Is there a Doctor in the room?
What can he do?
Is the world expecting too much from Obama?Richard Silverstein from Tikun Olam (Obama to Invite Abbas, Mubarak and Netanyahu for Separate Talks) believes that things will play out differently this time around.
The world, including us, may think Obama is more liberal than he is. After all, rightwing nutcases have been screaming he hangs out with terrorists (who apparently NEVER are liberal, nevertheless...), he's communist, he's socialist, and on and on...anything to re-instill the ol' Bush/Cheney fear. But progressives never thought he was liberal. The liberal candidates either got shot down or shot themselves.
ReplyDeleteTo let the world have a more sharply etched look, he needs to drop the conciliatory stance in US politics. It isn't working...and clearly isn't going to. The trouble with his cabinet is the Repubs he's carried over...although the strategy may be good. And as Frank Rich said Sunday, he should get out of the way of those of us who DO want to look back over the past 8, 20, 30 years~~~
"Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality....
"President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/opinion/26rich.html?_r=1