling into illusions in relation to a possible political change in the United States on the basis of the election of a new president.

Obama had certainly opposed the Bush war in Iraq before many others in the U.S. Congress. He knew from his own adolescence the humiliations of racial discrimination and, like many Americans, admired the great civil rights fighter, Martin Luther King.

Obama was born, educated, went into politics and was successful within the imperial capitalist system of the United States. He did not wish to nor could he change the system. The strange thing is, in spite of that, that the extreme right hates him for being an African American and is fighting against what the president is doing to improve the deteriorated image of that country.

He has been capable of understanding that the United States, with barely 4% of the world population, consumes approximately 25% of fossil energy and emits the greatest volume of the world’s contaminating gases.

Bush, in his ravings, did not even subscribe to the Kyoto Protocol.

In his turn, Obama proposes to apply tighter regulations in the context of tax evasion. He has announced, for example, that out of the 52,000 accounts held by U.S. citizens in Swiss banks, these banks are to provide information on approximately 4,500 suspected of tax evasion.

In Europe, a few weeks ago, Obama committed himself before the G-8 countries, especially France and Germany, to bring to an end his country’s use of tax havens in order to inject vast quantities of U.S. dollars into the world economy.

He has offered health services to almost 50 million citizens who lacked medical insurance.

He has promised the people of the United States to lubricate the productive apparatus, halt growing unemployment and restore growth.

He has informed12 million Hispanic illegal immigrants that he will put a stop to the cruel raids and the inhuman treatment to which they are subject.

There were other promises that I am not enumerating, not one of which questions the system of imperialist capitalist dominion.

The powerful ultra-right is not resigned to any measure whatsoever that diminishes its prerogatives to the most minimum degree.

I shall confine myself just to referring textually to information coming from the United States that has been arriving in the last few days, taken from news agencies and the U.S. press.

August 21:

"Americans’ confidence in the leadership of President Barack Obama has fallen sharply, according to a survey published today in The Washington Post."

"In the midst of growing opposition to health system reforms, the telephone survey undertaken jointly with the ABC TV network from Aug 13 to 17 of 1, 001 adults, reveals that… forty-nine percent now say they think he will be able to spearhead significant improvements in the system, down nearly 20 percentage points from before he took office."

"Fifty-five percent see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April."

"The heated debate on healthcare reform in the United States is showing signs of an extremism that is worrying experts, alarmed at the presence of armed men at public meetings, paintings of swastikas and images of Hitler."

"Experts in hate crimes recommend closely watching these extremists, and while many Democrats have been overwhelmed by the protests, others have opted for directly facing their co-citizens."

"A young woman carrying a manipulated photo of Obama with a Hitler-style mustache is feeding the theory that the leader is to create ‘death panels’ that would back euthanasia for elderly people with terminal illnesses…"

"Some people are turning a deaf ear and opting for hate messages and extremism, which former FBI agent Brad Garrett is observing with alarm."

"It's certainly a scary time," Garrett told ABC last week, adding that the secret services ‘really do fear that something could happen to Obama.’"

"Without going any further, on Monday, around 12 people airily displayed their weapons outside the Phoenix Convention Center (Arizona), where Obama was making a speech to war veterans, defending, among other things, his medical reforms."

"Another man was carrying a pistol and a sign saying ‘It is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty," a reference to Thomas Jefferson's quote that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

"Some messages have been even more explicit, wishing for ‘Death to Obama, Michelle and his… daughters.’"

"Those incidents demonstrate that hatred has erupted into U.S. politics with more strength than ever."

"’We are talking about people who are shouting, who are carrying photos of Obama characterizing him as a Nazi… and who are using the term socialist contemptuously," EFE was informed by Larry Berman (University of California, author of 12 books on the U.S. Presidency), who attributes part of what is taking place to the latent legacy of racism."

"After The New York Times reported yesterday that, in 2004, the CIA hired Blackwater for planning, training and surveillance tasks, in today’s edition the daily provides more details on the activities assigned to that controversial private security company whose current name is Xe."

"The daily noted that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency recruited Blackwater agents to plant explosive devices in drone aircraft with the objective of killing Al Qaeda leaders."

"According to information given by government officials to The New York Times, the operations were carried out in bases located in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the private company assembled and loaded Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs."

"The agency’s current director, Leon Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June."

"Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program."

"Blackwater was the central private security company responsible for protecting U.S. personnel in Iraq during the George W. Bush administration."

"Its aggressive tactics were criticized on a number of occasions. The gravest case occurred in September 2007, when company agents killed 17 Iraqi civilians."

"Faced by record suicide figures and the wave of depression among soldiers, the U.S. army is gradually training specialized formations aimed at making its troops ‘more resistant’ to emotional stress related to war situations."

August 22:

"U.S. President Barack Obama today launched harsh criticisms of those opposed to his plan to reform the country’s health system and accused them of circulating lies and distortions."

"As he has noted in his speeches, the objective of the reform of the medical care system is to halt its spiraling cost and to guarantee medical coverage to close to 50 million Americans who lack insurance."

"…’should be honest debate, not dominated by falsehoods and intentional distortions circulated by those who would most benefit from things being maintained as they are.’"

"The U.S. State Department is still financing Blackwater, the private company of mercenaries involved in the murder of Al Qaeda leaders and which is now called Xe Services, according to today’s New York Times."

"David Patterson, governor of New York state, stated on Friday that the media has utilized racial stereotypes in its coverage of African-American officials, like himself, President Barack Obama and the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick."

"The White House calculates that the budget deficit over the next 10 years will be $2 trillion more than recent forecasts, a devastating blow for President Barack Obama and his plans for creating a public health system funded to a large extent by the state."

"Ten-year forecasts are seen as highly volatile and could vary with time. However, the new red figures in public finances are going to pose difficult problems for Obama in Congress, and enormous anxiety among foreigners who are financing the U.S. public debt, especially China. Almost all economists consider them unsustainable, even with a massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar."

August 23:

"The U.S. army joint chief of staff stated on Sunday that he was concerned at the loss of popular support in his country for the war in Afghanistan, while he stated that that country still remains vulnerable to extremist attacks."

""I think it is serious and it is deteriorating, and I've said that over the past couple of years – that the Taliban insurgency has gotten better, more sophisticated, in their tactics," said Admiral Mike Mullen."

"In an interview broadcast on NBC, Mullen declined to specify whether it was necessary to send in more troops."

"A little over 50% of people consulted in a recently published Washington Post-ABC survey, stated that the war in Afghanistan is not worth it."

"At the end of 2009, the United States will have three times more soldiers in Afghanistan than the 20,000 deployed there three years ago."

Confusion reigns in the heart of U.S. society.

Next September 11 is the eighth anniversary of the fateful 9/11. That day we warned in an event in the Ciudad Deportiva [Havana] that war would not be the way to put an end to terrorism.

The strategy of withdrawing troops from Iraq and sending them to the Afghanistan war to fight against the Taliban, is an error. The Soviet Union sunk there. The European allies of the United States will steadily put up more resistance to shedding the blood of their soldiers there.

Mullen’s concern over the popularity of that war is not unfounded. Those who plotted the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers were trained by the United States.

The Taliban is an Afghani nationalist movement that had nothing to do with that event. The Al Qaeda organization, financed by the CIA from 1979 and utilized against the USSR in the Cold War years, was the group that plotted that attack 22 years later.

There are shady events that have not as yet been sufficiently clarified before world public opinion.

Obama has inherited those problems from Bush.

I do not harbor the slightest doubt that the racist right will do everything possible to wear him down, blocking his program to get him out of the game in one way or another, at the least possible political cost.

Hopefully I am mistaken!


Fidel Castro Ruz
August 24, 2009

Afghanistan's election debacle

AN ELECTION intended to showcase Afghanistan's "emerging democracy" has instead exposed astonishing corruption, fraud and violence on the part of the U.S.-backed government.

Incumbent President Hamid Karzai and challenger Abdullah Abdullah are each claming victory amid allegations of vote-rigging and fraud on both sides, with Abdullah's supporters even hinting that his forces will take up arms if the election is stolen by Karzai.

As of August 25, the small number of votes counted showed each leading candidate with about 40 percent of the vote. If no candidate wins an outright majority, a runoff election will be held.

Threats from Abdullah, who served as Afghanistan's foreign minister after the U.S. invasion that ousted the Taliban in 2001, can't be taken lightly. Abdullah is a disciple of the late Ahmed Shah Masoud, a leading guerilla fighter against the former USSR's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and, later, a leader of the Northern Alliance insurgency against the Taliban regime of the 1990s.

But Karzai's camp has an equally blood-soaked past. To secure support beyond his base of ethnic Pashtuns around Kabul, Karzai chose Northern Alliance warlord Muhammad Fahim as one of his running mates, in an attempt to split Abdullah's base among ethnic Tajik people. Fahim has been accused of human rights violations on numerous occasions. Karzai's other running mate, Karim Khalili, is another notorious warlord.

Karzai also made deals with warlords who dominate other regions and ethnicities: the Uzbek boss Abdul Rashid Dostum and the Hazara chief Muhammad Mohaqeq. In the western province of Herat, Karzai relied on Ismail Khan, another warlord infamous for imposing Taliban-style restrictions on women.

Now, Karzai's rivals allege that he has supplemented his political deal-making by stuffing ballot boxes. According to Faizullah Mojadedi, a politician from the Logar province, a Taliban stronghold, Karzai supporters used low voter turnout as an opportunity to rig the vote. He told the Washington Post:

In Baraki Barak District, only about 500 people were able to vote out of 43,000 registered voters. In Harwar District, nobody at all was able to vote out of 15,000 registered voters. Yet the ballot boxes from these places came to Kabul full. The fact that people were afraid to vote became a big excuse for those who wanted to take advantage of it.

If Karzai was out to steal votes, he wasn't alone. Numerous reports indicate that village headmen voted for entire villages, and men voted by proxy for women. According to Anand Gopal, a Kabul-based journalist, the credibility of the U.S. and the Afghan government have been dealt a major blow. In an interview, Gopal noted:

In many parts of the country, there appears to have been vote stealing, ballot stuffing, proxy voting, intimidation, etc. This creates a major credibility crisis for the Afghan government and its Western backers. One of the most important claims made by the West here is that it was able to bring democracy to the rugged hills of Afghanistan. But with what seems to be an exceedingly low voter turnout in the south of the country, and fraud in most parts of the country, the credibility of the U.S. and its Afghan partners have taken a major hit.

There is a growing feeling among Afghans that the Western involvement here is not helping them, and the elections only furthered that--they were seen by many as a show put on by the international community.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHATEVER THE outcome of the election, the vote isn't a step toward "peace" in Afghanistan, let alone a withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops.

Just days after the election, U.S. commanders in Afghanistan informed U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke that more troops would be needed in addition to the nearly 60,000 American soldiers now in the country.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN that the situation in Afghanistan is "serious and it is deteriorating," adding, "The Taliban insurgency has gotten better, more sophisticated, in their tactics." Anthony Cordesman, a key civilian adviser to U.S. commanders, earlier argued that 45,000 more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama's commitment to Afghanistan has raised the specter of an endless, bloody conflict that will keep the U.S. on the ground for years. In an article headlined, "Is Afghanistan Obama's Vietnam?" a New York Times journalist observed:

No matter who is eventually declared the winner of last week's election in Afghanistan, the government there remains so plagued by corruption and inefficiency that it has limited legitimacy with the Afghan public. Just as America was frustrated with successive South Vietnamese governments, it has grown sour on Afghanistan's leaders with little obvious recourse.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has countered the recent surge of U.S. troops with attacks of its own. As Anand Gopal described the situation:

The Taliban has responded to the military offensive by going on an offensive of their own. The number of insurgent-initiated attacks have reached record levels this year. Most of the attacks have been roadside bombs, although there have been more ambushes and suicide attacks than ever before.

This is all part of a trend that we've been seeing for the last few years. The number of insurgent attacks increased every year since 2005. In large part, this is because there have been an increasing number of troops each year, so there more targets to fire at. But it's also because the insurgency in general has grown stronger and more resolved.

The U.S. doesn't seem to be serious about buying off "good Taliban"--i.e., giving money and land to rank-and-file Taliban fighters to wean them from the insurgency. There has been a lot of talk about this, but up until now, the programs that exist to bring fighters in from the cold have mostly failed, due to corruption and inefficiency. Of course, if jobs and land had been available to poor rural Afghans in the first place, the insurgency wouldn't be nearly as strong as it is today.

Al-Qaeda plays almost no role in the insurgency. It used to be that al-Qaeda was the core of the Islamist leadership in the region and the Taliban a mere appendage. Nowadays, the situation is exactly reversed--the two Taliban movements (in Afghanistan and Pakistan) are the core, and al-Qaeda the appendage.

In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is almost nonexistent except for tiny pockets along the Pakistani border. In Pakistan, they have been greatly weakened by the drone strikes and the growing lack of safe havens due to the Pakistani state crackdown. Al-Qaeda is a movement that has almost no base among the local population in Pakistan, unlike the Taliban movements.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AT THE same time, the U.S. is having limited success at best in getting the Pakistani government to pursue the Taliban on its side of the border. As Gopal put it:

The biggest boon to Holbrooke and the U.S. was the Pakistani Taliban advance this spring from Swat to Buner, a district of the North West Frontier Province that is less than 60 kilometers from Islamabad. When this happened, the Pakistani military brass decided to retaliate and delivered a weakening blow to the insurgents. The Pakistani Taliban had never really threatened the Pakistani state--this was very exaggerated in the media--but they were a thorn in their side.

As a reward for the Pakistani crackdown, the military is likely to get millions of dollars in aid from the U.S. This has been something of a sore point among ordinary Pakistanis, who see a lot of money going to the military but very little of it filtering down to them.

The logic of U.S. policy in the region will lead Washington to further intensify the conflict, Gopal added:

Right now, some in the U.S. establishment say they don't want more troops, but many of their policy proposals require more. For instance, there's a lot of talk about increasing the size of the Afghan army and police. But to do this will require large amounts of trainers and other troops. Commanders on the ground also say that they want more troops for combat operations, since there are only enough soldiers to hold urban areas--the surrounding rural areas, where most Afghans live, are generally outside of their control.

I suspect that we will see one or two more escalations in the next year. The problem, however, is that this is exactly what we've been seeing for the last four years. U.S. policy makers have not arrived a strategy that is fundamentally different from the military-focused, troop-heavy approach of recent years.

Thus, the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan, once seen by many as a limited chapter in a "good" war to overthrow a brutal regime, has become an open-ended military engagement--and a cornerstone of U.S. imperial strategy in Central and South Asia. The antiwar movement, which has long focused almost exclusively on Iraq, has to take note.

Obama, rendition, and the decay of American democracy

The Obama administration’s decision to carry on the practice of rendition, by which “terror suspects” are spirited off to third-party countries to face torture, testifies to the profound decay of American democracy.

Rendition under Obama will be the same as the practice as it existed during the Bush administration. An anonymous source close to the White House’s Task Force on Interrogation and Transfer Policies, who leaked the announcement to the New York Times, offered only vague assurances that prisoners would not be “rendered” to nations known to practice torture, and that diplomats would be allowed greater access.

The Bush administration made similar assurances. In fact, there is no reason for rendition except to utilize the services of those nations most hospitable to torture and impervious to public scrutiny.

The announcement comes after a week of revelations related to the lawless and anti-democratic nature of the “war on terror,” which, taken together, reflect the growing power of the military-intelligence apparatus and the consolidation of the infrastructure for an American police state.

* On August 20, it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hired the private security firm then known as Blackwater Associates for a program of “targeted killings” of alleged Al Qaeda operatives. The CIA violated US law in failing to inform Congress of this program.

* On August 21, a New York Times report revealed that the Obama administration employs the same mercenary firm in the operation of the CIA’s unmanned Predator drone assassination program in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

* On August 22, Der Spiegel confirmed that the CIA hired Blackwater to transport prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to secret prisons in Central Asia, where they faced torture.

* On August 24, the White House made public a heavily redacted version of a CIA inspector general’s report discussing cases of agency torture and murder of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among other forms of abuse, interrogators threatened inmates with death and warned that their mothers and children would be arrested and raped. The report had been suppressed since 2004 and was released in compliance with a court order stemming from a Freedom of Information suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Confronted with overwhelming evidence that its predecessor systematically violated US and international law—as well as basic human rights—the Obama administration has sought to contain the damage.

After releasing the CIA inspector general’s report, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a prosecutor to investigate a handful of torture cases discussed in the document. The purview of the investigation will be limited to “rogue” agents who supposedly went beyond the forms of torture specifically endorsed by the Bush White House. In keeping with administration policy, there will be no investigations of Bush administration officials, including Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, who formulated and oversaw the torture program.

Obama immediately distanced himself from even this half-measure. A spokesman repeated Obama’s mantra that “we should be looking forward, not backward,” while pinning responsibility for any investigation on Holder, who “ultimately is going to make the decisions.”

The CIA’s open opposition to the report’s release and the appointment of a prosecutor approached the level of insubordination. An agency spokesman declared that the cases had already been investigated by the Bush Justice Department.

“Justice has had the complete document since 2004, and their career prosecutors have reviewed it carefully for legal accountability,” said Paul Gimigliano. “That’s already been done.”

After the inspector general’s report was released, the CIA took the unprecedented step of releasing two classified documents whose publication had been demanded by Cheney. The former vice president claimed the documents would demonstrate the necessity of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Predictably, these documents made no specific reference to intelligence secured through torture. Instead, they offered lurid and unsubstantiated claims about terror plots disrupted through CIA interrogations.

Cheney returned to the attack on Tuesday, criticizing the Justice Department’s proposed investigation in the most ominous terms. It raises “doubts about this administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security,” Cheney charged.

The terms of the “debate” that emerged after the publication of the inspector general’s report was very much dictated by the military-intelligence apparatus. It hinged on whether or not torture “works.” This, it was claimed, is a matter for legitimate intellectual discussion.

Current CIA Director Leon Panetta, an Obama appointee, echoed Cheney in declaring that torture had disrupted attacks. Panetta suggested that whether or not such methods are “the only way to obtain that information will remain a legitimate area of dispute, with Americans holding a range of views on the methods used.”

In this context, Obama’s declaration that rendition will continue was a transparent bid to curry favor with the military-intelligence apparatus. Even the Times noted that the announcement “seemed intended in part to offset the impact” of the release of the inspector general’s report.

Obama’s continuation of rendition is yet another repudiation of his campaign promises. In an article in Foreign Affairs in 2007, Obama said he would “eliminate the practice of extreme rendition, where we outsource our torture to other countries.”

Many of those who voted for Obama did so out of revulsion over the Bush administration’s use of torture and other illegal methods. But, as with Obama’s anti-war posturing and his pledges to reverse the pro-corporate agenda of Bush, the campaign promises of the apostle of “change you can believe in” have proven worthless. On every essential question, the Obama administration is continuing and deepening the reactionary policies of his predecessor.

Obama’s endorsement of rendition demonstrates that the anti-democratic methods of US imperialism—torture, kidnapping, assassination, aggressive war—are not rooted in the personal characteristics of politicians and cannot be overcome by replacing one party of American imperialism by another.

The danger of a police state emerges inexorably from the turn by the ruling elite as a whole to aggressive war and militarism as a means of offsetting the deepening crisis of American capitalism. At the same time, the crisis is being used to effect a vast restructuring of class relations in the US to the benefit of the financial aristocracy which controls both parties and all the levers of state power. The social inequality that is being created is such that the brutal measures currently employed in the “war on terror” will ultimately be unleashed on the working class within the US.

Tom Eley