In the US left capitalism is using the rabidly militaristic Bush regime as a rallying cry to mobilize massive layers of the population behind a more articulate voice for American imperialism. Barack Obama, who is nothing more than a replacement hood ornament on the machine of American capitalism. One that is far more polished and palatable to the capitalist class than the current occupant of the White House, whose sole claim to enter into political life was based on the fact that he owned a baseball team and was well connected to his fellow capitalists.

The Democratic Party's pro-war record is undeniable. As is Obama's record in support of the war, through his votes in favor of massive war appropriations, for both the war in Iraq and the more nebulous "War on Terror". By giving his yes vote to Senate Congressional Resolution 70, House Resolution 4156, House Resolution 1591 and, House Resolution 4297, he has voted in favor of some $3.8 trillion dollars in war spending. ⁽¹⁾

On April 27, on the Fox News Sunday program, Obama announced his support for General Petraeus continuing to lead the war in the event of Obama's election. Furthermore, Obama won't "rule out" the use of mercenaries in Iraq. Obama has proposed simply that they be accountable to US law. ⁽²⁾

As we have seen from military criminal prosecutions in cases such as the Haditha Massacre or the exposure of abuses at Abu Ghraib, accountability means the people on the bottom get punished while the officers and politicians order the crimes. No winner in this election will end the use of mercenaries in Iraq as this would require the recruiting and vetting of thousands of new government contractors. The US embassy in Baghdad is set to be the largest most heavily staffed embassy in the world and its security can't be maintained solely by the US armed forces. Nor would our capitalists want to do so. Groups like DynCorp, Triple Canopy, and Blackwater only stand to see their share of US military dollars increase in the event of withdrawals from Iraq of regular US military forces. Barack Obama, the most likely future occupant of the White House, who writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, tells us:

Throughout the Middle East, we must harness American power to reinvigorate American diplomacy. Tough-minded diplomacy, backed by the whole range of instruments of American power - political, economic, and military - could bring success even when dealing with long-standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria. Our policy of issuing threats and relying on intermediaries to curb Iran's nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and regional aggression is failing. Although we must not rule out using military force, we should not hesitate to talk directly to Iran. Our diplomacy should aim to raise the cost for Iran of continuing its nuclear program by applying tougher sanctions and increasing pressure from its key trading partners. The world must work to stop Iran's uranium-enrichment program and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is far too dangerous to have nuclear weapons in the hands of a radical theocracy. At the same time, we must show Iran - and especially the Iranian people - what could be gained from fundamental change: economic engagement, security assurances, and diplomatic relations. Diplomacy combined with pressure could also reorient Syria away from its radical agenda to a more moderate stance - which could, in turn, help stabilize Iraq, isolate Iran, free Lebanon from Damascus' grip, and better secure Israel. ⁽³⁾

With statements like these coming from one of the possible future leaders of the US republic, a war with Iran is inevitable, and so is the fact that the left will be the ones that help put the leaders who start this war in power, by participating in this electoral circus. In this context it is not surprising that Obama makes populist and nationalist statements against NAFTA while one of his handlers was assuring a nervous Canadian government that it was all just campaign rhetoric. Whether attempting to convince workers in front of the GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin that he represents "Change we can believe in", or the Hershey plant in Hershey, Pennsylvania, we are given a populist message, against NAFTA and "for" American jobs, in the nationalist protectionist sense that the Democratic Party loves playing to during election years.

A generation of young workers has grown up thinking, under the Bush regime and the internecine political warfare between Democratic and Republican factions of the bourgeoisie, that the Democrats are different and thus better than the Republicans. They have been taught to confuse their own class interests with the interests of a faction of the capitalist class. In doing so, they have been led into giving a mandate of support for imperialist conflict, issued by a more articulate capitalist voice for imperialist slaughter. What appeared first as a golden moment for the Democrats to take power in all branches of the government is shaping up to be like a rerun of the 1992 election, where Bill Clinton was groomed and picked for power in order to head a largely GOP controlled legislature and judiciary.

Workers have been subjected to their own political negation for far too long. These "progressive" democrats have presided over the destruction of public education in all major urban areas of the US. These same Democrats have been partners in turning the US into the most imprisoned society on earth, one that reserves the harshest criminal punishments for the poorest and most exploited layers of society, the result in large part from the underground capitalist drug economy. These same Democrats stood up and clapped when the "War on Terror" was initiated. Municipal Democratic Party administrations have overseen the monetary starvation of the US public schools. If capitalists in the US saw a financial purpose behind educating these children they would do so, they do not do so because working class children have no future outside of prisons and insecure low-wage labor. The task that presents itself most clearly to an articulate bourgeois like Obama, is to stabilize and preserve US capitalism and its imperialist power from the unprecedented debacle of what was a bi-partisan bourgeois war in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no useful purpose in supporting or reforming this regime any longer, they are the butchers of Fallujah and Tal Afar. They are the racist bourgeois scum who left masses of proletarians to die in the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina. A racist capitalist system will not change by putting a new face on the administration. The options for workers in the US are to once again attempt to alter or reform the course of American capitalism, or to work towards its destruction. To avoid a repetition of the failures of the past necessitates a move beyond the tactics and ideas of the bourgeois left in the US as it progresses into a state of total senile infantilism dying in the belly of the Democratic Party - an animate corpse running anti-war organizations and unions with no more purpose or objective than to be good citizens and wait for the next election.

(1) See Obama's voting record at Project Vote Smart votesmart.org .

(2) Scahill, Jeremy. Obama's Mercenary Position. The Nation. Vol. 286. No. 10, March 17, 2008.

(3) Obama, Barack. Renewing American Leadership. Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations July/August 2007 foreignaffairs.org .