Article by Luis Carapinha, member of the International Department
Barack Obama’s one year in the White House, was marked under the discredit and crisis fate. Never the distance between speech and facts, expectations and reality, has been so huge. With more celerity than the climbing of the Obama phenomena, is the fall of the Obama myth and the illusions therefore created, on which the PCP brightly warned, since the beginning.
Richard Holbrooke, one of the main figures, in the past, associated with the dismantlement of Yugoslavia and currently the USA envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, had defined the future North-American administration as the most difficult since World War II, even before the elections which gave Obama the victory. The maintenance of a world hegemony, which runs against time, required the Bush’s era failure fast overcoming and the repair of its damages. As a representative of the USA´s leader class, Obama did not handover his credits to others. The change vote of many North-American millions – even lacking a greater political depth– and which elected him was defrauded, but not touching the interests which dictate the North-American imperialism strategic agenda. During these 12 months, its clear that Washington is not in the look for reformists. On the other and on this side of the Atlantic, Capital persists and is above all, in a great hurry.
Confronting the greatest economic and systemic crisis since the Great Depression, Obama’s Administration incarnated, as few, the institutional weight of the current unique bicephalous partisanship, in the country. With its axis turning in such a manner to "the right", that the enormous republican electoral defeat menaces, after all, to convert itself into a bed of roses for the USA´s political most reactionary sectors.
The palliative measures to hinder the notable fall on Obama’s popularity, do not conceal the bet unto the prosecution of the Wall Street millionaire public ransom or the new absolute record of the 2010 military budget. The intensifying of the capitalist exploitation within the USA is a reality with Obama, and even the emblematic "health care reform", although mutilated and marrieageable with the great private interests, might fail , being symptomatic the Republican victory within the Democrat Massachusetts feud running for a chair in the Senate, empty since Edward Kennedy’s death.
However, it is within the foreign policy level that the "Obama phenomena" vanity. reveals itself in all its prime. Bush’s policy and the neocons had no conditions to carry on, but is, in its essence, being reintroduced and reinforced by the current Administration, which demonstrates on this issue, an "inviable"rage. Whatever the captured world front or region, examples are plentiful. The Nobel Prize Obama announced the reinforcement of the Afghanistan war, carried out together with NATO. State terrorism machine spreads its action throughout Pakistan – where, foreseeing future wars, non-crew planes, daily kill – from Yemen unto the Horn of Africa. Uncertainty remains within the Middle East, with the Iraq occupation, the escalade against Iran and the Palestinian drama silence. The Honduras coup, the Haiti infamous military occupation and the Colombian bases, are signals of the ambitious counter-offensive, in order to reintroduce the initiative within Latin America and destroy the Venezuela, Cuba and ALBA examples. Pressure measures urge over Russia, side-by-side with diplomatic activity, with the purpose of forcing "compromises" from Moscow. And the announcement of a new armament transaction to Taiwan and the support to the Dalai Lama , point out the Washington agenda’s real intentions towards China, a revealing fact of our times character and threats.
God bless the United States. The Capital epigones pray for Heaven’s blessings. They are aware, with all its dangers, the militarist delirium cannot revert the USA´s decline. Obama, an icon that fades away, performs the imperialist power matrix. What’s left over: the persuasive oratory rhetoric and the distinguished teleprompter ability.
