Now to evidentiary details:
Starting with the downgrading of the majesty of the Office of the President. It is impossible not to link between the constant attacks on Obama and his being black. Racism in the US is a cancer in that body politic since the introduction of slavery. Cures that have been developed, especially with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, have dealt with the outward symptoms, not with the roots.
Yes the Voting Rights Act was signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. But today, several States, called "red States" for being under Republican administrations, are chipping off at those rights. Measures intended to make it ever harder for minorities (Blacks and Latinos) to exercise those rights. The alarm bells sounded as of 2008. The percentage of whites eligible to vote in the presidential elections, won by Obama that year, was 66% of the aggregate voters. Guess what? Same percentage of Black and Latino voters who rushed to the polling stations to have a man of color win.
This trend had to be obstructed, so reasoned the GOP in several states. How could this be done without the appearance of violating the law? Under the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It is called the supremacy clause.
This is "The United States," 50 of them; a federal system, where the states have all powers except for a few. The few powers of the federal government are: to declare war, to collect taxes, to regulate interstate commerce, and others. Those "other" powers are listed. Whatever is not listed, belongs to the states.
As stated above, voting rights are governed by the 1965 Act. But how to exercise those rights is decided by the states. In order to make that exercise difficult, regardless of the principle of "equality before the law," the "red" states have been very busy: Gerrymandering of electoral districts, intended to unfairly secure disproportionate influence at elections for non-minorities. Shortening the hours for voting. Placing polling stations at geographically far locations. Requiring photo identification cards. Closing polling stations on Sunday.
Yet this is the heart of the democratic process. A process which the US is eager to have other countries adopt. Vigorously calling for "respect for the right of dissent."
Such roll back of minority rights is not a mere assertion of states rights. To understand its dimension in full must include the rejection by the neo-racists of the President. Never has a US President been more subjected to personal slurs and affronts by the right, the Tea party, the evangelists and Republicans. The list is endless and truly disgusting. More importantly, un-American.
Here are samples, and attribution to specific Republicans in search of nomination for the presidency in 2016:
- Marco Rubio: "The President has no class."
- Donald Trump: "I don't know who he is."
- Lindsey Graham: "I don't know whether he is Christian."
- Scott Walker: "I presume he is, because he says he is."
- Mitch Mc Connell: "We shall make sure that he is a one term President. (On Obama's inauguration day in January 2009).
- Ted Cruz: "He is the worst President in the history of the United States."
- A congressional member yelling at the President during his delivery of the State of the Union message: "You are a liar." Obama's restrained response: "Thank you."
How can such affronts to the present occupant of the Oval Office not be demeaning to the majesty of that Office? How can it not affect the credibility of the U.S. world-wide when its Head-of-State is called names (including, "he is a closet Muslim") as a civil polity? How can the principle of separation of powers, underpinned by constitutional checks and balances, maintain its efficacy in a system where the Republicans have shut down the federal government earlier. Now, they are threatening to do the same again.
Obama is also threatened by empty Congressional proposals for impeachment. Faced with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, he has resorted to using his constitutional instruments in defense of the executive branch. These are: his resort to issuance of executive orders, and of the use of his veto power. Yet as a constitutional scholar, he had sought these mechanisms sparingly.
Obama's signature accomplishment of the "Affordable Care Act" was challenged by this Republican Congress more than 40 times. Extending health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans, largely the poor and the elderly, it has been divisively called by his opponents "The Obama Care Act." All Republican aspirants to succeed Obama have pledged collapsing that historic Act as of "Day One in the Oval Office."
Same totally negative attitude towards Obama's repeated attempts to fix the broken system of immigration; of tax reform; of bank regulation, of income inequality, of education reform (an area reserved for the states), of gun control, and of reforming the criminal justice system.
Even the historic trade pact with Asia was about to be killed if not for a brief moment of bipartisan support. In Singapore, Secretary of State Kerry on August 5 voiced the obvious. "No country can expect its economy to grow simply by buying and selling to its own people."
More glaringly is Congressional blocking of Obama's attempts to close down Guantanamo. That is where more than a hundred Muslim detainees are still languishing in legal limbo since 9/11.
They are neither charged. Nor are they released. Several states of the U.S. do not want them loose in their neighborhood. And foreign States do not want them either, largely for reasons of radicalization through prolonged incarceration. An ugly relic of the party of war -the Republican Party, which has lurched into xenophobia since the criminal acts of destruction of 9/11.
Moving along into the area of foreign policy and its reflection on war and peace, one reaches the depth of Republican Party conversion. From the party of Lincoln, the great emancipator, to the party of endless wars. Especially in the Middle East.
It is well-known that sovereignty is an essential requirement for the ability of a State to conduct its own foreign policy. Thus the US Constitution has assigned to the President the following powers: "He shall have the Power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur."
Clear enough!! So let us examine the chaotic situation in Congress with regard to a present issue of war and peace in the Middle East. I am not referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where no sane leadership exists on either side: of Israel, a brutal occupier, with no regard for international law or common sense fairness. Nor on the side of the Palestinians, forever divided, habitually corrupt, and deeply committed to the falsehood of the UN creating their State for them, rather than the State, when in being, applying for UN membership.
I am examining the Iran nuclear deal where US sovereignty and Obama's commitment to disengaging America from the endless wars in the Muslim world are implicated.
Here we have a deal reflecting the coming together of 6 States with Iran's moderate leadership. A historic agreement, reached after 16 months of arduous negotiations. Its only goal is to prevent Iran from weaponizing its enriched uranium, and be rewarded with the lifting of sanctions and reintegration into the international community. Iran said "yes;" Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany said "yes." The UN Secretary Council, usually a dysfunctional body because of the veto, unanimously said "YES."
Not yet America: In US Congress, the deal has become the latest version of a football game with no rules. Here are the unbelievable details:
- The majority of both houses cried "foul." Claimed that Obama was "fleeced" (as per the Republican Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.) Even prior to digesting that 159 page report, they were asking for a better deal!!
- Obama, Secretary Kerry, and the great nuclear physicist, Moniz, Secretary of Energy, responded: (a) What is your "better deal;" (b) Your "disapproval" shall be vetoed by the President; (c) scuttling the deal will cause the sanctions regime to unravel; (d) Iran could be then forced to proceed to the development of a nuclear bomb; and (e) America's credibility is in the balance.
- Seventeen Republicans aspiring to occupy the Oval Office in 2017 gave these responses short shrift. Called the deal "an appeasement" a la Munich in 1938; considered war against Iran a viable option; bought into the Netanyahu alarmist propaganda that the deal was an existential threat, not only to Israel, but to the whole world.
Then came Obama's definitive response to these falsehoods. In his historic speech at American University in Washington, D.C. on August 5, Obama reminded the Republican Party of its horrific war misadventures in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Against the calls of out-of-control war-crazed John Bolton of "bomb Iran now," the President chuckled in derisive amazement: "Those people were wrong yesterday. They are wrong today." The party of war, bereft of any logical response, began to froth at the mouth:
- "The U.S. has become the main supporter of terrorism" -said Senator Ted Cruz;
- "Obama is marching the Israelis to the door of the oven." -said former Governor Mike Huckabee;
- "This is the worst President the U.S. has ever seen." -said Donald Trump.
With money pouring in for daily ads against the deal with Iran, the opposition had two very powerful backers. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United" which considered money gifted to electoral candidates as a form of "free speech." And AIPAC (the American Israeli Political Action Committee). AIPAC is funding "Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran" which is planning to spend $25 million to defeat that historic deal. Of course there is no likelihood of "Citizens for a Nuclear Free Israel."
As the President met with 20 leaders of Jewish groups to win their support, Netanyahu had a packaged response to Obama's arguments about "no alternative other than war." In blatant interference in US sovereign decisions, Israeli's Prime Minister called Obama's arguments as "utterly false."
For these reasons, the "Grand Old Party" deserves my grand contempt. The President of the US is the constitutional manager of America's foreign affairs. Israel is a foreign power, regardless of the degree of its strategic relationships with the US.
I have not seen Obama pursuing Israel in regard to ending its colonist settlerism in Palestinian territories. By the same same token, Israel should have no legitimate business in interfering blatantly in US sovereign decisions regarding what defines America's national interests.
Nothing in the annals of diplomacy is found to permit the Israeli ambassador to America to openly delve into an internal conflict between Congress and the President. Were it the Ambassador of, say, Turkey (a NATO ally of the US), he or she would have been promptly thrown out as persona non grata.
In his speech on August 5 at American University, the US President reminded the Republican hordes of their lying to the country as they led it to the disastrous war in Iraq. Without mincing his words, he bluntly chided their unending beating of the war drums. Said he: "Many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal."
But AIPAC's director of communication, Marshall Wittman, responded to President Obama on the same day. Lying through his teeth, he said: "To remove any misinformation or confusion, AIPAC took no position whatsoever on the Iraq war."
Then, parroting his real Master's Voice (Netanyahu's), he felt obliged to insult the American President in nearly the same words. So Wittman added: "This is an entirely false and misleading argument." This is not mere lobbying. This is being "an agent of a foreign power -Israel."
Watching the first televised Republican debate among the 17 Republican aspirants for the presidential office on August 6, I turned off that miserable show with one impression: Truly pathetic!! Felt even sorrier for America when Michele Bachman, standing on the sidelines, was interviewed.
Though she was not one of the 17, Bachman seemed to speak for all of them in regard to the Iran deal. Her insane solution was: "Bomb Iran now because the window of opportunity is fast closing." Bachman, the queen of Islamophobia in the U.S. had claimed that God speaks to her!!
Does she have a private God who also communicates with other select Republican war lords like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld? Two unindicted war criminals, afraid to leave the US for fear of being bagged to the Hague to stand trial before the International Criminal Court.
Isn't America's sovereignty worthy of support?!
In the avalanche of these acrimonious diatribes, it is uplifting to discover some sane voices. Particularly those issuing from American Jewish leaders. In a letter to the Editor of the New York Times of August 7, one such voice said: "I believe that Netanyahu's address to American Jews on Tuesday (August 4) and his in person speech to Congress in March were wholly inappropriate, insulting to the American president and people, and constituted an intrusion by a foreign leader into American domestic politics."
The author of that letter added: "It is up to the United States to make a decision on this deal on its merits." Well said, Mr. Seymour Reich, former Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Is America's sovereignty for sale?
What we have in America today is nothing other than a power grab by Congress of presidential prerogatives; a distortion by money and lobbyists of the popular will through fair national elections, and the demeaning spectacle of a foreign power jumping over the high fence of American sovereignty to subvert an international deal seen by the Obama Administration as in the best interest of the American people and of world peace. Let each State define by itself, and for itself, the requirements of its own security.
Yes, American sovereignty matters!!
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