As the first year of the Obama presidency comes to a close, it’s worth noting an article that appeared in the progressive news website, AlterNet, on Dec. 24, by Clancy Sigal, that sums up the mood of progressives:

“My personal breaking point, after months of jaw-dropping astonishment at Obama’s betrayals, was his refusal almost alone of the world’s leaders, to ban child-killing landmines and cluster bombs.”

The piece, titled “I Volunteered For Obama in 2008, But His Support of Landmines Is the Last Straw,” which originally appeared in the Comment Is Free blog, summed up the frustration that many liberal-leftists feel towards their messiah.

The article should’ve been titled “I Am A Huge Sucker,” because Obama is an opportunist, ambitious, careerist politician — what else explains his meteoric rise? While it’s true that the policies of the current administration are criminal, they didn’t come out of the blue. What was truly “jaw-dropping” was the extent people who should have known better were willing to blind themselves to the reality of electoral politics and the system.

For example, if his supporters had been paying attention to his background — and not his rhetoric — they would’ve noticed his pro-Israel orientation.

In Jan. 2006, then-Sen. Obama met with then-Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom right after Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke and said, “our hearts go out to the family of Prime Minister Sharon and we are praying for a recovery on his part.” In 2007 at the America Israel Public Affairs Committee gathering, he said, “we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs.”

From this logically follows the statement Vice President Joe Biden made this statement last June during an interview on ABC-TV when asked about the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities:

“Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.”

Sounds like a green light, doesn’t it? The State Dept. denied it was a green light … by reiterating Biden’s green light:

“We are certainly not going to give a green light to any kind of military strike, but Israel is a sovereign country and we’re not going to dictate its actions,” State Dept. spokesperson Ian Kelly told the Associated Press.

In other words:

Can the Obama administration prevent Israel from attacking Iran?

“Yes they can!”

Will they?

“No they won’t!”

Presumably, Sigal didn’t bother looking at Obama’s corporate backers during the time she volunteered for his campaign. If she did, she might not have volunteered for him in the first place.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics website, www.opensecrets.org, among the top contributors to his campaign was General Electric, known for its extensive defense portfolio.

From 2000 to 2003, GE tripled its revenue in defense revenue, from $1.1 billion to $3.1 billion, while in 2007 it bought aircraft control and diagnostic systems manufacturer Smiths Aerospace PLC for $4.8 billion. GE contributed $479,454 to the Obama campaign.

Latham and Watkins, a major corporate law firm “representing traditional defense contractors,” among others, according to its website, gave $467,311. Another law firm that counts defense contractors among its clients, WilmerHale, gave $524,292.

With this background, is it any wonder he escalated the Afghan occupation after increasing the number of CIA drone attacks over the previous administration?

So far, 1013 civilian deaths in the first six months of this year, “an increase of 24% of civilian casualties in the first six months of 2009 as compared to the same period in 2008,” according to a UN report. This was a period before the surge he announced in early Dec., where he said that, “we are going to dismantle and degrade their capabilities and ultimately dismantle and destroy” Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Dismantling both groups has resulted in incidents like the one where eight children were killed in a nighttime raid in Kunar province earlier this month, according to the AP. It also meant backing the corrupt Bush client government of Hamid Karzai in what was seen as a stolen election.

Former Deputy Special Representative to the U.N., Peter Galbraith, revealed this in an Oct. 4 Washington Post op-ed. Gailbraith was ordered by his boss, Kai Eide, to not reveal evidence or report electoral fraud to the authorities.

“Before firing me last week from my post as his deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed one last instruction: Do not talk to the press,” he wrote. The Obama administration accepted this fraud and has recognized Karzai as president, despite his brother’s suspected involvement in heroin trafficking.

All this — and more — has led so-called progressives to cease their unconditional support for “change we can believe in.” From those of us who knew beforehand that the Obama campaign was a lie — like all electoral campaigns — I can only say to people like Sigal “we told you so.” Voting is no substitute for what was always the solution to these and other problems; people power.
And people power is the only solution to the Obama regime’s crimes.