Wednesday, March 30, 2011

US wants to rip assad a new one, but...

the obamatrons seem to be flailing to make themselves relevant in a world where washington chicanery and double-dealing is viewed with the disdain it deserves.
"WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration sharply criticized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for failing Wednesday to address any of the reforms demanded by anti-government protesters, saying his widely anticipated address to the Syrian parliament lacked substance and would not satisfy calls for change or ease unrest."
put aside for a moment the shameless US bombing oil-rich libya while unleashing just a tongue-lashing on the resource-poor syrians.

the real problem is that obamatron struggles to reach critical mass, and instead comes off as a hypocritical ass.

those who voted for him in 2008 looked for reforms and real, substantial change. no one could come closer to totally repudiating very values he stood for in the election than has our boy in the white house.

i've tried any number of times to fathom the mind of obamatron. some claim to have seen the incipient centrist during the campaign, and that may be true, but there's no question that the candidate of "change we can believe in" and "the audacity of hope" turned into a compliant corporate shill almost as soon as the ballots were counted -- as he stood firm for TARP and the wall street bailouts.

bashar assad is a product of his environment. he rules the way he does because this is the system that dropped into his lap -- holding onto the reins of power in syria probably demands just what we see as protesters challenge assad's 11-year rule.

obamatron, on the other hand, won a mandate and with it the expectation that he would repudiate the worst excesses of the bush years -- whether it be fake national-security abominations like the PATRIOT act or the collusion of the FED and the banks to blow a gigantic asset bubble in real estate.

either way, the obamatron not only rolled back dubya's excesses, he gave them a bipartisan legitimacy that was theretofore lacking. he didn't close gitmo, he didn't try to restore habeas corpus, he didn't fully investigate the crimes of the bush administration or put an end to the illegal and irrational wars of aggression in iraq and afghanistan -- and now libya. he's not even "bush-lite" -- on "national security" he's the real thing, bush II.

nor is he an improvement on the class war front. bush called the oligarchs "my base," while obamatron populates the economic posts in his administration with wall street hacks -- guys who'll pass through the revolving door, "regulating" the industries where they previously worked and then sashaying back to fat paychecks at goldman sachs and JP morgan.

instead of standing by the teachers and firefighters in wisconsin's public-sector unions, obamatron placed jeffrey immelt, chairman of GE, in a powerful position as an economic advisor, and cozied up to outfits like BP, which put profits above people in the deepwater horizon debacle. not content to wallow with pigs in the gulf, the commander-in-chief is pushing with renewed zest for the construction of additional nuclear power plants, even as fukushima smolders menacingly, and the japanese government frantically searches for a magical redemption.

obamatron may have come into office fired up and ready to get to work on behalf of the people who elected him, and was immediately told to have a seat, while the rules were explained to him. if so, his decisions to escalate rather than withdraw from afghanistan make more sense.

it makes more sense, however, to look at who funded his campaign -- which was mostly large wall street firms -- to see which way the wind blows. while it may wipe the stardust from the eyes of you bright-eyed idealists, this is the same reality that our buddy bashar assad deals with in syria.

you're at the pinnacle of power. what do you do?

the state department can lecture the syrians all it wants, because the lesson out of DC is that calls for change and reform can be ignored -- money and power are the only two things that really count out there. if you don't like it -- as we don't like how we were betrayed by obamatron -- it's tough biscuits, kid. nobody said elections are fair.




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