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The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad Hardcover – October 17, 2010
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—Barack Obama, West Point, December 1, 2009
What has really changed since Bush left the White House? Very little, argues Tariq Ali, apart from the mood music. The hopes aroused during Obama’s election campaign have rapidly receded—the honeymoon has been short. Following the financial crisis, the “reform” president bailed out Wall Street without getting anything in return. With Democratic Party leaders and representatives mired in the corrupt lobbying system, the plans for reforming the healthcare system lie wrecked on the Senate floor. Abroad, the “war on terror” continues: torture on a daily basis in the horror chamber that is Bagram, Iraq occupied indefinitely, Israel permanently appeased, and more troops to Afghanistan and more drone attacks in Pakistan than under Bush. The fact that Obama has proved incapable of shifting the political terrain even a few inches in a reformist direction will pave the way for a Republican surge and triumph in the not too distant future.
- Print length168 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVerso
- Publication dateOctober 17, 2010
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.71 x 7.8 inches
- ISBN-101844674495
- ISBN-13978-1844674497
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“The Obama Syndrome documents the collapse of the Myth into a thousand pieces”—Vijay Prashad, Sri Lanka Guardian
“A comprehensive account.”—Andrew Levine, Huffington Post
“Ali ... remains an outlier and intellectual bomb-thrower in his adopted London; an urbane, Oxford-educated polemicist.”—Stryker McGuire, Observer
“Ali is smart as fire.”—Ian Epstein, New City
“Ali doesn’t put all blame on Obama and offers a prescription for the terrible problems confronting us: ‘The lack of popular social movements in the United States enabled the elite to impose its own solutions, and these were, unsurprisingly, designed to boost the existing arrangements ... The lesson is an old one: without action from below, there will be no change above.’”—Z Magazine
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- Publisher : Verso; American First edition (October 17, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 168 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1844674495
- ISBN-13 : 978-1844674497
- Item Weight : 11.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.71 x 7.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,545,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10,576 in U.S. Political Science
- #22,921 in International & World Politics (Books)
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Ali writes that Obama favors a thoroughly discredited market-oriented approach to every important issue, and the nurturing of the military muscle to enforce its every edict. Bailouts for the casinos on Wall Street? No problem. Help for homeowners in jeopardy? Not so much. Increased military spending? Obama makes Bush look like a welterweight. Escalate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Obama calls leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq complemented by a large contingent of mercenaries, and the building of the largest US embassy in the world in Baghdad, withdrawal. He ups the ante in Afghanistan - although Ali says we shouldn't be surprised because he promised to do so in his campaign - increased the drone attacks across the Afghanistan border with Pakistan, which have killed countless innocent civilians and destabilized the regime, and spread the so-called terror-war to Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia. After winning the election he stood by mute as Israel mercilessly attacked hospitals, schools, mosques, homes, orphanages, UN facilities, and used white phosphorous munitions on the civilian population of Gaza.
Repeatedly Ali describes the pusillanimity of the Obama style of governance. For example: "Unable and unwilling to deliver any serious reforms, Obama has become the master of the sympathetic gesture, the understanding smile, the pained but friendly expression that always appear(s) to say, 'Really, I agree and wish we could, but we can't. We really can't and it's not my fault.' The implication is always that the Washington system prevents any change that he could believe in. But the ring of truth is absent."
Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have promoted charter over public schools, in the process vilifying teachers and their unions, and militarized schools in Chicago and elsewhere. Ali notes this is a process designed to obviate the need for a draft and makes for a surplus contingent of war recruits of the underclass, available for service to empire.
Only six months before the oil disaster in the gulf, Obama, and his industry-friendly Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar had colluded with the oil giants to allow for just the type of oil drilling that resulted in the catastrophe. Again and again Ali shows that Obama works, like his predecessors, for the ruling elite, and in the class warfare that is raging, as an agent of the plutocrats. Ali doesn't mention a single bright spot on Obama's resume as president.
At one point Ali calls it only half ironic that a leading columnist for the Financial Times lists the most important events of 2009 as speeches by Obama. In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech Ali cites Obama in flagrante delicto alluding to the "limits of reason." As if our society has approached anything resembling reason, let alone scaling its limits. In the instance Obama elucidates that his "limits of reason" threaten even more aggravated use of US weaponry - rather than, as understanding teaches, the beginning of philosophy.
Perhaps the worst of all is Obama's economic team. Ali writes that as President Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin helmed the deregulation of Wall Street that culminated in 1999 in the repeal of the depression-era Glass Steagall Act. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act dissolved the barrier between commercial and investment banks and insurance companies , which was largely responsible for the economic collapse of 2008. Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Neal Wolin and others, instrumental in drafting the legislation and proteges of Rubin, were all appointed to top posts in the Obama regime. Rubin left Treasury to pocket a cool $120 million at Citigroup, and Wolin to the Hartford Insurance Company. Both corporations benefited from this revolving-door economic policy, and were subsequently bailed out by US taxpayers.
Speaking of Obama's mandate in January of 2009, and the citizenry's disgust with the eights years of the Bush regime, Ali writes that, "If ever there was a moment for a set of measures [to be] enacted [to regulate the so-called free market] this was surely it, but US politics had for many decades been based on the needs of corporate capitalism, with the government as a supportive, rather than a controlling, force. The economy was wedded to militarism and financialization." Obama has changed this paradigm not a whit, shows Ali.
Ali is fair enough, however, that he doesn't put all blame on Obama, and in the process, offers a prescription for the terrible problems confronting us: "The lack of popular social movements in the United States enabled the elite to impose its own solutions, and these were, unsurprisingly, designed to boost the existing arrangements...The lesson is an old one: without action from below, there will be no change above."
The right wing has been doing all it can, legally and otherwise to disenfranchise minority voters which certainly would include Afro Americans. With Obama they knew they would automatically get the black vote and many Hispanic votes as well. Even today well over 90% of Afro Americans still support Obama. The right wing knew that Hillery would not only be the most difficult candidate to beat but also to control once she was in the Oval office. Obama is a shill for the right and has been all along. Once again the right wing has duped the drudge American into voting against his own interests. Once Americans were respected and admired throughout the world, now they are ridiculed for their ignorance and apathy. The Great Democratic Experiment was instigated by men of a caliper that is seldom seen these days. 21st century Americans are mindless consuming machines having fallen for the hype that one can purchase happiness. Instead they have sold their souls and their children's future to Robber Baron's for a pittance.
Triq Ali has given us ample evidence of the time worn adage that describes American politics as being akin the two bottles, both the same and both empty. It is as true now as when I first heard it.
The Obama Syndrome informs us that America is broken, a democratic system that has exhausted its historical function; only distant echoes remain. Over time US capitalism has turned everything into a commodity, including the country's politicians, with this difference: the human commodities knew who owned them, and they behaved accordingly. Under Obama nothing has changed, he said "yes we can " and has shown he couldn't.
Tariq Ali tells of opportunities lost when Obama chose to give giant handouts to the banks and the auto corporations, when they should have been allowed from fall, American and the world lost an excellent opportunity to start a new railway system.
If, as seems likely, Yemen is America's next target, I await the TV footage of American bombers destroying another World Heritage site. How long will the mud-brick Shibam city with its 100 feet high last against skyscrapers last against cruse missiles? America is a country that believes International law is not applicable to the United States, so I don't expect to wait long. Informative and a good read.
Top reviews from other countries
truly all this obsesion with conspiracy theories and hidden state secrets is fun, but it does not make any sense for serious academic writing or reaserch. did not enjoy this as much as i thought i would.
american media behaviour all and all very eye openning
This is Tariq Ali's first book I have read and I'll read more of his books. He has deep knowledge of what he is talking about and its evidence based, not shooting in the air!
The case presented is persuasive: from his origins as a flunky for the Democratic party machine in Illinois and Chicago (the home of the Daley dynasty with it's stranglehold on the state Democratic party) to his time as a member of the U.S. senate it has been clear that the main evidence for his progressive politics was in the rhetoric of his speeches and writing rather than his actual political record.
For Ali his record as president is lamentable. Health Care reform was retarded by the vested interests of the private insurance sector; the program that was eventually enacted is skewed towards their financial interests rather than towards those who struggle to access health care. Experts predict that this will render the limited benefits gained grotesquely expensive before this decade is out. The policy of charter schools, a variant of which the Conservative party and their Liberal lackeys are touting under the name of "Free Schools", is likewise manna from heaven for the private education sector. On the economy, Obama has preferred to re-engage those who were up to their necks in the formation of the problem in the first place such as Lawrence Summers in preference to even considering those such as Joseph Stiglitz ( Freefall ) who have a record of being prescient on the failings of the last decades, and have constructive ideas with regard to getting the economy moving again, for the majority and not the few.
Abroad it is business as usual, nothing has changed. Iraq runs on as before, and as the war in Afghanistan extends into its tenth year (and into Pakistan) there is little sign of an improving situation, indeed the opposite as it becomes increasingly bloody for all those involved. The fact that the Israel Lobby demonises Obama tells us more about what they have been used to with the Bush II and Clinton administration, it is not an indication of a new even handed approach.
With the recent mid-term elections it must now be clear even to the most delusional of Obama supporters that the window of opportunity for progressive reform is firmly shut. The Republican Party, mouthing its usual platitudes about "small government", augmented with a heavy smattering of the deranged, delusional and dangerous tea-partyists, has its hands on the purse strings. The United States is in for a rough ride, and the collateral damage will likely extend well beyond its borders.
Stylistically "The Obama Syndrome", with the exception of the opening chapter on the Black experience of U.S. politics, is not up with Ali's best though this is to measure it against a very high standard. There are odd occasions when the prose stutters in a very un-Ali way, and the size of the subject, namely the current state of politics in the U.S., demands a far greater and more in-depth book. One suspects that it was slated to be published in time for the mid-term elections for maximum relevance, and the effort to meet this deadline explains the books shortcomings, though it should be said that Ali can still be brilliantly and brutally funny. As a bonus the appendices include an article by an American doctor on working in a County level Emergency Department which will horrify the British reader, and an article of Ali's on Yemen (originally published in The London Review of Books) that was written in response to talk within the Obama administration and the media about escalating the American intervention there. This is an interesting rather than an exceptional book that is still more than worth a look.



