Can Obama reshape U.S. foreign policy? (Tehran Times via The Guardian!)

The presidential hopeful opposed the Iraq war and spoke sense about Iran, but expect business as usual on the Middle East

Now that Barack Obama is almost certain to be the Democratic party’s nominee, in spite of Tuesday night’s expected Clinton victory in West Virginia, those who want to believe he may change America’s foreign policy should turn to his pre-campaign biography. I don’t mean the recent and obviously self-serving Audacity of Hope, but Dreams From My Father, which he wrote in his early 30s.

In four tight pages, before the main section about the dilemmas of being a person of mixed race in America, Obama recounts his 1960s childhood in Jakarta with an Indonesian stepfather and a white mother. Working in the U.S. embassy, she found herself alongside “caricatures of the ugly American, prone to making jokes about Indonesians until they found out she was married to one”.

Obama recalls how she picked up “things she couldn’t learn in the published news reports”: the role the CIA had just played in toppling the popular nationalist leader, Sukarno; the fact that half a million alleged communist sympathizers were murdered; the way the massacres were suppressed both by the regime and terrified survivors. Obama was only six, but his mother later told him of her shock that “history could be swallowed up so completely, the same way the rich and loamy earth could soak up the rivers of blood that had once coursed through the streets”.

It’s a beautiful book. One wonders whether any would-be U.S. president has been so good a writer. More importantly, has any other candidate grown up with such a direct encounter with a country under massive political repression or seen the cynical face of the U.S. empire? The Republican nominee John McCain accuses Obama of not having national security “experience”, but what experiences do he or Hillary Clinton have which compare with Obama’s? They were raised in the usual American cocoon of believing that the values behind the country’s anti-colonial beginnings still guide its international behavior. Obama, by contrast, knows the U.S. has run a global empire for at least the past half a century. His mother taught him, he writes, “to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad”.

This awareness of how many people around the world see the U.S. is the bedrock on which Obama’s approach to foreign policy is built. It is the opposite of the naive self-image of the U.S. as a beacon on the hill. It explains his principled opposition to the Iraq war from its inception. It underpins his criticism of Clinton’s threat to “obliterate” Iran if it considered attacking Israel. As he put it: “We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber-rattling and tough talk, and in the meantime have made a series of strategic decisions that have actually strengthened Iran ... It is important that we use language that sends a signal to the world community that we’re shifting from the sort of cowboy diplomacy, or lack of diplomacy, that we’ve seen out of George Bush ... This kind of language is not helpful,” he concluded coolly.

This does not mean Obama is a friend of Iran. … But, unlike Clinton, he criticizes Washington’s refusal to have direct talks with Iran, as well as Cuba.

Over Israel, sadly, Obama has chosen to make large-scale compromises. He saw how Hillary Clinton, in an earlier vintage, was bullied by the pro-Israel lobby after embracing PLO chairman Yasser Arafat’s wife. Since first bidding for a Senate seat from New York, she has become ultra-conservative on the issue. Obama, too, has felt the pressure. After remarking in Iowa last year that “nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people”, he was accused by a member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of not supporting Israel. Obama now uses an ingeniously expanded sentence: “Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel.”

McCain may sneer that Hamas would cheer an Obama victory, but Obama’s line is hardly distinguishable from the present administration’s. The speech he made on race relations after the Jeremiah Wright issue erupted was widely regarded as a brilliant analysis of the psychology of black churches. But it included an alarming phrase that described the Middle East’s longest conflict not in terms of land and forced displacement but as one in which Israel is an innocent victim of outside forces. Obama denounced the Rev Wright for having a “view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies …”.

This year David Harris, director of the American Jewish Committee, was quoted in the New York Times as wondering: “Does Obama feel Israel in his kishkas?” (the Yiddish word for gut). This sets the bar especially high, or low. Scrutiny now has to focus on candidates’ entrails as well as their minds. But Obama has been working hard to oblige. In the current crisis over Gaza, Obama echoes the Israeli government’s line. Before Clinton or McCain, he came out against a proposed UN security council statement that would have expressed concern over the Israeli blockade. He describes Israel’s siege as “forced” by the Palestinian rocket attacks.

Although he repeatedly outlines a general principle that the U.S. should talk to every important player without preconditions, he does not apply this in the Middle East. In 2006, Obama blamed Hezbollah for the war with Israel and did not join the appeals for Israel to accept a ceasefire. Last month he criticized Jimmy Carter for talking to Hamas. “We must not negotiate with a … group intent on Israel’s destruction,” he said.

Past presidents have greater freedom than future presidents, apparently. So the big questions remain: does Obama really want to change U.S. foreign policy and can he, if he does? Having a black person in the Oval Office, and especially one with an understanding of U.S. imperialism, would have a colossal international impact in itself. But would this merely result in even greater disappointment once the months go by and U.S. policy stays the same? In my kishkas I feel Obama is our best hope. In my mind I prepare for business as usual.

Per Wikipedia:

“On the night of September 30, 1965, six of Indonesia’s top anti-communist generals were kidnapped, killed and thrown down a well at Lubang Buaya (literally translated : Crocodile Dungeons) Area, East Jakarta. One survivor, the staunchly anti-communist General Abdul Haris Nasution, escaped the murder plot, but lost his youngest daughter, Ade Irma Suryani Nasution, and his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Pierre Tendean. The events and supposed coup plotters of that night are referred to as “G30S/PKI,” an abbreviation of “Gerakan 30 September,” or “the September 30th Movement.”

“Major General Suharto, commander of the Army’s strategic reserves cracked down on the Communist Party. The army encouraged anti-communist organizations and individuals to join in killing anyone suspected of being a communist sympathizer. The killings were concentrated in Sumatra, East Java and Bali and were largely over by early 1966. Estimates of those killed in the purge range from 78,000 to over 1 million, with most estimates agreeing that at least half a million were killed.[11] The ethnic Chinese were also targeted, primarily for economic and racial reasons. The embassy of the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] was overrun by demonstrators and looted.”

“An official CIA report called the purge “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century.”2 American diplomats 25 years later revealed that they had compiled lists of Indonesian “communist operatives” and had turned over as many as 5,000 names to the Indonesian military.[12]”

“Sukarno’s grip on power was weakened by the crisis, while Suharto used the situation to strengthen his own hand. On March 11, 1966, Suharto and his supporters in the military forced Sukarno to issue a Presidential Order called Supersemar (Surat Perintah Sebelas Maret — The March 11 Order), in which Sukarno gave orders to Suharto only to restore peace and order, not to transfer of power to him. After obtaining the Presidential Order, Suharto had the PKI declared illegal and the party was abolished. He also arrested many high ranking officials that were loyal to Sukarno on the charge of being PKI members and/or sympathizers, further reducing Sukarno’s political power and influence.”

“In 1991 a government minister admitted that the national archives only possessed a copy of this letter, and in 1992 another government minister called for whoever is in possession of the original document to submit it to the national archives. However, there is testimony from several eyewitnesses who claim that such a document did exist and that the copy in the archives is a faithful reproduction of the original.”

“Sukarno was stripped of his presidential title by Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (Provisional Peoples Representative Assembly) on March 12, 1967, led by his former ally, Nasution, and remained under house arrest until his death at age 69 in Jakarta in 1970. He was buried in Blitar, East Java, Indonesia. In recent decades, his grave has been a significant venue in the network of places that Javanese visit on ziarah and for some is of equal significance to those of the Wali Songo.”

“While the semi-official version of the events of 1965-1966 claims that the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) ordered the murders of the six generals, others blame Sukarno, and still others believe Suharto orchestrated the assassinations to remove potential rivals for the presidency.[13]”

Note: Sukarno was diagnosed with kidney disease on Aug.9, 1965.

Neither Sukarno nor Suharto were nice people. I really don’t see how the U.S. and the CIA can be blamed for all this carnage. Sounds like ancient grudges IMHO

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