Twenty-one giant C-130 Hercules cargo planes each carrying $2.4 billion cash went to Iraq and somehow the cargo went unaccounted afterwards. Stuart Bowen, special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction, said the missing $US6.6 billion might be ”the largest theft of funds in national history”. While the Pentagon said they could track down the money given enough time, six years later it seems the money is still not able to be tracked. Isn’t that what a thief would say?

As bad as a $6.6 billion theft is, keep in mind that trillions of dollars are spent on all the occupations, invasions, and bombings the US heads up today: Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, saber-rattling against Iran, …all while Americans are suffering from an illegal and unchallenged foreclosure wave, a larger gulf between the rich and poor than ever before, and no clear indication the American government cares about its citizens woes.

Is any of this really a surprise? How bad do things have to be before millions of Americans find the time to protest in all the major cities at the same time (so as to clearly show solidarity)?

Progressives who do this will tell you that this unconditional Party support is necessary and justifiable because no matter how bad Democrats are, the GOP is worse. That’s a different debate. The point here is that — whether justified or not — telling politicians that you will do everything possible to work for their re-election no matter how much they scorn you, ignore your political priorities, and trample on your political values is a guaranteed ticket to irrelevance and impotence. Any self-interested, rational politician — meaning one motivated by a desire to maintain power rather than by ideology or principle — will ignore those who behave this way every time and instead care only about those whose support is conditional. And they’re well-advised to do exactly that.

Generally, another slam-dunk for Greenwald who has a habit of great writing. I think the major theme of Greenwald’s post comes from Frederick Douglass’ famous quote

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.
Frederick Douglass

Progressives who go along with the Democrats to get along will get whatever horrors that party dishes out. Douglass was correct then and he’s correct now.

I don’t agree with some of Greenwald’s minor points made along the way:

• MoveOn.org and Rachel Maddow are either not progressives or the word “progressive” has become just another way to say “blind Democrat party supporter”. I’ve never found Maddow’s show to be that compelling (I’ve mentioned some of my disagreement with her perspective on this blog). MoveOn.org never fails to rally behind Democrats at election time, much like the Nation magazine with their periodic anti-Nader editorials published around election time. I’ll be surprised if Maddow doesn’t fall into line supporting the Democrats closer to election time.
• I don’t think the debate over who is worse is as separate a debate as Greenwald says: I don’t think either party is worse overall; I think both Democrat and Republican parties are roughly equally horrible and I believe they support mostly the same big-ticket issues: endless war/world dominance or empire, reduction in civil liberties, running up the cost of government, ecological disaster. Any issue where large sums of money or power are at stake generally find bi-partisan support in the US Congress. Unconditional Party support is never justified as it’s a sure road to being ignored.

While it’s perfectly rational for any candidate to ignore anyone who asks nothing for their support (“support” meaning: vote, campaign contribution, or staffing time on their campaign) the Left has long behaved as if they’re ignorant of the message they send when they behave in this way. I don’t see how the Left or Progressives can expect to maintain their number of supporters when they boast blind Democratic Party support.

I no longer think highly of the Left or Progressives because too many of the Progressives I come across (in person, reading their work, or having worked with them on political stuff in the past) blindly support Democrats and believe in voting Democrat because “[Republicans] are worse” and, just as Greenwald said, are horribly offended when their elected leader doesn’t heed their views. For me, Progressives who do this merely support corporatism, the single thing that undergirds all the horrible stuff the US is involved in.

As a result I have stopped caring about who becomes US President or which of the two US corporate-run major parties leads Congress. I know the same policies will be furthered no matter who wins. Greenwald’s articles point out how one party is no better than the other; you can skim Greenwald’s blog posts and find posts on major issues where Obama’s Democrats kept G.W. Bush’s policies intact or made them worse.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Scheer, your last chapter, “Sucking Up to the Bankers: Crisis Handoff from Bush to Obama”—has Obama done anything different about the economy than Bush, do you feel?

ROBERT SCHEER: No. Obama has been a disaster. And I say this as someone who was suckered into contributing to his campaign financially. You know, my wife maxed out in her contributions, pushing those buttons every time. I still get emails from the Obama campaign telling “We’re winning here, we’re winning there.” But it’s been a disaster.

Meanwhile President Obama’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan continue apace at the cost of trillions of dollars; trillions Americans could have pumped into schools, roads, jobs, buying houses, and so much more. Obama’s drone war against Pakistan and killings in Yemen and Somalia go on and on. Clearly the US will not be on the road to justice until its leaders are tried for war crimes and sitting in prison. AWARE’s most recent flier tells the tale. The financial cost is more than the American economy can bear.

Update (2010-09-10, 2010-09-11): Terry Jones is a pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, a small church in Gainesville, Florida which planned to mark September 11, 2010 by burning printed Qur’ans. Recently President Barack Obama said that Dove World Outreach Center’s protest “could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan”. Democracy Now! and the BBC report that Defense Secretary Robert Gates echoed Obama’s sentiment to Pastor Jones by phone. The BBC also notes that some unnamed person from “[t]he FBI had visited Mr Jones to urge him to reconsider his plans“. Obama explained the logic behind his statement to ABC News: “this is a recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda. You know, you could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan.”. The BBC quotes Obama saying “We’ve got an obligation to send a very clear message that this kind of behaviour or threat of action puts our young men and women in harm’s way.”.

Obama, Gates, and their sympathizers who oppose Jones’ protest on these grounds are shamefully trying to deflect responsibility for the continued Iraq & Afghanistan occupations and the Pakistan drone attacks onto Jones’ misguided protest. Amazing how Jones’ small protest captures so much American corporate media attention and is blamed for so much while anti-war activists struggle for national coverage. This alone tells us that there’s something about Jones’ message that is acceptable to corporate media while anti-war protests are not acceptable for corporate media to cover—if you challenge the occupation on ethical grounds you must be kept away from the mic but if your message can be co-opted by those who benefit from war, your effort may be called news. Whether Al Qaeda or anyone else, the occupations and attacks are “a recruitment bonanza” for anyone who wants to end American occupation. The American occupation proceeded under former US President George W. Bush. People are unwilling to be occupied and occupiers have no rights. This desire for freedom in turn “puts our young men and women in harm’s way”. Occupation and a thirst for war are two of the strongest links tying together the two major corporate parties in the US. Burning Qur’ans is notably intolerant but non-lethal and incredibly minor in comparison to occupation. As Jones told CNN, “We are burning the book. We are not killing someone. We are not murdering people.”.

It doesn’t matter who is president – George Bush or Barack Obama. Indeed, Obama has stepped up Bush’s wars and started his own war in Pakistan. Like Bush, he is threatening Iran, a country Hillary Clinton said she was prepared to “annihilate”. Iran’s crime is its independence. Having thrown out America’s favourite dictator, the Shah, Iran is the only resource-rich Muslim country beyond American control. It doesn’t occupy anyone else’s land and hasn’t attacked any country – unlike Israel, which is nuclear-armed and dominates and divides the Middle East on America’s behalf.

In Australia, we are not told this. It’s taboo. Instead, we dutifully celebrate the illusion of Obama, the global celebrity, the marketing dream. Like Calvin Klein, brand Obama offers the riske thrill of a new image attractive to liberal sensibilities, if not to the Afghan children he bombs.

This is modern propaganda in action, using a kind of reverse racism – the same way it deploys gender and class as seductive tools. In Barack Obama’s case, what matters is not his race or his fine words, but the class and power he serves.

John Pilger

Pilger’s article on Obama as brand and the success with which the American people were led to believe Obama would oppose Bush’s policies reminds us that

In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.

John Pilger

Why has the liberal left who supported Obama ceded the streets to the Tea Party? What happened to groups like “United for Peace and Justice” organizing millions in the streets of major US cities?

Glenn Greenwald on Bill Moyer’s Journal in a web exclusive (video, transcript) had this to say about President Obama’s continuation of rounding up people around the world and locking them up for as long as we like.

[O]ne of the principle controversies of the Bush Administration, one of the defining aspects of their radicalism, was the idea that we can take human beings who we don’t capture on a battlefield, who we simply abduct and pick up, who we suspect of engaging in terrorism and put them into cages for years or decades without having to charge them with any crime.

That — simply based on executive authority — the ability to point to someone and say, “This is a terrorist,” then justifies the elimination of all due process and putting them into prison forever. Obama, several months ago, said that he not only believes in that power, but wanted Congress to enact a statute that would permanently enshrine this theory of law into Presidential power.

He gave up on that because there was going to be difficulty in terms of getting the bill that he wanted passed through the Congress. So, instead what he did was he embraced the Bush/Cheney justification as to why the President can do that, which is that the Congress implicitly authorized it.

And so, we’re continuing our scheme of indefinite lawless detention, free of due process, free of any charges of any kind. Where we can pick up people anywhere around the world and put them into cages. He’s actively defending that power in Afghanistan, by saying that people who we abduct far away from the battlefield, far away from Afghanistan, and then ship to Afghanistan and imprison at Bagram have no rights even to habeas corpus, which the Supreme Court said at least that Guantanamo detainees have.

And so, that’s just one example where for years liberals yelled and screamed vehemently that Bush was subverting the Constitution and degrading the American culture, political culture, by asserting this power. And yet, here you have Barack Obama not just refusing or taking his time undoing it, but himself actively defending and advocating it. And there’s very little outcry. And that repeats itself in terms of the state secrets privilege. And the effort to block accountability for torture victims. And a whole variety of other powers that Bush and Cheney asserted to great controversy.

Glenn Greenwald

The Left has profoundly mischaracterized Obama’s campaign promise to end the use of Guantanamo Bay: during the campaign this was widely celebrated as a reason to vote for Obama. But even if that prison is destroyed and never to be used again, the US maintains a system of prisons around the world (some unknown to us, I can only guess). It’s reasonable to believe that in those other prisons the US tortures (whether directly or by proxy hardly matters) and detains people indefinitely. Shifting the site of illegal unethical behavior is not the same as ceasing that behavior.

Obama’s support for your civil liberties is profoundly lacking. You’ll recall his administrations support of the telecommunications corporations’ illegal wiretapping which surpassed the Bush administration.

I hope that by the time Obama’s first term is over we can look at his presidency and name a dozen seriously beneficial things he has done for the US (ideally, 12 things John McCain would have been unlikely to do). Not being Bush isn’t good enough.

Well, obviously we all congratulate Barack Obama. We wish him well. But the precursor to his election has not been very encouraging, and he has repeatedly taken up the positions of the corporate supremacists, not just his latest vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, but a whole string of votes and policy positions. He opposes single-payer health insurance. Well, the HMOs and the insurance companies do, too. He wants a bigger military budget. So does the military-industrial complex. His idea of a living wage on his website is $9.50 an hour by 2011. That would make it less than it was in 1968, adjusted for inflation.

He matched McCain in the third debate, belligerent—belligerency for belligerency, toward Russia, toward Iran, more soldiers in Afghanistan, supporting the Israeli military repression and occupation and blockade of Gaza and the West Bank. And virtually nothing about 100 million poor people in this country. That’s why I really fault him, that he played the Clinton linguistic game by talking constantly about the middle class and not mentioning the word “poor.”

And we expect more of him. And I don’t think he has a public philosophy of where corporations must operate in this country. How? Under what rule of law? Under what regulation? Under what vulnerability to litigation in the courts? He’s proud of tort reform, supports the nuclear industry, supports the coal industry. So we’re really talking about just more of the same, in terms of the corporate domination of Washington.

I detected no concern, no quaking of concern, among the drug industry, oil, gas industry, nuclear, coal industry, Wall Street, over his probable election in the last few weeks. Usually, when they’re really worried about a politician, they will issue warnings. But Barack Obama has raised far more money than John McCain from Wall Street interests, corporate interests and, above all, corporate lawyers. And the question to be asked is, why are they investing so much in Barack Obama? Because they believe he’s their man. So, prepare to be disappointed, but keep your hope up.

Ralph Nader, November 5, 2008 on Democracy Now! (audio, high-quality audio, video, transcript)

Add to that, continued presidential support for the death penalty (the change from Pres. Bush being that Obama recognizes that it was used to kill innocents and the death penalty doesn’t have the intended effect of stopping crimes for which capital punishment is used), and I remain fearful about what that means for death row inmates (DN! has been following Troy Anthony Davis’ case). It would be better to send a clear signal that the death penalty isn’t just costly and does nothing to reduce certain crimes, the more compelling reason to reject it has to do with killing people being ethically unjustifiable and offering no room for making mistakes. We simply aren’t going to teach people not to kill while we continue to carve out an exception for the state.

I remain concerned about what Obama’s policies will amount to for the nation’s poor. I don’t see serious change for the better so long as health insurance companies are allowed to control health care policy. I don’t recall anything in Obama’s policies addressing homelessness, and I don’t think a 90-day reprieve on making mortgage payments for those who are close to eviction will seriously reduce the eviction rate after the 90-day window ends. Sending more American poor into war isn’t going to help either (as Sgt. Matthis Chiroux points out, Obama is not an anti-war candidate: “I’m very excited about what an Obama candidacy—or Obama presidency, the kind of racial unity it can bring, but I’m worried that people in this country believe he is truly going to be an antiwar president, and he’s not. He’s very far away from that. He’s got plans to leave troops in Iraq. He wants to expand the war in Afghanistan, go into Pakistan.”). Locally, I’ve already seen anti-war efforts decrease just like they did when Sen. John Kerry was the Democratic party candidate and the national anti-war campaigners were unwilling to challenge Kerry’s pro-war message—he’d manage occupation better than George W. Bush.

My friends who supported Obama’s campaign tell me that progressives will challenge him after they give him their support (vote, time, money) and get him in office. I find that strategy to be wholly unwise if your goal is to really help people in need because there’s no clear mechanism for making a candidate follow your advocacy if a candidate knows that they have you in their back pocket. Corporations surely don’t behave that way, they only pay to help campaigners when it’s clear that there’s a deal before the election.

I hope that the good feelings and celebrations going on now change into real progressive political pressure. From what I can tell of Obama’s policies, funding sources, and voting record, he’ll need a lot of pressure to do what’s right by those most in need.

Of all the companies making headlines this week, AIG has been the most nonpartisan in its contributions, splitting evenly the $9.7 million it has contributed over time. Sen. Chris Dodd, chair of the Senate banking committee, has racked up the most from AIG, with a total of $281,400, while Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of both the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, takes second with $116,400. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama collected $103,000 and $82,600 from AIG, respectively.

So now you know where some of AIG’s money went. Maybe now that a majority of AIG is nationalized (see, socialism is okay now! It all depends on who the beneficiaries are!) their campaign contributions will change.

Probably not.

From today’s Democracy Now! (headline, small audio, high-quality audio, video): (emphasis mine)

The Senate has approved a new war funding bill allocating $165 billion for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In a challenge to President Bush, the measure also includes billions in domestic spending, including $51 billion dollars for veterans’ education. Republican presidential candidate John McCain had opposed the domestic provisions, but did not interrupt his campaign schedule to return to Capitol Hill for the vote. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both voted in favor of the measure.

How long until a signing statement takes away any funding not directly aimed at continuing occupation and oppression?

How long until the public votes to say no more war?

How many more people have to die before you’ll decide that the Democrats aren’t the way to justice?

• They didn’t just go along with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. A majority of them voted on principle to not define the US by war and oppression, but by close examination of facts and evidence even when it meant questioning the US President. And let’s be practical, who wants to be a party to war crimes? They haven’t altered this clear anti-war stance for years.
• Somehow the invasion of Iraq happened anyhow but the Democrats ended the occupation once they were put into office during the 2007 mid-term election. That’s why you won’t find any American troops, American mercenaries, or American corporations in Iraq today. The Democrats used the power of the congressional calendar (which the Democrats control) and setting conditions on how to spend money on the occupation in order to say “This far and no further!”.
• The Democrats kept impeachment alive and we’re all better off for it. We’d look like first-class dumbasses if we supported some party that said they wouldn’t consider holding people responsible for corruption on the order of “high crimes and misdemeanors”! The Democrats are keeping our heads where they belong: challenging the wars abroad so we don’t have to challenge each other at home.
• The Democrats’ strong support for HR676, a single-payer universal health plan also known as “Medicare for All”. That’s why the 47+ million Americans without health insurance is a thing of the past. No more fearing that you’ll be left to the tender but expensive mercies of the emergency room; no need to worry where chronic care will come from (like insulin for insulin-dependent diabetics) because Americans are all covered now. The Democrats didn’t ignore the majority of Americans who have long held that universal health care is desirable even if it means paying more in taxes to get it (this, despite Americans paying already more per capita for health care than countries that already have universal coverage). While Vice President Cheney glibly dismisses public opinion the Democrats highlight their difference by obeying the clarion call of ordinary Americans and pushing aside their would-be corporate paymasters (not that the Democrats would let corporate money influence their decisions!). Just listen to the strong endorsement Democratic Party presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton gave to universal single-payer health care at a recent debate in Los Angeles: (audio, high-quality audio, video, transcript)

  Sen. Hillary Clinton: We cannot get to universal healthcare, which I believe is both a core Democratic value and an imperative for our country, if we don’t do one of three things. Either you can have a single-payer system, or—which I know a lot of people favor, but for many reasons is difficult to achieve—or you can mandate employers—well, that’s also very controversial—or you can do what I am proposing, which is to have shared responsibility.

  to which that nay-saying Nellie, Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, responds:

  Amy Goodman: It’s interesting to note something Hillary Clinton says in that clip. When she mentions a single-payer system, the audience applauds and cheers, even though it’s an option rarely seriously discussed by politicians or the corporate media. And Hillary Clinton acknowledges the applause by saying, “I know a lot of people favor [it], but for many reasons [it’s] difficult to achieve.” She doesn’t explain why she thinks it’s difficult to achieve. And polls repeatedly show a majority of Americans favor it. An A.P. poll in December found nearly two-thirds of voters want universal healthcare, in which everyone’s covered in a Medicare-type program, while more than half of voters explicitly said they support single payer.

  Barack Obama’s unwavering support for single-payer universal health care shines through when he rejects the current buy-it-yourself HMO-based system of American health care:

  Sen. Barack Obama: What they’re struggling with is they can’t afford the healthcare. And so, I emphasize reducing costs. My belief is—is that if we make it affordable, if we provide subsidies to those who can’t afford it, they will buy it.

  And only Obama has the fearlessness to cite the job loss inside HMOs we’d suffer by switching to universal single-payer health care. With leadership like what the Democrats are offering, it’s hard to know which candidate will support my favorite HMO best!

I’m sure this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Yes, it makes so much sense to support the Democratic Party now that they’re showing us what they’ll do with their power. Once you see how much they’re on your side you really have no other alternative. That scoundrel Ralph Nader who makes all the Democrats so upset, is just a Republican-lite, a mere imitator. One look at his campaign website, his articles, his almost-blank political history and you’ll agree that Nader clearly wants more corporate control of our economy which means more war, more environmental pollution, and more recession—policies which present no clear differences from those of the two major parties.