Obama is a competent, charismatic George W Bush

Barack Obama is a competent and charismatic George W Bush. His Cairo speech to US puppets and dictators in the Muslim world was full of sophistry and deceit. Stripped of its rhetoric it’s a business as usual speech.

Violence is a dead end said the man who is increasing US troop numbers in Afghanistan.

This is the same man on whose orders innocent women and children are being killed by drones in Pakistan; on whose orders innocents are being slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan; whose puppet army in Pakistan is killing thousands and who has supported the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Obama’s dictators in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the quislings in the Palestinian Authority use violence daily to prop up their rule over their people. Why not tell them to end their violence?

Could it be because these dictators serve the interests of US imperialism?

Perhaps Obama has forgotten US history. America is a country built by violent revolution against an imperial order - a revolution from below which the homegrown ruling elite quickly hijacked.

I support the violence of the oppressed against the violence of their oppressors.

The right of the Vietnamese to oppose the US invaders, the right of the ANC to form an armed wing, the right of Tamils to defend themselves against genocide, the right of Palestinians to fight against US imperialism and zionist genocide, the right of the Black Panthers to arm themselves against the attacks of the racist US state, the right of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto to take up arms against the Nazis, all are legitimate struggles and justifiable.

I stand with the oppressed against their oppressors.

One guide to Obama’s business as usual approach was that he did not specifically mention democracy in the Muslim world once. Not once.

Another guide to business as usual was Obama’s comment that the bond with apartheid Israel is “unbreakable”.

Israel is a racist state built on the genocide of the Palestinian people. Obama’s two-state solution, if he is serious about it, further recognises and rewards that genocide.

But the US ruling elite is not serious about a “solution” in the Middle East. The present chaos - the imprisonment of Palestine and the imposition of friendly Arab and Muslim dictators - is their preferred position.

It is in the interests of US imperialism to have the Middle East permanently destabilised through Israel. This enables it to control the whole region indirectly through the Zionist state and directly through its dictators.

In doing that it helps the US control imperialist rivals like China.

In essence Israel is the armed wing of US imperialism in the region and Obama will not change that.

As an aside, Obama has deliberately conflated criticism of Israel with holocaust denial.

The Zionist project - the establishment of an exclusive Jewish homeland on the bones of the Palestinian people - has appropriated the holocaust for its own genocidal purposes. That is not to deny the holocaust but to understand the malevolent use of history as justification by some for another form of genocide.

To me the solution appears to be a democratic and secular Palestine for all who want to live there. That can only come about in the long term through the Arab masses overthrowing their US supported dictators.

Many will believe Obama’s talk about a new beginning. Their hopes will crash upon the rocks of imperialism. Barack Obama is the Commander in Chief of Terror. His goal is the same as that of George W Bush - continued US dominance around the world. The only difference is his methods are more nuanced and subtle.

Changing drivers on the bulldozer doesn’t change the bulldozer.

His Cairo speech is a panegyric to imperialism by denying its existence. “America” he proclaims, “is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire”.

I agree. It is much more than a crude stereotype. It is the pre-eminent empire of capital.

Such an empire can only survive on the labour of its workforce. And therein lies our hope for the overthrow of the US Empire - the US working class.

Often the US Empire dominates countries economically and politically. In the end it will rely on military power - hence its bases around the world and its preparedness to unleash its forces as it sees fit anywhere in the globe.

It dominates weaker countries in a bloody chess game against potential imperialist rivals like China and the EU.

As Thomas Friedman (one of the most influential journalists in the US) wrote some years ago in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree:

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

Obama is not challenging the right of US capital to rule the world. He is its CEO.

What about the economy?

Obama is the representative of one wing of the US ruling class which sees government bailouts and restructuring of US and world capitalism as the way forwards. This faction wants a state-managed process of creative destruction.

The bailouts of financial institutions and the “nationalisations” of companies like GM are aimed at doing this. They are a structured deleveraging of employment. (That is code for sackings.)

Obama can and will do little to prevent unemployment. He is married to profit so sees solutions only in terms of the problem.

For example, a rational, democratic and planned economy would tool the GM plants up to produce buses for public transport and thus create jobs, not destroy them. A rational society would move to renewable energy immediately and abandon coal fired power plants to the dinosaur age before they send us there.

But we do not live in a rational world.

We live in a world where we are all forced to bow before the profit god and so suffer the wars and recessions that go, of necessity, with capitalism.

Obama’s aim is not to change the system but to better it; his goal is more exploitation not less.

In his speech Obama opened up to Iran. He admitted that in1953 the US overthrew the democratically elected Mossadeq Government. But this opening up is to bring Iran inside the tent. Obama is keen to retain US and Israeli dominance in the region.

Hence only the racially exclusive state of Israel is allowed to have nuclear weapons in the region. If Obama were serious about peace in the Middle East he’d stop propping up the Zionist regime with military and economic aid, and halt the flow of money to US dictators like Mubarak.

And if he were serious about recognising past mistakes and learning from them, he’d acknowledge the 195 invasions of other countries the US ruling elite have undertaken, and withdraw his troops from the 132 countries the US currently is in.

But Obama won’t do any of this because he is the chief cheerleader of US imperialism.

But Obama may have unleashed forces beyond his control. The Arab masses may believe him But when he fails to deliver anything that reflects their interests rather than the interests of US imperialism, the explosion may be all the more powerful.