Neocons love Obama

Obama's foreign policy speech

by Jerome a Paris
jeromeguillet@yahoo.fr

Tue May 1st, 2007 at 08:42:00 AM EDT

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Barack Obama's speech on foreign policy is attracting strange supporters:

Robert Kagan: Obama the Interventionist

Andrew Sullivan: The Re-Branding of America

The Washington Post Editorial Board: Mr. Obama's Worldview - An encouraging start to talking policy

And they are quite clear as to why they love what they heard:

America must "lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good." With those words, Barack Obama put an end to the idea that the alleged overexuberant idealism and America-centric hubris of the past six years is about to give way to a new realism, a more limited and modest view of American interests, capabilities and responsibilities.

(...)

Obama talks about "rogue nations," "hostile dictators," "muscular alliances" and maintaining "a strong nuclear deterrent." He talks about how we need to "seize" the "American moment." We must "begin the world anew." This is realism? This is a left-liberal foreign policy?

Kagan is literally gleeful. More military, more interventionism, more "values", more preemptive attacks. Sullivan is not far behind:

Obama's speech (...) is emphatically not against the use of military force when necessary; it is emphatically pro-military in its call for many more troops. On the critical issue of Iraq, Obama has taken a stand - a clear one for withdrawal, with the possibility of a strike-force over the horizon. This is a very difficult call, and the timing and execution of withdrawal will be dispositive. But one core strength of Obama's candidacy is that he got this war right when many of us got it wrong. He deserves more of a listening than many of us do.

Ditto with the Washington Post:

As an opening statement of Mr. Obama's philosophy, there is much that we found significant -- and encouraging -- in the Chicago speech. Acknowledging that "many Americans may find it tempting to turn inward" after the failures in Iraq and elsewhere, the senator quoted Franklin Roosevelt in saying the United States nevertheless must continue to "lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good." Mr. Obama called for a sizable increase in the size of the Army and for the reinforcement of NATO forces in Afghanistan. He said that "no president should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary -- to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened."

To be fair, the WaPo does see him as a bit weak, or at least uncommitted, on the War on Terror:

Still, Mr. Obama ought to explain more directly how he views jihadism. Is it an ideological challenge comparable to communism and fascism, as Mr. Bush contends, or merely an esoteric dogma held by bands of criminals, like the anarchism of the early 20th century? Is terrorism the central threat of the early 21st century, or, as some Democratic strategists argue, merely one of a panoply of challenges that include global warming, pandemics and the rise of China?

And when you read the speech, it's hard not to note the multiple references to the military, how it must be supported, increased in size, and used, preemptively if necessary (as quoted above). Even his bits about diplomacy focus on military alliances (NATO is lenghthily mentioned, but not the EU), and his examples of how the US should conduct "hearts and minds" operations in various countries are, again, run by the military.

The WaPo's note that he does not explicit his position on the "war on terra" is strange, considering that most of the places mentioned in his speech are in the Muslim world, and most of the threats seem to come from there. The only non-Muslim threat he also focuses on is loose Russian storage of nuclear material, but that's also part of the 'war on terra' - indeed, it is its signature threat, the one that has been used to justify most of the excesses of the past few years, and the attacks at home on civil rights - let us protect you from the mushroom cloud.

Basically, his proposal is to accept the goals of the George Bush administration, use the same tools, but run the policy competently and less boneheadedly. To his credit, he is not proposing that for Iraq itself, which he explicitly states the US must leave (well, except for a "few troops"), but in the wider picture, it's still about bringing democracy to others, and in particular to the Muslim world, and about having the biggest, most ass-kicking military force in the world.

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Now, in the interest of fairness, I'll add this second quote from Andrew Sullivan:

The simple existence of Obama as a new president in a new century would in itself enhance America's soft power immeasurably, just as a clear decision to leave Iraq would provide much greater leverage for diplomacy and military force in a whole variety of new ways. Obama would mean the rebranding of America, after a disastrous eight years. His international heritage, his racial journey, his middle name: these are assets for this country, not liabilities.

This is the hope that with a decent, competent president, things will go back to normal, the idea of the USA will shine brightly again, and it will be able once again to fulfill its international policy objectives by leading instead of by bullying.

Barck Obama says it thus:

But if the next President can restore the American people’s trust – if they know that he or she is acting with their best interests at heart, with prudence and wisdom and some measure of humility – then I believe the American people will be ready to see America lead again.

They will be ready to show the world that we are not a country that ships prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries. That we are not a country that runs prisons which lock people away without ever telling them why they are there or what they are charged with. That we are not a country which preaches compassion and justice to others while we allow bodies to float down the streets of a major American city.

That is not who we are.

The problem is that yes, this is precisely who America is today in the eyes of most of the world - whether the genuinely aghast or the hypocritically gleeful to have a kettle to hide their pot.

Finally stopping the most atrocious behaviour will not eliminate the fact that it took place, that it took place for a long time, and that it was supported by a surprisingly high proportion of the population - and an higher, and even more terrifying, proportion of the punditry, which should have known better than fall for the nasty propaganda and fearmongering of the Bush administration. These were policies of a big chunk of the elite in Washington, as kossacks all know (and despair about).

But I am also struck about Obama's description of the world as a source only of threats for America - most related to terrorism one way or another, with a nod to global warming. Opportunity is only what America can bring to the world, not the other way around. In a word, just like with the current administration, the world has only headaches to bring to the USA. Thus the need for a big army to wage two wars at the same time. Thus the need to be everywhere to engage would-be terrorists before they actually turn into ones. Thus the need to lead alliances. The methods will be different: the relevant countries will need to be convinced rather than coerced, but the only goal is still to get them aligned behind US objectives.

And yet America will not be in a position to lead until it has atoned. You don't eliminate such a stain, such a loud precedent (which many others will be all too happy to use as an excuse for their own abuses for a long time) just by not doing it anymore. The credibility to talk about values, about democracy, about cooperation, about peace - just isn't there. And talking about a stronger military, more interventionism in other countries (even of the humanitarian or modest kind), and bringing the American model back to the world is not going to work, because it is yet more meddling.

Oh, sure, the weak and weasely leaders of Europe will be all too happy to be seduced rather than bludgeoned into submission, and the 'international community' will be all too happy to pretend that adults are in charge again, and that we can all go back to normal. Cooperation between secret services. Joint military/humanitarian missions (like the failing Afghanistan occupation, maybe?). More police coordination - with more uncontrolled data swapping between governments? After all, there are still evil terrrists out there. We cannot let the guard down too much. But at least we are all defenders of human rights and democracy again, for real this time.

Nah. As the quote from Obama's speech above suggests, this is a discourse for Americans, not for the rest of the world. They don't get to elect their overlords.

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Maybe it is too much to expect anything different, and, without the Bush/Iraq precedent, the speech would be mostly uncontroversial. After all, anything less intervention-prone would be shot down as "weak", "defeatist", etc... the whole gamut of Republican smears. The fact is that political discourse is still dominated by the need to appear 'strong' and to support the military without any restriction, and by the conviction that it is America's absolutely legitimate right to intervene in any other country's affairs because it is a model for the world and if only everybody else were in its image, all would be well.

Peddling to these deep strands in America's psyche may be smart politics, but it is not going to change policy - and current policy is creating more threats by the minute, via the preference for 'might is right' logic, the refusal to contemplate any leadership by example where it matters (energy consumption and carbon emissions - Obama only talks about demanding "equal efforts" from the USA and much poorer China or India), and the bizarre need to turn a small band of nasty gangsters with grievances into an apocalyptic threat.

So yeah, I understand why the neocons love Obama. He's not really challenging the reckless policy logic they have successfully instilled in your govenrment. Getting out of Iraq is not a proof of sanity, it's just an absence of proof that you are insane or deluded or both. That this is seen as progress only goes to show how low the standards have be brought down by this administration.

Be sure to see the comments section!

Foreign policy challenge: see world as it really is

Published: 04.30.2007
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

ROBERT ROBB

The neoconservative hubris that the United States can and should reshape the world has been a casualty of the Iraq war, both substantively and politically.

The practical limitations on the ability of the United States to direct the destiny of other peoples and cultures, and the cost of such ambitions, have been exposed.

Nevertheless, the three leading Republican candidates for president in 2008 - Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney - cling to some version of the neoconservative vision.

This gives Democrats the chance to forge a new direction and consensus on foreign policy. However, if Barack Obama's speech last week to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs is illustrative, and it probably is, they aren't really up to the task.

The foreign policy challenge for the United States is figuring out how to operate in a world less and less interested in U.S. leadership.

Europe already has an economy roughly as large as that of the United States. The major Asian-Pacific economies (Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and Taiwan) are now about three-quarters as large. So, while obviously still a very important market, the United States is no longer a dominant economic force.

The United States does still have the only military with truly global reach. However, this yields considerably less influence than it used to, particularly after Iraq.

For the most part, other global powers see the U.S. military as a force not so much to be feared, as to be harnessed for sanctioned international missions or in response to international calamities, such as tsunamis and earthquakes.

In his speech, Obama acknowledged that the willingness to accept U.S. leadership has waned. However, he seems to think that it is just because George Bush is such a boor.

With nice and skillful American diplomacy, he maintains, the United Nations can be effective, the countries of Europe will spend more on defense, and NATO can assume more of the military burden.

There's no objective basis for this belief. The U.N. is structurally dysfunctional and its members like it that way. No amount of skilled diplomacy by the U.S. is going to overcome the lack of domestic support for increased military spending in Europe.

And Afghanistan has demonstrated that, while NATO may be useful for peace-keeping missions, it is ineffective as a fighting force.

The harsh reality is that if there are tough things that have to be done in the world, the United States is not going to have much company or support in taking them on.

Bush believes that, to protect the country against terrorism, the United States has to be an active agent of democratic change around the world.

Obama seems to believe that, to protect the country against terrorism, the United States has to be an active agent helping to provide clean water, food, medicine, shelter and education around the world. He would increase foreign and developmental aid to $50 billion a year and establish a $2 billion "Global Education Fund."

The track record on foreign aid is abysmal. Countries with sound governance don't need it. It doesn't do any good in countries without sound governance. Nor is there any indication that it can lead to sound governance, a conceit Obama shares with Bush.

Obama says he supports a strong military, but apparently wants to turn it into a sort of international WPA. He quotes with great approbation a Djibouti U.S. base commander who said that "our mission is at least 95 percent civil affairs."

According to Obama, the United States "must lead the world, by deed and example."
The essence of Obama's foreign policy perspective, then, is this: If the United States tries hard enough to do good and be nice, the rest of the world will be impressed and grateful and accept U.S. leadership.

That's not the world as it really is.

Obama's delusion, widely shared by Democrats, isn't nearly as dangerous as the neoconservative delusion still being served up by the Republicans. It's still a delusion, nonetheless.

Obama the Interventionist

By Robert Kagan

Sunday, April 29, 2007; B07

America must "lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good." With those words, Barack Obama put an end to the idea that the alleged overexuberant idealism and America-centric hubris of the past six years is about to give way to a new realism, a more limited and modest view of American interests, capabilities and responsibilities.

Obama's speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week was pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer. It had a deliberate New Frontier feel, including some Kennedy-era references ("we were Berliners") and even the Cold War-era notion that the United States is the "leader of the free world." No one speaks of the "free world" these days, and Obama's insistence that we not "cede our claim of leadership in world affairs" will sound like an anachronistic conceit to many Europeans, who even in the 1990s complained about the bullying "hyperpower." In Moscow and Beijing it will confirm suspicions about America's inherent hegemonism. But Obama believes the world yearns to follow us, if only we restore our worthiness to lead. Personally, I like it.

All right, you're thinking, but at least he wants us to lead by example, not by meddling everywhere and trying to transform the world in America's image. When he said, "We have heard much over the last six years about how America's larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom," you probably expected him to distance himself from this allegedly discredited idealism.

Instead, he said, "I agree." His critique is not that we've meddled too much but that we haven't meddled enough. There is more to building democracy than "deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box." We must build societies with "a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force." We must build up "the capacity of the world's weakest states" and provide them "what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, . . . generate wealth . . . fight terrorism . . . halt the proliferation of deadly weapons" and fight disease. Obama proposes to double annual expenditures on these efforts, to $50 billion, by 2012.

It's not just international do-goodism. To Obama, everything and everyone everywhere is of strategic concern to the United States. "We cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy." The "security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people." Realists, call your doctors.

Okay, you say, but at least Obama is proposing all this Peace Corps-like activity as a substitute for military power. Surely he intends to cut or at least cap a defense budget soaring over $500 billion a year. Surely he understands there is no military answer to terrorism.

Actually, Obama wants to increase defense spending. He wants to add 65,000 troops to the Army and recruit 27,000 more Marines. Why? To fight terrorism.

He wants the American military to "stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar," and he believes that "the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face." He wants to ensure that we continue to have "the strongest, best-equipped military in the world."

Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a last resort. Rather, he insists that "no president should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary," not only "to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked," but also to protect "our vital interests" when they are "imminently threatened." That's known as preemptive military action. It won't reassure those around the world who worry about letting an American president decide what a "vital interest" is and when it is "imminently threatened."

Nor will they be comforted to hear that "when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others." Make every effort?

Conspicuously absent from Obama's discussion of the use of force are four words: United Nations Security Council.

Obama talks about "rogue nations," "hostile dictators," "muscular alliances" and maintaining "a strong nuclear deterrent." He talks about how we need to "seize" the "American moment." We must "begin the world anew." This is realism? This is a left-liberal foreign policy?

Ask Noam Chomsky the next time you see him.

Of course, it's just a speech. At the Democrats' debate on Thursday, when asked how he would respond to another terrorist attack on the United States, Obama at first did not say a word about military action. So maybe his speech only reflects what he and his advisers think Americans want to hear. But that is revealing, too. When it comes to America's role in the world, apparently they don't think there's much of an argument.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post. His latest book is "Dangerous Nation," a history of American foreign policy. He has been advising John McCain's presidential campaign on an informal and unpaid basis.

Barack Obama: Neocon Warrior

These are the ways we will answer the challenge that arrived on our shores that September morning more than five years ago. A 21st century military to stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar.
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Remarks of Senator Barack Obama to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs

April 23, 2007

Good morning. We all know that these are not the best of times for America’s reputation in the world. We know what the war in Iraq has cost us in lives and treasure, in influence and respect. We have seen the consequences of a foreign policy based on a flawed ideology, and a belief that tough talk can replace real strength and vision.

Many around the world are disappointed with our actions. And many in our own country have come to doubt either our wisdom or our capacity to shape events beyond our borders. Some have even suggested that America’s time has passed.

But while we know what we have lost as a consequence of this tragic war, I also know what I have found in my travels over the past two years.

In an old building in Ukraine, I saw test tubes filled with anthrax and the plague lying virtually unlocked and unguarded – dangers we were told could only be secured with America’s help.

On a trip to the Middle East, I met Israelis and Palestinians who told me that peace remains a distant hope without the promise of American leadership.

At a camp along the border of Chad and Darfur, refugees begged for America to step in and help stop the genocide that has taken their mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.

And along the crowded streets of Kenya, I met throngs of children who asked if they’d ever get the chance to visit that magical place called America.

So I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.

I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so. This President may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open. And it’s time to fill that role once more.

I believe that the single most important job of any President is to protect the American people. And I am equally convinced that doing that job effectively in the 21st century will require a new vision of American leadership and a new conception of our national security – a vision that draws from the lessons of the past, but is not bound by outdated thinking.

In today’s globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. When narco-trafficking and corruption threaten democracy in Latin America, it’s America’s problem too. When poor villagers in Indonesia have no choice but to send chickens to market infected with avian flu, it cannot be seen as a distant concern. When religious schools in Pakistan teach hatred to young children, our children are threatened as well.

Whether it’s global terrorism or pandemic disease, dramatic climate change or the proliferation of weapons of mass annihilation, the threats we face at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries.

The horrific attacks on that clear September day awakened us to this new reality. And after 9/11, millions around the world were ready to stand with us. They were willing to rally to our cause because it was their cause too – because they knew that if America led the world toward a new era of global cooperation, it would advance the security of people in our nation and all nations.

We now know how badly this Administration squandered that opportunity. In 2002, I stated my opposition to the war in Iraq, not only because it was an unnecessary diversion from the struggle against the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, but also because it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the threats that 9/11 brought to light. I believed then, and believe now, that it was based on old ideologies and outdated strategies – a determination to fight a 21st century struggle with a 20th century mindset.

There is no doubt that the mistakes of the past six years have made our current task more difficult. World opinion has turned against us. And after all the lives lost and the billions of dollars spent, many Americans may find it tempting to turn inward, and cede our claim of leadership in world affairs.

I insist, however, that such an abandonment of our leadership is a mistake we must not make. America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet them without America. We must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission – we must lead the world, by deed and example.

We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people. We must lead by marshalling a global effort to stop the spread of the world’s most dangerous weapons. We must lead by building and strengthening the partnerships and alliances necessary to meet our common challenges and defeat our common threats.

And America must lead by reaching out to all those living disconnected lives of despair in the world’s forgotten corners – because while there will always be those who succumb to hate and strap bombs to their bodies, there are millions more who want to take another path – who want our beacon of hope to shine its light their way.

This election offers us the chance to turn the page and open a new chapter in American leadership. The disappointment that so many around the world feel toward America right now is only a testament to the high expectations they hold for us. We must meet those expectations again, not because being respected is an end in itself, but because the security of America and the wider world demands it.

This will require a new spirit – not of bluster and bombast, but of quiet confidence and sober intelligence, a spirit of care and renewed competence. It will also require a new leader. And as a candidate for President of the United States, I am asking you to entrust me with that responsibility.

There are five ways America will begin to lead again when I’m President. Five ways to let the world know that we are committed to our common security, invested in our common humanity, and still a beacon of freedom and justice for the world.

The first way America will lead is by bringing a responsible end to this war in Iraq and refocusing on the critical challenges in the broader region.

In a speech five months ago, I argued that there can be no military solution to what has become a political conflict between Sunni and Shi’a factions. And I laid out a plan that I still believe offers the best chance of pressuring these warring factions toward a political settlement – a phased withdrawal of American forces with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31st, 2008.

I acknowledged at the time that there are risks involved in such an approach. That is why my plan provides for an over-the-horizon force that could prevent chaos in the wider region, and allows for a limited number of troops to remain in Iraq to fight al Qaeda and other terrorists.

But my plan also makes clear that continued U.S. commitment to Iraq depends on the Iraqi government meeting a series of well-defined benchmarks necessary to reach a political settlement. Thus far, the Iraqi government has made very little progress in meeting any of the benchmarks, in part because the President has refused time and again to tell the Iraqi government that we will not be there forever. The President’s escalation of U.S. forces may bring a temporary reduction in the violence in Baghdad, at the price of increased U.S. casualties – though the experience so far is not encouraging. But it cannot change the political dynamic in Iraq. A phased withdrawal can.

Moreover, until we change our approach in Iraq, it will be increasingly difficult to refocus our efforts on the challenges in the wider region – on the conflict in the Middle East, where Hamas and Hezbollah feel emboldened and Israel’s prospects for a secure peace seem uncertain; on Iran, which has been strengthened by the war in Iraq; and on Afghanistan, where more American forces are needed to battle al Qaeda, track down Osama bin Laden, and stop that country from backsliding toward instability.

Burdened by Iraq, our lackluster diplomatic efforts leave a huge void. Our interests are best served when people and governments from Jerusalem and Amman to Damascus and Tehran understand that America will stand with our friends, work hard to build a peaceful Middle East, and refuse to cede the future of the region to those who seek perpetual conflict and instability. Such effective diplomacy cannot be done on the cheap, nor can it be warped by an ongoing occupation of Iraq. Instead, it will require patient, sustained effort, and the personal commitment of the President of the United States. That is a commitment I intend to make.

The second way America will lead again is by building the first truly 21st century military and showing wisdom in how we deploy it.

We must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the world in order to defeat and deter conventional threats. But while sustaining our technological edge will always be central to our national security, the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face. This is why our country’s greatest military asset is the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States.

This administration’s first Secretary of Defense proudly acknowledged that he had inherited the greatest fighting force in the nation’s history. Six years later, he handed over a force that has been stretched to the breaking point, understaffed, and struggling to repair its equipment.

Two-thirds of the Army is now rated “not ready” for combat. 88% of the National Guard is not ready to deploy overseas, and many units cannot respond to a domestic emergency.

Our men and women in uniform are performing heroically around the world in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable. But the war in Afghanistan and the ill-advised invasion of Iraq have clearly demonstrated the consequences of underestimating the number of troops required to fight two wars and defend our homeland. That’s why I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.

But adding troops isn’t just about meeting a quota. It’s about recruiting the best and brightest to service, and it’s about keeping them in service by providing them with the first-rate equipment, armor, training, and incentives they deserve. It’s about providing funding to enable the National Guard to achieve an adequate state of readiness again. And it’s about honoring our veterans by giving them the respect and dignity they deserve and the care and benefits they have earned.

A 21st century military will also require us to invest in our men and women’s ability to succeed in today’s complicated conflicts. We know that on the streets of Baghdad, a little bit of Arabic can actually provide security to our soldiers. Yet, just a year ago, less than 1% of the American military could speak a language such as Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Urdu, or Korean. It’s time we recognize these as critical skills for our military, and it’s time we recruit and train for them.

Former Secretary Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the Army you have, not the one you want.” I say that if the need arises when I’m President, the Army we have will be the Army we need.

Of course, how we use our armed forces matters just as much as how they are prepared.

No President should ever hesitate to use force – unilaterally if necessary – to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened. But when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others – the kind of burden-sharing and support President George H.W. Bush mustered before he launched Operation Desert Storm.

And when we do send our men and women into harm’s way, we must also clearly define the mission, prescribe concrete political and military objectives, seek out advice of our military commanders, evaluate the intelligence, plan accordingly, and ensure that our troops have the resources, support, and equipment they need to protect themselves and fulfill their mission.

We must take these steps with the knowledge that while sometimes necessary, force is the costliest weapon in the arsenal of American power in terms of lives and treasure. And it’s far from the only measure of our strength.

In order to advance our national security and our common security, we must call on the full arsenal of American power and ingenuity. To constrain rogue nations, we must use effective diplomacy and muscular alliances. To penetrate terrorist networks, we need a nimble intelligence community – with strong leadership that forces agencies to share information, and invests in the tools, technologies and human intelligence that can get the job done. To maintain our influence in the world economy, we need to get our fiscal house in order. And to weaken the hand of hostile dictators, we must free ourselves from our oil addiction. None of these expressions of power can supplant the need for a strong military. Instead, they complement our military, and help ensure that the use of force is not our sole available option.

The third way America must lead again is by marshalling a global effort to meet a threat that rises above all others in urgency – securing, destroying, and stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

As leaders from Henry Kissinger to George Shultz to Bill Perry to Sam Nunn have all warned, the actions we are taking today on this issue are simply not adequate to the danger.

There are still about 50 tons of highly enriched uranium – some of it poorly secured – at civilian nuclear facilities in over forty countries around the world. In the former Soviet Union, there are still about 15,000 to 16,000 nuclear weapons and stockpiles of uranium and plutonium capable of making another 40,000 weapons scattered across 11 time zones. And people have already been caught trying to smuggle nuclear materials to sell them on the black market.

We can do something about this. As President, I will lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years – the most effective way to prevent terrorists from acquiring a bomb.

We know that Russia is neither our enemy nor close ally right now, and we shouldn’t shy away from pushing for more democracy, transparency, and accountability in that country. But we also know that we can and must work with Russia to make sure every one of its nuclear weapons and every cache of nuclear material is secured. And we should fully implement the law I passed with Senator Dick Lugar that would help the United States and our allies detect and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.

While we work to secure existing stockpiles of nuclear material, we should also negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material.

As starting points, the world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and work to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. If America does not lead, these two nations could trigger regional arms races that could accelerate nuclear proliferation on a global scale and create dangerous nuclear flashpoints. In pursuit of this goal, we must never take the military option off the table. But our first line of offense here must be sustained, direct and aggressive diplomacy. For North Korea, that means ensuring the full implementation of the recent agreement. For Iran, it means getting the UN Security Council, Europe, and the Gulf States to join with us in ratcheting up the economic pressure.

We must also dissuade other countries from joining the nuclear club. Just the other day, it was reported that nearly a dozen countries in and around the Middle East –including Syria and Saudi Arabia – are interested in pursuing nuclear power.

Countries should not be able to build a weapons program under the auspices of developing peaceful nuclear power. That’s why we should create an international fuel bank to back up commercial fuel supplies so there’s an assured supply and no more excuses for nations like Iran to build their own enrichment plants. It’s encouraging that the Nuclear Threat Initiative, backed by Warren Buffett, has already offered funding for this fuel bank, if matched two to one. But on an issue of this importance, the United States should not leave the solution to private philanthropies. It should be a central component of our national security, and that’s why we should provide $50 million to get this fuel bank started and urge other nations, starting with Russia, to join us.

Finally, if we want the world to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia must lead by example. President Bush once said, “The United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status – another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation.” Six years later, President Bush has not acted on this promise. I will. We cannot and should not accept the threat of accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch. We can maintain a strong nuclear deterrent to protect our security without rushing to produce a new generation of warheads.

The danger of nuclear proliferation reminds us of how critical global cooperation will be in the 21st century. That’s why the fourth way America must lead is to rebuild and construct the alliances and partnerships necessary to meet common challenges and confront common threats.

In the wake of the Second World War, it was America that largely built a system of international institutions that carried us through the Cold War. Leaders like Harry Truman and George Marshall knew that instead of constraining our power, these institutions magnified it.

Today it’s become fashionable to disparage the United Nations, the World Bank, and other international organizations. In fact, reform of these bodies is urgently needed if they are to keep pace with the fast-moving threats we face. Such real reform will not come, however, by dismissing the value of these institutions, or by bullying other countries to ratify changes we have drafted in isolation. Real reform will come because we convince others that they too have a stake in change – that such reforms will make their world, and not just ours, more secure.

Our alliances also require constant management and revision if they are to remain effective and relevant. For example, over the last 15 years, NATO has made tremendous strides in transforming from a Cold War security structure to a dynamic partnership for peace.

Today, NATO’s challenge in Afghanistan has become a test case, in the words of Dick Lugar, of whether the alliance can “overcome the growing discrepancy between NATO’s expanding missions and its lagging capabilities.”

We must close this gap, rallying members to contribute troops to collective security operations, urging them to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization, streamlining decision-making processes, and giving commanders in the field more flexibility.

And as we strengthen NATO, we should also seek to build new alliances and relationships in other regions important to our interests in the 21st century. In Asia, the emergence of an economically vibrant, more politically active China offers new opportunities for prosperity and cooperation, but also poses new challenges for the United States and our partners in the region. It is time for the United States to take a more active role here – to build on our strong bilateral relations and informal arrangements like the Six Party talks. As President, I intend to forge a more effective regional framework in Asia that will promote stability, prosperity and help us confront common transnational threats such as tracking down terrorists and responding to global health problems like avian flu.

In this way, the security alliances and relationships we build in the 21st century will serve a broader purpose than preventing the invasion of one country by another. They can help us meet challenges that the world can only confront together, like the unprecedented threat of global climate change.

This is a crisis that cannot be contained to one corner of the globe. Studies show that with each degree of warming, rice yields – the world’s most significant crop – fall by 10%. By 2050 famine could displace more than 250 million people worldwide. That means people competing for food and water in the next fifty years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, South Asia.

As the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gases, America has the greatest responsibility to lead here. We must enact a cap and trade system that will dramatically reduce our carbon emissions. And we must finally free ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil by raising our fuel standards and harnessing the power of biofuels.

Such steps are not just environmental priorities, they are critical to our security. America must take decisive action in order to more plausibly demand the same effort from others. We should push for binding and enforceable commitments to reduce emissions by the nations which pollute the most – the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, and India together account for nearly two-thirds of current emissions. And we should help ensure that growth in developing countries is fueled by low-carbon energy – the market for which could grow to $500 billion by 2050 and spur the next wave of American entrepreneurship.

The fifth way America will lead again is to invest in our common humanity – to ensure that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow.

A recent report detailed Al Qaeda’s progress in recruiting a new generation of leaders to replace the ones we have captured or killed. The new recruits come from a broader range of countries than the old leadership – from Afghanistan to Chechnya, from Britain to Germany, from Algeria to Pakistan. Most of these recruits are in their early thirties.

They operate freely in the disaffected communities and disconnected corners of our interconnected world – the impoverished, weak and ungoverned states that have become the most fertile breeding grounds for transnational threats like terror and pandemic disease and the smuggling of deadly weapons.

Some of these terrorist recruits may have always been destined to take the path they did – accepting a tragically warped view of their religion in which God rewards the killing of innocents. But millions of young men and women have not.

Last summer I visited the Horn of Africa’s Combined Joint Task Force, which was headquartered at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti. It’s a U.S. base that was set up four years ago, originally as a place to launch counter-terrorism operations. But recently, a major focus of the Task Force has been working with our diplomats and aid workers on operations to win hearts and minds. While I was there, I also took a helicopter ride with Admiral Hunt, the commander of the Task Force, to Dire Dawa, where the U.S. was helping provide food and water to Ethiopians who had been devastated by flooding.

One of the Navy captains who helps run the base recently told a reporter, “Our mission is at least 95 percent civil affairs. It's trying to get at the root causes of why people want to take on the U.S.'' The Admiral now in charge of the Task Force suggested that if they can provide dignity and opportunity to the people in that region, then, “the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if not completely, diminishes.”

We have heard much over the last six years about how America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom – that it is the yearning of all who live in the shadow of tyranny and despair.

I agree. But this yearning is not satisfied by simply deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box. The true desire of all mankind is not only to live free lives, but lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and simple justice.

Delivering on these universal aspirations requires basic sustenance like food and clean water; medicine and shelter. It also requires a society that is supported by the pillars of a sustainable democracy – a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force. It requires building the capacity of the world’s weakest states and providing them what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth. And it requires states that have the capacity to fight terrorism, halt the proliferation of deadly weapons, and build the health care infrastructure needed to prevent and treat such deadly diseases as HIV/AIDS and malaria.

As President, I will double our annual investments in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012 and ensure that those new resources are directed towards these strategic goals.

For the last twenty years, U.S. foreign aid funding has done little more than keep pace with inflation. Doubling our foreign assistance spending by 2012 will help meet the challenge laid out by Tony Blair at the 2005 G-8 conference at Gleneagles, and it will help push the rest of the developed world to invest in security and opportunity. As we have seen recently with large increases in funding for our AIDS programs, we have the capacity to make sure this funding makes a real difference.

Part of this new funding will also establish a two billion dollar Global Education Fund that calls on the world to join together in eliminating the global education deficit, similar to what the 9/11 commission proposed. Because we cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy.

I know that many Americans are skeptical about the value of foreign aid today. But as the U.S. military made clear in Camp Lemonier, a relatively small investment in these fragile states up front can be one of the most effective ways to prevent the terror and strife that is far more costly – both in lives and treasure – down the road. In this way, $50 billion a year in foreign aid – which is less than one-half of one percent of our GDP – doesn’t sound as costly when you consider that last year, the Pentagon spent nearly double that amount in Iraq alone.

Finally, while America can help others build more secure societies, we must never forget that only the citizens of these nations can sustain them. The corruption I heard about while visiting parts of Africa has been around for decades, but the hunger to eliminate such corruption is a growing and powerful force among people there. And so in these places where fear and want still thrive, we must couple our aid with an insistent call for reform.

We must do so not in the spirit of a patron, but the spirit of a partner – a partner that is mindful of its own imperfections. Extending an outstretched hand to these states must ultimately be more than just a matter of expedience or even charity. It must be about recognizing the inherent equality and worth of all people. And it’s about showing the world that America stands for something – that we can still lead.

These are the ways we will answer the challenge that arrived on our shores that September morning more than five years ago. A 21st century military to stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar. Global efforts to keep the world’s deadliest weapons out of the world’s most dangerous hands. Stronger alliances to share information, pool resources, and break up terrorist networks that operate in more than eighty countries. And a stronger push to defeat the terrorists’ message of hate with an agenda for hope around the world.

It’s time we had a President who can do this again – who can speak directly to the world, and send a message to all those men and women beyond our shores who long for lives of dignity and security that says “You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.”

It’s time, as well, for a President who can build a consensus at home for this ambitious but necessary course. For in the end, no foreign policy can succeed unless the American people understand it and feel a stake in its success – and unless they trust that their government hears their more immediate concerns as well. After all, we will not be able to increase foreign aid if we fail to invest in security and opportunity for our own people. We cannot negotiate trade agreements to help spur development in poor countries so long as we provide no meaningful help to working Americans burdened by the dislocations of a global economy. We cannot expect Americans to support placing our men and women in harm’s way if we cannot prove that we will use force wisely and judiciously.

But if the next President can restore the American people’s trust – if they know that he or she is acting with their best interests at heart, with prudence and wisdom and some measure of humility – then I believe the American people will be ready to see America lead again.

They will be ready to show the world that we are not a country that ships prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries. That we are not a country that runs prisons which lock people away without ever telling them why they are there or what they are charged with. That we are not a country which preaches compassion and justice to others while we allow bodies to float down the streets of a major American city.

That is not who we are.

America is the country that helped liberate a continent from the march of a madman. We are the country that told the brave people of a divided city that we were Berliners too. We sent generations of young people to serve as ambassadors for peace in countries all over the world. And we’re the country that rushed aid throughout Asia for the victims of a devastating tsunami.

Now it’s our moment to lead – our generation’s time to tell another great American story. So someday we can tell our children that this was the time when we helped forge peace in the Middle East. That this was the time when we confronted climate change and secured the weapons that could destroy the human race. This was the time when we brought opportunity to those forgotten corners of the world. And this was the time when we renewed the America that has led generations of weary travelers from all over the world to find opportunity, and liberty, and hope on our doorstep.

One of these travelers was my father. I barely knew him, but when, after his death, I finally took my first trip to his tiny village in Kenya and asked my grandmother if there was anything left from him, she opened a trunk and took out a stack of letters, which she handed to me.

There were more than thirty of them, all handwritten by my father, all addressed to colleges and universities across America, all filled with the hope of a young man who dreamed of more for his life.

It is because someone in this country answered that prayer that I stand before you today with faith in our future, confidence in our story, and a determination to do my part in writing our country’s next great chapter.

The American moment has not passed. The American moment is here. And like generations before us, we will seize that moment, and begin the world anew. Thank you.

*As prepared

Obama's Ties To Chicago Slum Lord

Obama and his Rezko ties

April 23, 2007

For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side.

It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony'' Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers.

Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on.

But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building.

Obama has been friends with Rezko for 17 years. Rezko has been a political patron to Obama and many others, helping to raise millions of dollars for them through his own contributions and by hosting fund-raisers in his home.

Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko's low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems -- including squalid living conditions, vacant apartments, lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers.

The building in Englewood was one of 30 Rezmar rehabbed in a series of troubled deals largely financed by taxpayers. Every project ran into financial difficulty. More than half went into foreclosure, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

"Their buildings were falling apart,'' said a former city official. "They just didn't pay attention to the condition of these buildings.''

Eleven of Rezko's buildings were in Obama's state Senate district.

Obama, now a U.S. senator running for president, has come under fire over his friendship with Rezko, who was charged last fall with demanding kickbacks on state business deals under Gov. Blagojevich.

Much of the criticism has centered on two real estate deals involving Obama's South Side mansion. In the first, Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price for a doctor's home, while Rezko's wife paid the doctor full price for the vacant lot next door. Then -- a few months before Rezko was indicted -- Obama bought part of that lot from Rezko's wife.

But Obama's ties with Rezko go beyond those two real estate sales and the political support, the Sun-Times found. Obama was an attorney with a small Chicago law firm -- Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland -- that helped Rezmar get more than $43 million in government funding to rehab 15 of their 30 apartment buildings for the poor.

Obama role unclear

Just what legal work -- and how much -- Obama did on those deals is unknown. His campaign staff acknowledges he worked on some of them. But the Rezmar-related work amounted to just five hours over the six years it said Obama was affiliated with the law firm, the staff said in an e-mail in February.

Obama, however, was associated with the firm for more than nine years, his staff acknowledged Sunday in an e-mail response to questions submitted March 14 by the Sun-Times. They didn't say what deals he worked on -- or how much work he did.

"The senator, relatively inexperienced in this kind of work, was assigned to tasks appropriate for a junior lawyer,'' according to an e-mail from Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. "These tasks would have included reviewing documents, collecting corporate organizational documents, and drafting corporate resolutions.''

In fact, Gibbs wrote, "Senator Obama does not remember having conversations with Tony Rezko about properties that he owned or any specific issues related to those properties.''

Rezko and Mahru had no construction experience when they created Rezmar in 1989 to rehabilitate apartments for the poor under the Daley administration. Between 1989 and 1998, Rezmar made deals to rehab 30 buildings, a total of 1,025 apartments. The last 15 buildings involved Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland during Obama's time with the firm.

Rezko and Mahru also managed the buildings, which were supposed to provide homes for poor people for 30 years. Every one of the projects ran into trouble:

• Seventeen buildings -- many beset with code violations, including a lack of heat -- ended up in foreclosure.

• Six buildings are currently boarded up.

• Hundreds of the apartments are vacant, in need of major repairs.

• Taxpayers have been stuck with millions in unpaid loans.

• At least a dozen times, the city of Chicago sued Rezmar for failure to heat buildings.

For five weeks, the Sun-Times sought to interview Obama about Rezko and the housing deals. His staff wanted written questions. It responded Sunday but left many questions unanswered. Other answers didn't directly address the question.

Among these: When did Obama learn of Rezmar's financial problems? "The senator had no special knowledge of any financial problems,'' Gibbs wrote.

Did the senator ever complain to anyone -- government officials, Rezmar or Rezko -- about the conditions of Rezmar's buildings? "Senator Obama did follow up on constituency complaints about housing as [a] matter of routine,'' Gibbs wrote.

Did the senator ever discuss Rezmar's financial problems with anyone at his law firm? "The firm advises us that it [is] unaware of any such conversations,'' Gibbs wrote.

Turns down Rezmar job

Obama's friendship with Rezko began with a telephone call.

It was 17 years ago. Obama had just become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Newspapers wrote about him. One story caught the eye of David Brint, a vice president of Rezmar, a new company that had become the Daley administration's favored developer of low-income housing.

"I just cold-called him," Brint said in an interview.

Brint said he wanted to know if Obama would come work for Rezmar, developing housing for the poor -- something Obama had expressed interest in, according to the story Brint had read. Brint arranged for Obama to meet Rezko, but Obama didn't take the job.

Obama, who has a law degree from Harvard, subsequently returned to Chicago to lead a voter-registration drive in 1992.

The next year, Obama joined Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, a 12-lawyer firm that specialized in helping develop low-income housing. The firm's top partner, Allison S. Davis, was, and is, a member of the Chicago Plan Commission, appointed by Mayor Daley. Davis was also a friend of Rezko. Davis and Rezko would eventually go into business together, developing homes.

Another firm partner, Judson Miner, ran the city Law Department under Mayor Harold Washington, one of Obama's political idols.

Asked what Rezko cases Obama worked on, Miner told the Sun-Times, "We'll put together a list of the cases he worked on involving Rezko/Rezmar in the next day or two.''

That was March 13. He never provided the information.

While at the law firm, Obama spent much of his time working on issues that would help improve conditions in poor neighborhoods, according to his first book, Dreams from My Father, published in 1996.

"In my legal practice, I work mostly with churches and community groups, men and women who quietly build grocery stores and health clinics in the inner city, and housing for the poor,'' Obama wrote in the book.

Three community groups represented by Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland were partners with Rezmar in the troubled housing deals.

Rezko offers Obama support

Obama had been at the firm for two years when he began his political career, running to replace state Sen. Alice Palmer.

Rezko became Obama's political patron. Obama got his first campaign contributions on July 31, 1995: $300 from a Loop lawyer, a $5,000 loan from a car dealer, and $2,000 from two food companies owned by Rezko.

Around that time, Rezmar began developing low-income apartments in partnerships with the Chicago Urban League and two other not-for-profit community groups, both founded and run by Bishop Arthur Brazier, pastor of the Apostolic Church of God and a powerful ally of the mayor -- the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., known as WPIC, and the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization.

All three community groups were clients of the Davis law firm. Davis himself was treasurer of WPIC when it went into business with Rezmar.

Why go into business with Rezmar? "We thought they were successful,'' Davis said, noting that little development was taking place in Woodlawn.

At the time, Rezmar had been in business for six years and had become one of City Hall's favored developers of low-income housing, managing 600 apartments in 15 buildings it rehabbed with government funding. Teaming now with community development groups, Rezmar rehabbed another 15 buildings, with 400 apartments, between 1995 and 1998. Each deal involved a mix of public and private financing -- loans from the city or state, federal low-income-housing tax credits and bank loans.

By the time Rezmar started working with those community groups, at least two of its earlier buildings were falling into disrepair -- including the Englewood apartment building at 7000 S. Sangamon where the tenants were without heat for five weeks.

The tenants there had no heat from Dec. 27, 1996, until at least Feb. 3, 1997, when the city of Chicago sued to turn the heat on. The case was settled later that month with a $100 fine.

It was during that time that the area's new state senator, Barack Obama, got a $1,000 campaign donation from Rezmar. The date: Jan. 14, 1997.

Obama works on Rezmar deals

Obama spent the next eight years serving in the Illinois Senate and continued to work for the Davis law firm.

Through its partnerships, Rezmar remained a client of the firm, according to ethics statements Obama filed while a state senator.

Davis said he didn't remember Obama working on the Rezmar projects.

"I don't recall Barack having any involvement in real estate transactions,'' Davis said. "Barack was a litigator. His area of focus was litigation, class-action suits.''

But Obama did legal work on real estate deals while at Davis' firm, according to biographical information he submitted to the Sun-Times in 1998. Obama specialized "in civil rights litigation, real estate financing, acquisition, construction and/or redevelopment of low-and moderate income housing,'' according to his "biographical sketch."

And he did legal work on Rezko's deals, according to an e-mail his presidential campaign staff sent the Sun-Times on Feb. 16, in response to earlier inquiries. The staff didn't specify which Rezmar projects Obama worked on, or his role. But it drew a distinction between working for Rezko and working on projects involving his company.

"Senator Obama did not directly represent Mr. Rezko or his firms. He did represent on a very limited basis ventures in which Mr. Rezko's entities participated along with others,'' according to the e-mail from Obama's staff.

Obama buys Rezko land

Over the years, Rezko, Mahru, their wives and businesses have given more than $50,000 to Obama's campaign funds, records show. And Rezko has helped raise millions more.

Rezko was among the people Obama appointed to serve on his U.S. Senate campaign finance committee, the Sun-Times reported in 2003. The committee raised more than $14 million, according to Federal Election Commission records, helping send Obama to Washington in 2004.

As a U.S. senator, Obama grew closer to Rezko.

Two years ago, Obama bought a mansion on the South Side, in the Kenwood neighborhood, from a doctor. On the same day, Rezko's wife, Rita Rezko, bought the vacant lot next door from the same seller. The doctor had listed the properties for sale together. He sold the house to Obama for $300,000 below the asking price. The doctor got his asking price on the lot from Rezko's wife.

Last year, Rita Rezko sold a strip of that vacant lot to Obama for $104,500 -- a deal Obama later apologized for, acknowledging that people might think he got a favor from Rezko. Obama called the episode "boneheaded'' and a "mistake.''

At the time Obama bought that strip of land, it had been reported that Rezko was under federal investigation for influence-peddling involving the administration of Blagojevich, whose campaign also received Rezko's financial support.

Rezko has since been indicted for allegedly demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Blagojevich. Rezko's trial has been postponed while investigators sort through his finances.

'Disenchanted with Rezmar'

Rezmar's final low-income housing deals involving the Davis law firm went bad quickly.

Those deals were supposed to provide affordable housing for at least 25 years. But the first deal Rezmar struck with the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp. collapsed in just six and a half years, when the state sued for foreclosure. WPIC and its sister agency, the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, ultimately forced Rezmar to give up control of all 12 buildings they rehabbed together, citing financial troubles and deteriorating conditions of the buildings.

The state foreclosure suit came because Rezmar had stopped making monthly mortgage payments in March 2001 on a state loan to help turn an old nursing home into low-income apartments at 6140 S. Drexel, in Obama's state Senate district.

"WPIC became disenchanted with Rezmar and wanted to get rid of them,'' Brazier said. "They thought the buildings weren't being kept up properly. There were some financial problems.''

Rezmar and WPIC cut all ties last October, when the Chicago City Council agreed to let Rezmar out of a city loan. Rezmar transferred its interest to The Wolcott Group, a management company run by business partners of David Brint -- the man who had introduced Rezko to Obama.

Contributing: Chris Fusco and Art Golab

ABOUT THIS SERIES

Staff reporter Tim Novak examines previously unreported government-funded, low-income housing deals involving Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the indicted political fund-raiser.

COMING TUESDAY | Rezmar kept getting city and state funding, even as earlier projects fell into disrepair and financial troubles.

BY TIM NOVAK Staff Reporter/tnovak@suntimes.com

Dems divided over Webb’s proposal requiring approval for attacking Iran

By Elana Schor

April 18, 2007

Supporters of requiring President Bush to secure congressional approval for any preemptive strike on Iran are regrouping for a new push, presaging a difficult vote for Democratic leaders and presidential hopefuls alike.

Democrats hailed the Iraq withdrawal language attached to the emergency supplemental as a signal of a newly assertive Congress, even though the House removed a mandate for authorization of attacks on Iran from early drafts of the bill. The reversal quieted some Democrats’ concerns that reining in Bush on Iran could endanger Israel’s security in the Middle East.

Iran is likely to reappear on the agenda this spring, however, as Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) considers adding his language on the issue to the defense authorization bill and House Democrats hold their leadership to a promise for a roll-call vote.

“There is no hand-tying here. We’re not taking options off the table,” Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith said. “He offered this piece of legislation to restore the proper balance between the executive and legislative branch. This is a bill to empower Congress.”

For many Democratic base voters, Webb’s Iran language is also a litmus test for presidential candidates. White House assertions that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is tied to Iraqi insurgent groups makes opposition to a possible war with Iran as crucial as opposition to the Iraq war for Democrats running in 2008.

Tom Andrews, the former Democratic lawmaker now leading the anti-war group Win Without War, said the party’s White House hopefuls should see Webb’s plan as a no-brainer.

“The idea that you could not support prohibiting a military strike, given the conditions that are on [Webb’s measure] … certainly raises serious questions in our community,” Andrews said.

Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) are the only 2008 Democrats on record as backing Webb’s effort. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) took the Bush administration to task on Iran in a Feb. 14 floor speech, supporting the spirit of Webb’s effort, if not his specific language.

“It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further congressional authorization,” Clinton said.

When asked whether Clinton would vote for Webb’s language, a spokesman for the New Yorker took a wait-and-see approach, saying it depends on the format in which it reaches the floor.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has also kept mum on Webb’s language, which includes multiple exceptions in case of an attack on Iran or Iranian hostility in Iraq. But Obama took an interest in Webb’s push during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last month with Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.

Obama asked whether Bush believes he has presumptive authority to attack Iran, to which Burns responded: “It’s the position of our government that the president obviously has the constitutional duty to protect the American people … and as commander in chief has to be able to exercise that authority as he sees fit.”

“I think you meant, ‘it’s the position of our administration’ as opposed to ‘our government,’” Obama replied.

Iran’s recent saber-rattling detention of a British naval crew, which ended in the soldiers’ safe release, appears to have sparked less escalation than expected between Bush and Ahmadinejad. But pro-Israel stalwarts such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) see any curb on U.S. action against Iran as a potential handcuff in Iraq.

“What if the president decides, at the request of General Petraeus, that we have to take action to take out [an Iranian] base?” Lieberman said yesterday. “I wouldn’t want to have to go through a month-long debate in Congress before you could do that.”

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, held its capital policy conference just after the House removed Iran authorization language from its version of the supplemental. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr told members there that any legislative attempt to limit U.S. options in Iran would be harmful and signal weakness.

In addition to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) support, Webb has the public backing of Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In the House, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said through a spokesman that he would hold Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to her vow for a recorded vote on Iran authorization language.

“I think it will pass because there isn’t a thinking person in the world that believes the President when he says won’t launch a military strike against Iran,” McDermott said. “Even conservative Republicans are worried about the president’s lack of credibility.”

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) echoed McDermott’s intentions.

“The Bush administration has already misled our nation into one unnecessary preemptive war under false pretenses, and Congress needs to make it perfectly clear that he does not have the authority to take us down the same road with Iran,” Lee said in an e-mail.

The multilateralist group Just Foreign Policy marshaled supporters of the Webb amendment during the supplemental debate last month. Antiwar groups including Peace Action and United for Peace and Justice joined in by organizing grassroots call-ins to Senate offices urging a vote on the Webb language.

“The Senate is going to feel the pressure to pass this provision soon,” Robert Naiman, national coordinator of Just Foreign Policy, wrote on the group’s website. Among its board members are Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, and Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future.

Soros Kicked AIPAC. - Obama Kicks Soros.- Let's Kick All Three

http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner05252005.html

Board of Deputies of British Jews:
"Pragmatic" Nazi-Zionist Collaboration was OK
The Plot to Stigmatize "51 Documents" on Amazon.com
By LENNI BRENNER

================

"In this world, the follies of the rich pass for wise sayings."

Soros Kicked AIPAC. -

Obama Kicks Soros. -

Let's Kick All Three

By Lenni Brenner

BrennerL21@aol.com

Author of "51 Documents"

http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner1223.html

(Zionist Collaberation with NAZIS)

It is a sign of the changing political times that the 3/12 American

Israel Public Affairs Committee Washington conference received

much more candid journalistic treatment than AIPAC events

have ever received. The NY Times 3/14 report,

"Clinton and Obama Court Jewish Vote," got right to the point:

"As Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama compete

for Jewish donors and voters,

Mrs. Clinton is following a tried-and-true rule of hers from New York -

- support Israel to the last -- while Mr. Obama is trying

a more delicate strategy that hit some bumps this week."

Clinton never stops pandering to New York's ultra-right Zionists.

In an age when most young educated Jews escape from Judaism

and marry gentiles,

the 'Feminist' candidate is constantly in Sex-Segregated

Orthodox Jewish Synagogues, telling them of her great love of Israel,

which of course comes from her heart, not from their check books.

Her same ol' same ol' speech was remarked on,

but Obama is the new comet in the Democratic sky

and the Times focused on what was different

in his "I am pro-Israel" speech.

"Several Jewish conference-goers said they were concerned

by Mr. Obama's remark Sunday in Iowa where ... he said,

'Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people'....

Obama put the blame on the stalled peace efforts with Israel
and on the refusal of the Palestinian Govt. to renounce terrorism."

Obama represents Illinois, "the land of Lincoln."

But he models himself after the state's other great philosopher,

Al Capone. Chicago's Mafia leader proclaimed and proved that

"Kind words and a machine gun

will get you more than kind words alone."

Obama has a history of telling Arab-Americans that he

'feels the pain' of the Palestinians -

- while he supports giving billions in weapons to their oppressors.

The Times coverage of Obama was distinctive for the paper,

in giving competition "for Jewish donors and voters"

as the purpose of both leading wannabe Democratic candidates.

Since Hitler, for good and bad reasons, writing about Jewish political

money has been the great 'no-no' of America's capitalist media.

In 1991, I interviewed Harold Seneker, editor of the "Forbes 400"

issue of the magazine, for an article in the 2/11 Nation.

I estimated that Jews, about 2.5% of Americans,

were consistently circa 20% of the 400 richest Americans.

He wanted to write a story on it.

"Its a success, both for the Jews and capitalism."
But publisher Malcolm Forbes wouldn't let him.

He remembered the period after Hitler's 1933 victory inspired

American anti-Semitic propaganda about 'Jewish money.'

He agreed with Seneker's thesis, but didn't want responsibility for

even a slight possible rise in anti-Semitism resulting from an article.

The taboo's negative has been mass media silence about the

impact of Zionist money on US domestic and foreign policy since

Harry Truman, wanting Jewish campaign contributions, supported

Israel's creation in the run up to the 1948 presidential election.

But today many journalists, Jew and gentile, are critical of Israel

re the Palestinians, zealotry for Bush staying in Iraq and threats
of bombing Iran. For them, not talking about Jewish money means

not dealing with capitalist America's massive political corruption.

Thus the March 2 Forward, New York's prestigious

'Jewish community' weekly, had no hesitation in running

"How Many, How Much?," a graph estimating Jews as 24%

of the current Forbes 400 listing of the "nation's richest."

Most Jews aren't rich. And among the rich, the most famous

political donor, George Soros, isn't a Zionist.

(but he is a scoundrel who buys Halliburton Stock.)

The 3/23 Forward declared that he just dropped a political bomb

of "near-nuclear force" on American Zionism. The billionaire's
article in the post-dated 4/12 New York Review of Books,
http://nybooks.com/articles/20030, argues that the

US does Israel a disservice in ritually backing it:

"While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed,
criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed ....

One explanation is to be found in the pervasive influence of the

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which strongly

affects both the Democratic and the Republican parties ....

Politicians challenge it at their peril because of

the lobby's ability to influence political contributions."

He long ago left Judaism behind, but he kept quiet about this

because he "did not want to provide fodder to the enemies of Israel."

But now its time for the American Jewish community

"to rein in the organization that claims to represent it."

Soros is a Tory reformist.

He funds narcotics law reformers and other worthy-issue groups.

But the Drug Policy Alliance, which got 30% of its funds from Soros,

welcomed Republican conventioneers to New York in 2004,

even as a massive anti-war march

protested against Bush and his party's war.

Now he wants Israel to negotiate with Hamas.

"Fortunately Saudi Arabia, whose position is also precarious,

has a genuine interest in promoting a settlement based on 2 states."

He wants the Saudis to lean on Hamas while the US pressures
Israel into negotiating itself out of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Never mind that Saudia is a vicious despotism.

Ignore US arms to it and Israel. Forget that the American people

have absolutely no interest in arming either criminal government.

If Soros got his wishes fulfilled, the result would be "Bantustine,"

guarded by Israel and America's Arab satraps.

Many Americans also want Israel to deal with Hamas,

concerned for horrific Palestinian living conditions,

without sharing the billionaire's naive imperial mentality.

But nuking AIPAC was too much for Obama.

His campaign immediately announced that

"Mr. Soros is entitled to his opinions.

But on this issue, he and Senator Obama disagree.

The US and our allies are right to insist that Hamas -

- a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's destruction -

- meet very basic conditions before being treated as a legitimate actor.

AIPAC is one of many voices that share this view."

Soros is modern proof of Sancho Panza's proverb.

He told Don Quixote that -

"in this world, the follies of the rich pass for wise sayings,"

and Soros gave the Democrats $28 million in 2004,

knowing his party to be demagogues pandering after Zionist cash,

vainly hoping that they would beat Bush.

The 3/21 Sun, New York's Zionist daily, was 'right on the money'

when it explained Obama's problem. Even if we presume

that he really is troubled by the Palestinians' wretched conditions.

"The Soros article puts Democrats in the awkward position

of choosing between Mr. Soros, a major funder of their causes,

and the pro-Israel lobby, whose members

are also active in campaign fund-raising."

Soros cash would buy Obama media ads in Democratic primaries.

But taking it means AIPAC billionaires buying ads for Clinton.

On the other hand, denouncing Soros

doesn't mean him running ads against Obama.

And, if he gets nominated, he can reasonably expect

Soros to fund him against the Republican.

Soros's guileless reformism has ended him up with less,

not more, influence in inner circles of his lesser evil.

Democrats hustling Zionist money reaches surreal proportions.

Party leaders rage against Jimmy Carter -- their own ex-president! -

- for denouncing Israeli apartheid. Obama distances himself

from his party's biggest funder. But now the party may have to pay

a liberal price for its money chasing. Liberal Jews and gentiles

see Obama as anti-Iraq war. But many dislike Israeli policies.

If anti-war lefts Keep the AIPAC/Soros/Obama affair in front of their eyes,
Obama dumping on Soros can operate to make them suspicious

of their party as a real anti-war lesser evil. It doesn't take a high tech

crystal ball to see Obama's crisis as our opportunity.

If we get our own act together, the anti-war movement can move out

of the wings and into the center of the America's political stage.

Soros has more money than educated anti-war Democrats but they

don't have more brains than him.For now, they would still vote for any

hawk the Democrats pick in 08, as a lesser evil to any Republican.

But if we start an internet convention, ASAP, to pick a genuine

anti-war presidential candidate by the end of 2007, committed

to running against the bipartisan hawk-parties, many will sign on

as they come to understand that the US military isn't going

to get out of the Middle East, whether the Democrats win or lose.

In 2000 and 2004 they worried that voting for Nader meant electing

Bush. But now Democrats run Congress, and they aren't kicking

Bush out of Iraq. Working for a Democratic victory as a lesser

anti-war evil is no longer axiomatic for such types.

In fact, if a left party came to life and drew enough votes from
the Democrats to elect a Republican, every pundit, right to left,

would understand this to mean that the anti-war movement

was growing in number and determination to end

all of America's wars, once and for all and forever.

Liberals voted Democrat in 1968 and 1972, fantasizing

thattheir party would end the Vietnam war. It lost.

But Nixon's Attorney General stared out of the White House

at a gigantic march. While most demonstrators were liberal Democrats,

he knew the parade was called and organized by Trotskyists,

Stalinists, left Black nationalists, unions, pacifists and such:

"It looks like the Russian revolution."

Determined Marxist organizing cadre, only a few thousand at most,

not Democratic politicians, mobilized the hundreds of thousands

that forced "bipartisan" Washington out of Indochina.

Nixon read the handwriting on the wall: Get out -

- or get more radical explosions at home.

We have a better and worse situation. Bush is losing the confidence

of millions of Americans and the Democrats aren't gaining it.

But neither are the divided anti-war demonstrators.

Nevertheless, we have the same task in 2007 and forever more:

We must build a massive united street movement

to get US imperialism out of the Middle East

and everywhere else, from now to eternity.

Henceforth, no one can talk intelligently about US

Middle Eastern policy without discussing AIPAC, Obama and Soros.

We must shout from the rooftops about Zionist campaign contribs.

Anti-Semitism is "a fire that has burned itself out" in modern America.

It won't spring up from the ashes if we take care.
Lecture audiences laugh when I rhetorically defend our politicians:

"Rich Zionists can't just walk in on a Democrat and bribe him!

No way!! They must sit in his waiting room

with all the other bribe-givers until its their turn!!!"

US politics is the story of unending corruption since New York's

Tammany Hall and other 19th century political machines, when Jews,

rich or poor, were a minuscule percentage of the population,

and Zionists were non-existent.

We cannot seriously educate the public about the 'legalized bribery'

of Zionist campaign contributions to the modern Republicratic

Washington machine without putting it in its matrix of general grafting.

We won't persuade most Americans to end

Zionist buying of our rulers, alone. Nor should we try,

when we certainly can mobilize millions who already want abolition

of private election contributions, with publicly funded elections

taking their place.

In context, documented exposure of Zionism's perfidious role

is not only legitimate, it is a perfect educational example

of America's government

of the rich, by the rich, for the rich,

which must perish from the earth.

***
Lenni Brenner is the author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, and
editor of Jefferson & Madison On Separation of Church and State:

Writings on Religion and Secularism. He blogs at

http://www.smithbowen.net/linfame/brenner,
and can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com.

McCain, Obama, and genocide

More than a half-million Iraqis have died because of the U.S. invasion in March, 2003; another million or so died in the decade before that thanks the U.S./U.K. ("U.N.") sanctions. And in the light of all that, we can still, in this Alice-through the-looking-glass-world we live in, hear this from John McCain: "Failure is genocide." And when asked by Wolf Blitzer to respond to that statement, here's the stone-racist response from Barack Obama:

BLITZER: What if he's right? What if he's right, and what you're proposing and a lot of Democrats are proposing results in genocide in Iraq?

OBAMA: Well, look, what you have right now is chaos in Iraq. After having spent hundreds of billions of dollars, after seeing close to 3,200 lives lost, what you now see is chaos.

That's what Barack Obama thinks has been lost in Iraq - hundreds of billions of dollars, and 3,200 lives. The actual genocide that's taken place in the last 15 years? Sorry, neither he nor McCain nor Wolf Blitzer even acknowledges that that has taken place. The idea simply does not compute in their "the U.S. is a force for good in the world" brains.

// posted @ 4/01/2007 01:41:00 PM // Comments (3)

Iowa voters take Obama to task

Published: 02/04/2007

By James Zogby, Special to Gulf News

After delivering two solidly pro-Israel speeches before American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) audiences (one in Illinois, and the other in Washington) Senator Barack Obama ran into a troublesome question a few weeks ago, while campaigning in Iowa.

In many ways, it was a classic Iowa moment - the kind that makes me glad that Iowa still stands alone as the first caucus state in the presidential election cycle.

The question to Senator Obama came from an Iowa peace activist. It was thoughtful and quite direct, "On my trip to Israel/Palestine I found a very different reality on the ground for Christians and Muslims living in the West Bank than the Israel experience you shared with AIPAC last Friday. As president, how would you address the human rights crisis that Palestinian Christians and Muslims must bear?"

Obama's answer was also direct and included the following observations. After restating his belief in the centrality of the US-Israel strategic relationship, the senator went on to agree, in part, with the questioner saying "no one is suffering more than the Palestinian people".

He continued by suggesting that "if we could get some movement among the Palestinian leadership, what I'd like to see is a loosening up of some of the restrictions on providing aid directly to the Palestinian people". He then made reference to "heavy stones Israel must carry if there is to be progress for its peace", noting specifically the settlement issue.

Other than his expression of some real concern of the suffering of the Palestinians, Obama's observations were, in fact, nothing out of the ordinary and consistent with US policy. But the remark about Palestinian suffering became a national news story, prompting some hard-line supporters of Israel to demand a clarification. This was, I believe, an effort to teach a lesson to the junior senator from Illinois - much as had been done in 2004 when Howard Dean called for a more balanced US role in peacekeeping and when John Kerry criticised Israel's West Bank wall. The intent was to shut off debate by making it clear that this issue was off limits.

The story, however, did not end here, because this is Iowa and Iowans take their politics seriously. While some complain that Iowa or New Hampshire, (the first primary state) are not representative of the rest of the nation, in fact, they are. Though most of Iowa's ethnic, racial and interest groups are small, they take their responsibilities seriously, knowing that they will get the chance to raise the issues and ask the questions that the rest of America needs to have answered.

And on most topics, Iowans have done their homework and can be quite sophisticated, including matters involving the Middle East.

Open letter

In fact, for two decades, Iowa's Democrats have overwhelmingly passed resolutions at their state conventions supporting a more balanced and compassionate US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And so, it is not surprising that this year, a group of Iowans responded to the effort to intimidate Senator Obama with an open letter signed by activists across the state.

The letter, urging the senator to stand his ground, read, in part: "We have noted with concern the harshness of criticism you have received.... Your campaign has been built around a new brand of politics that offers hope to Americans eager for courageous, moral leadership. We thank you for extending this approach to a conflict which has historically suffered from a lack of American vision, engagement, and leadership. As Iowans, we have long advocated a foreign policy that reflects America's values and commitment to justice and peace. Your compassion and support for the establishment of a Palestinian state and the security of Israel are consistent with the positions taken by Iowa citizens for many years."

It is important that this group of Iowans responded as they did because it would have been tragic if those debate had been silenced and there had been no thoughtful discussion of the US peace-making role in the Arab-Israeli conflict during this presidential contest.

Given the deep frustration with US policy that exists throughout the Middle East and given the clear need that both Israelis and Palestinians have in US leadership providing a steady and balanced hand in peacemaking efforts, it is vital that this issue be discussed and candidates and voters be able to air their views.

As I have noted before, since the end of the Vietnam War, every US president has had to expend significant political capital on Arab-Israeli peacemaking (even George W. Bush, after ignoring this issue for years, now realises how important this question is to the US role in the broader Middle East). It is, therefore, imperative that those who seek to lead the United States in the next four years be asked to engage in an open conversation with the American people about how they intend to conduct Middle East policy.

Finally, it is worth noting, as our polling has demonstrated, that despite the hardline and one-sided positions taken by some, most Americans, including most American Jews and Arab Americans, support a US policy that recognises the needs of both Israelis and Palestinians and works for a balanced resolution to their conflict.

My thanks, therefore, goes to Iowa's peace activists for challenging the candidates to talk about the Middle East and for sending a clear message that the openness to engage in a respectful conversation about the Middle East is what is so desperately needed in this presidential race.

Dr. James Zogby is President of the Arab American Institute and Senior Advisor at Zogby International.