In the Public Interest: Between Hope and Reality
In the Public Interest
Between Hope and Reality
by Ralph Nader
Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope
and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark
declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives
and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers
of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of
the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous,
unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall
Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm
attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President
achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why,
apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall
Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so
much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate
record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign
record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil
drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and
avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the
corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget,
for example) you have shown that you are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires
character, courage, integrity—not expediency, accommodation and
short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation
from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago
before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman
for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic
oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water
seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their
shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman
summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation
magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority
of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports
the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago
worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by
a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance
for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you
align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your
infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after
you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported
an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with
Hamas—the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored
the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by
the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis
favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC
hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians
advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was
describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution
of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45
minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference,
and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have
focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your
trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance
of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused
on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have
totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian
casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that
decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the
Arab League’s 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state
within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and
diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you
played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and
Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your
trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of
indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here.
This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a
President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama
did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless
settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life
unlivable for millions of Palestinians. …Even the Bush
administration recently criticized Israeli’s use of cluster
bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org
for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli’s assault on
Lebanon as an exercise of its `legitimate right to defend itself.’"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly
criticized the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in
Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee
camp… with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate—Uri Avnery—described Obama’s
appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for
obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to
sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US
has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace
that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses
from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim
world and mortgaged his future—if and when he is elected
president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain:
Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad
for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for
the world and bad for the Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the
way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this
country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at
their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues,
you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W.
Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to
express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major
religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June
24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by
Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these
Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the
armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days
earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by
Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of
these comments and reports change your political bigotry against
Muslim-Americans—even though your father was a Muslim from
Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage
or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering
to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy
Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This
is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime
time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and
Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli
superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace
was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important
address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical
international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the
stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film
about the Carter Center’s post-Katrina work. Shame on you,
Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas
of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate,
Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back
on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites,
African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the
"middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor"
in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an
unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly
unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated
actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate
supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few
to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black
man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and
abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control
of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of
foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of
American politics—opening it up to the public funding of
elections (through voluntary approaches)—and allowing smaller
candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the
fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a
competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated
cowardly stands. "Hope" some say "springs eternal." But not when
"reality" consumes it daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
