OBAMA: "Moving Beyond Transactions, Finding Our National Purpose"

[KoKo]

Moving Beyond Transactions, Finding Our National Purpose
by: Chris Bowers
Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 15:00
Yesterday, I blogged about how connecting the Iraq war to the bad economy held transformative progressive potential since such an argument implied that such large scale military spending was fundamentally a waste of money. Today, Barack Obama made a speech connecting the war to the bad economy, which is a good first step. Unfortunately, Obama's framing was steeped in transactional politics, rather than transformational values:

Instead of fighting this war, we could be fighting for the people of West Virginia," Senator Obama said today. "For what folks in this state have been spending on the Iraq war, we could be giving health care to nearly 450,000 of your neighbors, hiring nearly 30,000 new elementary school teachers, and making college more affordable for over 300,000 students. We could be fighting to put the American dream within reach for every American - by giving tax breaks to working families, offering relief to struggling homeowners, reversing President Bush's cuts to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and protecting Social Security today, tomorrow, and forever. That's what we could be doing instead of fighting this war."

There is nothing remotely transformational about this. Instead, it is part of the long-standing Democratic habit of promising a laundry list of benefits to discrete voting and issue groups. It is technocratic, transactional politics, utterly lacking in the broader argument that large-scale military spending of the sort we have seen in Iraq has led to 5% of our national economy being sunk into ventures that provide virtually no return on that investment or broader benefit to Americans. In fact, part of Obama's argument is that military spending on Iraq should be redirected to other types of military spending:

As President, Barack Obama will end the war in Iraq and redirect our resources toward pressing domestic and national security priorities. Ending the war in Iraq will help pay for Obama's priorities for the country, which include:(...)

Rebuilding our military capability by increasing the number of soldiers, marines, and special forces troops, and insist on adequate training and time off between deployments;

We need to reduce our spending on Iraq so that we can increase the size of our military? Pardon me for asking, but what exactly is the purpose of increasing the size of our military if wars like Iraq don't make any sense? What does it accomplish except to inefficiently suck money out of the economy and guard against an impending Canadian invasion force?
The broader point that needs to me made is not that Iraq specifhas prevented money from being funneled directly to your specific demographic group, but that excessive military spending in places like Iraq drains massive amounts of money from our nation as a whole. The Iraq war is our major national project right now, equivalent to the Apollo program or the New Deal. Do we want that as our national project? I don't think many Americans would agree. Do we want a series of transactions to specific demographic groups and issues to be our national project? Even if is vastly preferable to making the Iraq war our national project, the truth is that isn't very appealing either. We need a different framing around what we want our national project to be, and we need a Democratic leader who is willing to make that case to the country as a whole.

MORE..and a good read with Specifics..........at......

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4661

[gabeana]

1. This is no big deal

We have more important issue like "crucifying" (thats right Crucifying) Obama over his pastor's words. We can't hold Hillary accountable for her own words because thats just being mean

[Petrushka]

2. Is there an echo in here or is it just my imagination? Deja vu? I mean: Barack's promises made

to WEST Virginians today, sound mighty similar to those made by Hillary YESterday . . . sorta like he followed her here only to say: "Yeah, y'know, I agree with what SHE said."





:hide:

[sudopod]

3. HOLY SHIT

THEY'RE BOTH DEMOCRATS!? WHO KNEW?!

[Peace Patriot]

4. Yeah, I caught that, too--in Obama's article in Foreign Policy magazine...

Cutting the spending in Iraq to EXPAND the military!

"Rebuilding our military capability by increasing the number of soldiers, marines, and special forces troops, and insist on adequate training and time off between deployments"...

We need to reduce our spending on Iraq so that we can increase the size of our military? Pardon me for asking, but what exactly is the purpose of increasing the size of our military if wars like Iraq don't make any sense? What does it accomplish except to inefficiently suck money out of the economy and guard against an impending Canadian invasion force?

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

We should be cutting the military budget by 90%, down to a true defensive posture--no more wars of choice! Never again! But Obama holds out the potential for many more wars--little wars here and there, until the war profiteers can build things back up to another major war--and, no doubt, the hijacking of our military for another corporate resource war.

I'm with you, too, on the tremendous drag on our economy of the UNPRODUCTIVE spending that war and big military budgets create. It all rides on the backs of the productive sector of the economy, which grows smaller and smaller, pushed over the edge with job outsourcing, so that the only employment our poor underclass can find is in the military!

I note the defensive comment above mine, by Gabeana, who cries that Obama is being crucified on the Rev. Wright issue--why are we wasting energy criticizing him?

Cuz you got to, Gabeana! You got to! The Left (the majority!) FAILED to dismantle this war machine after the horrors of Vietnam. My generation tried but it failed. We were too young, perhaps, to take it on. We were the first generation to rebel against war on a massive scale, and that seemed to exhaust us. Some of us saw the larger problem--the failure of the war machine to demobilize after WW II--but we just weren't savvy enough or organized enough to successfully challenge it.

And here we are again--with yet another liberal saying we have to have a big military machine...for what? So bastards like Bush and Cheney can come along and go kill a million-plus people for their oil?

Obama's analysis is insufficiently rigorous to address the REAL problem.

Doesn't mean he isn't the best of the lot. He surely seems to be. It just means that, if we somehow manage to elect him, many of his supporters may be in for serious disappointment, and it is wise to be ready for that. It has taken decades to destroy the U.S. of A. It didn't happen overnight. And it's going to take a lo-o-o-ong time to repair it. In my opinion, it has to start with throwing the "trade secret" code voting machines into 'Boston Harbor.' And it has to start with the PEOPLE. It takes more than a president to reform a country. It takes the whole country. That is one fantastic benefit of the Obama candidacy--he has re-ignited hope and activism among millions of people. The system is designed to demoralize and depress people--to disempower, to disenfranchise. His candidacy has countered all that demoralization.

And also--considering what-all he's up against, with the voting machines and our vicious political establishment and its corporate news media--we cannot expect Obama to do all the work himself, to advance positions that will literally kill any chance he has to overcome the secret code.

What we are having here is a NORMAL political discussion--discussing policy and its implications. It seems a luxury, I agree--given the fascist coup we have suffered, that ain't over yet. But it's still necessary, for many reasons. We must not accept our political leaders' compromises with the "military-industrial complex." We must insist on REAL reform. Not to drag Obama--or anyone else--down. But to re-create our DEMOCRACY, in which leaders are beholden to us--to we, the People. Otherwise we will end up right back where are now--with more unjust and heinous wars, and global corporate predators running things.

[KoKo]

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