There is an emerging parallel between President John F. Kennedy and President Obama. The recent negotiations with the Russians over Syria make a good case that Obama has been waiting for his second term to make significant progress in American foreign policy.
Let’s start with Kennedy; even respected icons of the “left elite” like Noam Chomsky have labeled Kennedy an unremitting cold warrior. Chomsky even said that it didn’t really matter if there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Obviously there was, and we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of that event.
In “JFK And The Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters”, James W. Douglass has described in great detail how Kennedy actually had back-channel communications with both Russian President Khrushchev and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Douglass provides dialogue of transcripts with both leaders. In the case of Khrushchev, both he and Kennedy describe how the military has their backs against the wall-pushing and pushing for a nuclear showdown which neither leader wanted. With Castro, Kennedy had journalists and agents meeting their Cuban counterparts both on Cuban soil and cocktail parties of the D.C. elite. Clearly, Kennedy was a new generation thinker who ran afoul of “The military-industrial complex”. His goal was to avert World War Three and his National Security memos demonstrate he intended to pull advisors and troops out of Vietnam.
Flash-forward to President Obama. Obama has also been labeled as a militarist due to his drone strike program. That is a legitimate criticism. He’s also taken the brunt of recent NSA spy revelations, something that has actually been going on for years.
But now we see Obama in his second term, with no election battle in front of him. His health care system is now part of his legacy, and he begins moving other chess pieces into place.
Most recently, the crisis over poison gas used in Syria (who deployed it is disputed) has the John McCain far right-wing types going nuts to start bombing somebody. All this while they accuse Obama of beating the war drums – as a possible angle for impeachment.
Turning the matter over to a do-nothing Congress (the Republican House) was a brilliant Constitutional move that bought him some time. Obama has done an end-run around the neo-cons. After Secretary of State John Kerry floated a trial balloon regarding Syria turning over all poison gas weapons to international authorities, the Russians stepped up in full agreement. Diplomacy won over war-mongering, putting the American right-wing into a dizzying tailspin.
Remember back in 2012 when a microphone recorded Obama and Russian President Medvedev? Here is the transrcript from ABC News:
President Obama Asks Medvedev for ‘Space’ on Missile Defense — ‘After My Election I Have More Flexibility’
(Excerpts)
Mar 26, 2012 6:17amSEOUL, South Korea — At the tail end of his 90 minute meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev Monday, President Obama said that he would have “more flexibility” to deal with controversial issues such as missile defense, but incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to give him “space.”
The exchange was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room for remarks by the two leaders.
The exchange:
President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
When asked to explain what President Obama meant, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes told ABC News that there is room for the U.S. and Russia to reach an accommodation, but “there is a lot of rhetoric around this issue — there always is — in both countries.
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That precious little moment also drove the right-wing bat-shit crazy. But it demonstrates that Obama would chose diplomacy over war talk, and was seeking “space” until after his second election.
Now, in today’s news we see that Obama has also been in back-channel contact with the newly elected leader in Iran. From Raw Story:
Obama on Iran’s new president: ‘There is an opportunity here for diplomacy’
By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, September 17, 2013 20:58 EDT
(Excerpts)
U.S. President Barack Obama pledged Tuesday to test the sincerity of signs that new Iranian President Hassan Rowhani may be ready for a newly productive nuclear dialogue with the West.
Days after revealing he and Rowhani had swapped letters, Obama however said that Iran would have to demonstrate its own seriousness by agreeing not to “weaponize nuclear power.”
“There is an opportunity here for diplomacy,” Obama said in an interview with the Spanish language television network Telemundo.
“I hope the Iranians take advantage of it. There are indications that Rowhani, the new president, is somebody who is looking to open dialogue with the West and with the United States — in a way that we haven’t seen in the past.
“And so we should test it,” Obama said.
Hopes for a new round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers expected to resume soon were boosted earlier Tuesday by cryptic remarks by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei, who bears ultimate responsibility for the nuclear issue, said that sometimes flexibility was necessary in diplomacy.
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There is something that the liberal left needs to remember: the national-security-state is more powerful than any one President. The death of President Kennedy at the hands of the military industrial complex proves that, and it is something Obama is keenly aware of. According to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Obama has already tread on the specter of assassination:
Obama told friends he reneged on progressive promises out of fear of assassination — former CIA analyst
Philip Weiss on June 3, 2013
(Excerpts)
Ratner then said, “I represent Guantanamo people. I thought the biggest lie in the speech was—’I have tried to close Guantanamo.’” There are half a dozen ways in which Obama “has actually sabotaged the closing of Guantanamo. Straight lie.”
McGovern responded:
Which leads to the question, why would he do all these things? Why would he be afraid for example, to take the drones away from the CIA? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s afraid. Number one, he’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, “Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for?” Obama turned sharply and said, “Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?” That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote.
The other thing is, I’ve always been kind of shocked that when he came into office, not only did he not prosecute the torturers, the kidnapers, the people with the black [unintelligible], even the people who violated our Fourth Amendment rights, but he left them all in place. I suspected at the time, now I’m pretty convinced the president of the United States is afraid of the CIA. That’s why he got John Brennan in place. He thinks John Brennan owes more personal loyalty to him than all those other thugs out there who did the torture and so forth. That’s a questionable thing. But Obama thinks that. And that’s why he fought so hard so that Brennan would be in place.
Now does he have any reason to fear the CIA? Well he sure as heck does. For those of your listeners who have not read James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable, you need to read that, because it’s coming up on 50 years. The mystery has not been solved in the mainstream press. After reading James Douglass, who took advantage of all the previous studies, plus all the more recent information released by Congress, I’m convinced that John Kennedy was assassinated largely by Allan Dulles whom he cashiered as the head of the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, and a coterie of joint chiefs of staff, FBI, even some Secret Service folks who thought that JFK was being soft on Communism by back channel communications with Krushchev, that he was playing games with Fidel Castro…to repair the relationship, and worst of all he was giving Southeast Asia to the Communists. Now is there evidence for this? There sure as heck is. John Kennedy signed two executive orders just a month or so before he was killed. One of them said we’re pulling out 1000 troops out of South Vietnam by the end of the year, the year being 1963. The other said we’re going to pull out the bulk of the troops by 1965, we’re finished in Vietnam. That’s a matter of record. Was that a unanimous decision? Well if you say the president makes a one person decision, you know it’s unanimous. Everybody else thought he was crazy, especially the joint chiefs of staff.”
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I have no intention of letting Obama off the hook for policy I might not agree with, such as drone strikes and NSA spying. But how much of this is in his control is what we must consider.
All we can do is lobby our Representatives to push him in the right direction, a path he may already be on.
And like former Russian President Medvedev, we should “give him some space”.
Obama is a product of military-industrial complex with families long assoceation with CIA. He is in box with no way out