Jun 26, 2008

Now let me be clear. Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper, but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state with secure, recognized, defensible borders. [Barack Obama, speaking before the American-Israel Public Affairs Committe (AIPAC), video excerpted on Democracy Now, June 18, 2008]

I think Barack Obama is in training to become panderer-in-chief. [Ralph Nader, speaking on Democracy Now, same day, in response to Obama's AIPAC speech]

We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything. [Barack Obama, video excerpt on Democracy Now, same day.]

The military-industrial complex and the politicians like Obama and McCain who support it—700 billion dollars, over half of the federal government's operating expenditure now is the military budget—are desperately looking for enemies, desperately exaggerating enemies. Iran has not invaded anybody in 250 years, yet it's obviously frightened. It's surrounded by the U.S. military, west, south, east, it's been labelled Axis of Evil by Bush who invaded Iraq after he labelled them Axis of Evil.... [Ralph Nader, ibid.]

A politician’s first duty is to get elected. And perhaps Obama believes the Palestinians’ security is as sacrosanct and non-negotiable as Israel’s, but he can’t say that before AIPAC. Perhaps Obama doesn’t believe it is within his power, absent a declaration of war by Congress, to drop a nuclear bomb, unilaterally, preemptively, and without provocation, on Iran. Despite the fact that our current president certainly believes it is within his power, and despite the fact that we have had dozens of executive branch military adventures since the last congressional declaration of war in 1941.

We will not vote for a warmonger. We will not vote for a politician who will continue the corporate hegemony that is destroying our liberty, our health, our country, and our planet. We will not vote for a candidate for whom the middle east is a black-and-white issue.

We believe Ralph Nader has a better opportunity to be responsible for putting McCain in the White House than he had for putting Bush there. And yet we cannot and will not vote for Barack Obama unless he convinces us that he will bring a paradigm shift to American politics if he is elected. Because if it is to be "business as usual" for the next eight years, it doesn't matter who is in the White House. We're finished, as a nation, as a world, and as a species.
tags: Politics | Nader | Obama

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