BAR: Cynthia McKinney Deserves Your Support, Obama Does Not

"No one with a brain any longer believes that Obama is a closet progressive, or even a genuine liberal."



Both Black and white progressives deliberately made themselves irrelevant to the Democratic campaign by failing to challenge Obama before and during the primary season. Now there is one remaining chance to put a healthy fear into Obama and to help build a Black-led movement that will fight for progressive values after the election is over: solidarity with Cynthia McKinney.

Surely no one with a brain any longer believes that Obama is a closet progressive, or even a genuine liberal. Last month he finally confessed that Black Agenda Report has been right about him all the time: he's Hillary Clinton's political clone  "If you look at my positions and Senator Clinton's, there's not a lot of difference, which is why it's so easy for advisers, senior advisers of Senator Clinton, to support my candidacy," said Obama, unveiling his roster of national security advisors.

And what a "Back to the Future" crew of Bill Clinton and Bush #1 retrograde hacks he has chosen! Obama's core group of foreign policy gurus is non-change personified - U.S. imperialism from the pre-Bush #2 era in the flesh. (See "Background of Obama's Foreign Policy Group," Institute for Public Accuracy.) Endless war is written on their faces. Progressives should have taken Obama seriously when he announced to everyone who would listen, back in March, "The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional, bipartisan, realistic foreign policy of George Bush's father, John F. Kennedy, of in some ways Ronald Reagan."

Obama had the gall to praise Reagan and the elder Bush while on a "Stand for Change" bus tour.

Cynthia McKinney offers real change - peace for a change.

"The United States should and must engage the world, but not in empire, not in military," said McKinney, who was first elected to the U.S. Congress from a suburban Atlanta district in 1992. "Ninety percent of the US security budget is dedicated to some military engagement with the world.  The United States should stop arming factions, supporting factions, new elections should be held [in Iraq] with international advisors, and the "coalition of the willing" should work with the United Nations to disarm and restore to the extent possible the Iraqi civil sector.  The Reconstruction Draft Manifesto calls for an end to US militarism and the establishment of a Department of Peace by restructuring the US State Department."

So it does. The manifesto is a comprehensive movement document, a basis for political action beyond the narrow confines of electoral contests. "Sadly," says the manifesto, "the Bush - Pelosi war policy is a formula for endless global conflict, deterioration of the rule of law among nations, and growing impoverishment, indebtedness and evisceration of civil liberties at home."

More and more each day, "the Bush-Pelosi war policy" is also Barack Obama's policy, as further evidenced by his about-face on Bush spying on U.S. citizens with the aid of U.S. telecom companies.

In going the extra, unrequested mile for AIPAC, the Israel lobby, Obama moved to the Right of every U.S. president in history. Obama's blustering vow that Jerusalem will remain forever an "undivided" "Jewish" city would lock the U.S. into a position unacceptable to every Arab or Muslim government on Earth. His bellicosity regarding Iran differs from John McCain's, only in that Obama would theoretically deign to hold talks with Iranians "at a time and place of my choosing," while refusing to rule out a preemptive strike.