The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad - Political Analysis Book on US Foreign Policy & Domestic Affairs | Perfect for History Buffs & Political Science Students

Tariq Ali reports that the system is indeed rotten, everybody knows it. Rather than ponderous, his style is succinct and breezy. The one irony after another that he exposes are so sardonic, combined with his steadfast veracity, that this is one of the very few instances in which humor would be unwelcome. One can almost hear Ali uttering these words the same way he does in a lecture or a debate: carefully, slowly, and self-assured. Most admirable is the wisdom that captures and uplifts, filled with both the fearlessness wisdom demands of the violence and irrationalities that our times confront us with, and also the profound humility that ought go with it. Ali makes a significant divergence in insisting the responsibility belongs most immediately on the incumbent. Yes, the mess Obama inherited was horrific. But how will that be repaired by following and prescribing the very policies that have brought us to these crises?Ali writes that Obama favors a thoroughly discredited market-oriented approach to every important issue, and the nurturing of the military muscle to enforce its every edict. Bailouts for the casinos on Wall Street? No problem. Help for homeowners in jeopardy? Not so much. Increased military spending? Obama makes Bush look like a welterweight. Escalate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Obama calls leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq complemented by a large contingent of mercenaries, and the building of the largest US embassy in the world in Baghdad, withdrawal. He ups the ante in Afghanistan - although Ali says we shouldn't be surprised because he promised to do so in his campaign - increased the drone attacks across the Afghanistan border with Pakistan, which have killed countless innocent civilians and destabilized the regime, and spread the so-called terror-war to Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia. After winning the election he stood by mute as Israel mercilessly attacked hospitals, schools, mosques, homes, orphanages, UN facilities, and used white phosphorous munitions on the civilian population of Gaza.Repeatedly Ali describes the pusillanimity of the Obama style of governance. For example: "Unable and unwilling to deliver any serious reforms, Obama has become the master of the sympathetic gesture, the understanding smile, the pained but friendly expression that always appear(s) to say, 'Really, I agree and wish we could, but we can't. We really can't and it's not my fault.' The implication is always that the Washington system prevents any change that he could believe in. But the ring of truth is absent."Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have promoted charter over public schools, in the process vilifying teachers and their unions, and militarized schools in Chicago and elsewhere. Ali notes this is a process designed to obviate the need for a draft and makes for a surplus contingent of war recruits of the underclass, available for service to empire.Only six months before the oil disaster in the gulf, Obama, and his industry-friendly Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar had colluded with the oil giants to allow for just the type of oil drilling that resulted in the catastrophe. Again and again Ali shows that Obama works, like his predecessors, for the ruling elite, and in the class warfare that is raging, as an agent of the plutocrats. Ali doesn't mention a single bright spot on Obama's resume as president.At one point Ali calls it only half ironic that a leading columnist for the Financial Times lists the most important events of 2009 as speeches by Obama. In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech Ali cites Obama in flagrante delicto alluding to the "limits of reason." As if our society has approached anything resembling reason, let alone scaling its limits. In the instance Obama elucidates that his "limits of reason" threaten even more aggravated use of US weaponry - rather than, as understanding teaches, the beginning of philosophy.Perhaps the worst of all is Obama's economic team. Ali writes that as President Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin helmed the deregulation of Wall Street that culminated in 1999 in the repeal of the depression-era Glass Steagall Act. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act dissolved the barrier between commercial and investment banks and insurance companies , which was largely responsible for the economic collapse of 2008. Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Neal Wolin and others, instrumental in drafting the legislation and proteges of Rubin, were all appointed to top posts in the Obama regime. Rubin left Treasury to pocket a cool $120 million at Citigroup, and Wolin to the Hartford Insurance Company. Both corporations benefited from this revolving-door economic policy, and were subsequently bailed out by US taxpayers.Speaking of Obama's mandate in January of 2009, and the citizenry's disgust with the eights years of the Bush regime, Ali writes that, "If ever there was a moment for a set of measures [to be] enacted [to regulate the so-called free market] this was surely it, but US politics had for many decades been based on the needs of corporate capitalism, with the government as a supportive, rather than a controlling, force. The economy was wedded to militarism and financialization." Obama has changed this paradigm not a whit, shows Ali.Ali is fair enough, however, that he doesn't put all blame on Obama, and in the process, offers a prescription for the terrible problems confronting us: "The lack of popular social movements in the United States enabled the elite to impose its own solutions, and these were, unsurprisingly, designed to boost the existing arrangements...The lesson is an old one: without action from below, there will be no change above."