Obama and whether a torn page can be turned over (a point of view)

Pages can get yellow and tattered and they can also be ripped out of books. The virtual election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States promises to turn a very spotted page but the question has more to do with the dynamics of the power structure than the good will of the 47-year-old would be reformer. It was none other than former president General Dwight Eisenhower who warned several decades ago about the dangerous power machine of the "industrial-military complex."  What Eisenhower was worried about was the defacto alliance following World War II between big business and the Pentagon, whose influence he saw as capable of swaying the will power of the decisions made by the executive or legislative branches of power. History has since then backed up Eisenhower’s  causes for worry.

Throughout history empires or big powers or whatever you want to call them have traditionally maintained one attitude inward, for citizens, and another quite different for outsiders or "barbarians." During the Cold War with the ex-Soviet Union, for example, there was an unprecedented growth in economic prosperity in the United States along with the development of weapons of mass destruction, relatively low scale military interventions abroad (such as the invasion of numerous countries in Latin America, the war against Korea and Vietnam...the military coups against allegedly left-leaning governments...)

The consumer society had been born and along with it the notion of deficit economics, as if it did not matter how much indebtedness Washington stacked up. Economists argued that going in debt was a way to stimulate the economy and, anyway, at that time, the debt was mostly within the country’s national boundaries. Of course, the banks and financial institutions did not hesitate a moment in granting questionable loans to impoverished governments around the world, charging inflated interest rates...

While the consumer society was developing in the U.S., and as its citizens began criticizing the war against Vietnam, blacks and minority groups in the country began to demand the rights established in the constitution but denied to them by means of racism, discrimination, separatism and the scant registering to vote of the minorities. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and many other afro-american leaders began to recognize the contradiction between the alleged U.S. claim to being a free and democratic country and discrimination at home and war abroad.

Skipping ahead in time, President George Bush--a former alcoholic, turned evangelical--found in the September 11th terrorist attack just the excuse he was waiting for to launch the country into yet another military adventure abroad and clamp down on basic civil liberties at home. After more than five years of war in Iraq, more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed in battle, hundreds of thousands of Iraq citizens killed, massive destruction of their homes, with the rich US citizens having a heyday (in 2005 the richest one percent of US people had 18% of otal income), an astronomical deficit of close to $15 billion...and the bombardment via paranoic propaganda mixed with outright lies related to the terrorist danger, the justification of cruel abuse and torture against political prisoners, with the systematic use of fear as a political instrument to keep people and the press from questioning the government’s policies...boom! A financial crash explodes right on the eve of presidential elections!

Although John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, tried to differentiate himself from Bush, he turned out to be a faithful follower in at least two key areas: the need to achieve "victory" in Iraq and the time-worn recipe of tax reductions for big business to deal with the financial crisis. Curious. It was precisely tax reductions and lack of financial controls that had turned the economy into an enormous casino.

Obama, whose father was from Kenya, who also bears the family name of Hussein, who spent his childhood in far away places such as Indonesia, who studied political science at one of the better US universities (Colombia) was a relatively unknown but respected politician until he launched himself into the presidential race. Perhaps because of his background, perhaps because of his charism, his intelligence, his demand for change without shouting insults at his opponents, Obama began to appear as the "dark horse" and, in fact, stacked up an incredible series of victories, first getting the Democratic party’s approval, then virtually winning the election against McCain.

To get there, though, he had to make a number of compromises. Obama had always opposed the invasion of Iraq but not so his running mate, Joe Biden. During the heat of the campaign, Obama took a trip to the war zone and came back saying the US should get out of Iraq and step up its anti´terrorist activities in....Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the domestic front, he proposed tax increases for big business in order to finance New Deal type economic recovery plans, something that led McCain to accuse him of sympathy for socialism!

Question: in view of the Military-industrial complex, and the US notion of its strategic interests, will an Obama government be able to do anything to the Pentagon’s dislike? An aspect of Obama approach to change is to use dialogue instead of confrontation (something dear to the Pentagon and the Bushites), that is dialogue with Europe, dialogue in the Mid East, dialogue with Venezuela, with Iran, to solve the potentially explosive problems the US must confront in the years to come. Question: to what extent will that expression of goodwill be underminded by the political-military-economic status quo?

People in the US and around the world expect to see Washington more intensely concerned about human rights (including its own abuses), cooperation in the search to turn down the world’s warm-up due to its reliance on petroleum based fuel, the inclusion of more of the world’s countries in the talks on reforming the present financial and trade institutions...

Sometimes old yellow or torn pages can be restored and turned over but it is not an easy task and will take much time, effort and patience. It also will demand the effective participation of the millions of persons not now represented in the world order.