Why Barack Obama is the Lesser of Two Evils, Part II

We previously discussed the reasons why John McInsane himself is the number one reason why Barack Obama is the lesser of two evils. Almost anyone would be the lesser of two evils when compared to that ghastly, war-mongering poltroon from Arizona. I can't think of many benchmarks lower than better-than-McInsane. Despite that, Barack Obama has a couple things to recommend himself. Not that I plan to vote for him. I could see voting for him if I lived in a so-called "swing state," and I wouldn't criticize anyone who made such a choice. But I think we can do better than the lesser of two evils. More on that later.

The first reason why Obama actually stands out as better than McInsane (leaving aside the fact that Barack Obama does not come across as an unstable lunatic) is that he does not appear to have any enthusiasm for taking our nation into an unnecessary and potentially quite disastrous war against Iran. In the Fall of 2002, when he was still a member of the Illinois state senate, he loudly condemned those Democratic members of the U.S. Senate (such as a certain Mrs. Clinton from New York) who voted with all but one Republican (the Hon. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, to give credit where it is due), in order to authorize the use of force against Iraq. He also (unlike Senator Clinton) voted against the ridiculous Senate Resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be a "terrorist organization."

Whatever one many think of Iran and its government (and I, for one, would argue its not quite the same irrational gang of lunatics we perceived it to be back in 1979; the Ayatollah Khomeini has been dead for 22 years now, and all revolutions moderate over time, besides which, the Shi'ite Muslims of Iran are a very different kettle of fish as compared to the Sunni Wahhabist nutjobs of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province/Waziristan, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, although there will be plenty of time for me to write on that subject later), the simple fact of the matter is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are a fully legal and incorporated segment of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran. To declare them to be "terrorists" would be no different than if North Korea declared the United States Marine Corps to be a "terrorist organization." Both claims are patently absurd. And the clear and obvious purpose behind that Senate Resolution was (and is) a neo-"conservative" plot to legitimize a war against the so-called "terrorists" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Resolution passed, so it may still be used in the closing months of the Bush/Cheney administration, but it stands Senator Obama in excellent stead that he chose to vote against it. If he becomes President next year, he can be relied upon to ignore it, unlike John McInsane, who was one of its principal backers in the Senate.

That, to me, is Barack Obama's signature appeal ie., if he becomes President, we probably won't have to go to war with Iran, while if he does not, we almost certainly will. And contrary to what many people seem to believe, Iran is not some weak, primitive country like we'd turned Iraq into during the 1991 war. Iran has a very sophisticated network of surface-to-surface missiles intended to do one thing, and one thing only: Destroy our naval vessels in the Persian Gulf. In the last two war games conducted by the Pentagon, Iran won. I'm not even kidding. In both war games, conducted over the last 3-4 years, they sunk our Aircraft Carrier. In the most recent war game in particular, it was just one of 16 U.S. Naval vessels they sunk in the first 24 hours of the war! Estimated deaths were well over 5,000. That's over 20 percent more guys dead in the very first day, then in almost five-and-a-half years of war in Iraq! And I must ask you, for what?

The CIA doesn't even believe Iran is building nuclear weapons. And even if they are, they won't have any for another ten years. I'd just as soon no country have nuclear weapons, but as long as that genie is out of the bottle, we have to learn to live with it, and to behave rationally in accordance to the conditions which actually prevail. And the fact of the matter is that Pakistan, a much more unstable and militant regime by any reasonable standards, has had nuclear weapons since at least 1998, and probably going back all the way to the 1980s. Its an imperfect situation, I'll grant, but its one we've been able to live with. And if the cost of going to war to prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club is arguably the single most disastrous U.S. military defeat of all time (which is exactly what the loss of our of our Aircraft Carriers would be; 5,000 men is more than we lost at Pearl Harbor, too), then I suggest the price is much too high. If the human race is going to survive and prosper in the future, we need to be smart. And attacking Iran just isn't smart. That's a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem, and like breaking an egg with a sledge hammer, it will cause more problems than it could ever hope to solve.

So again, that's one pretty solid reason to hope for an Obama victory in November.

But there's another. And Obama's supporters in the Democratic Party aren't going to like it.

Its called "backlash." You remember when Bill Clinton first became President, and tried to govern this country as a liberal Democrat, and basically shot himself in the foot so many times he was hobbling around on bloody stumps (so to speak)? Remember that incredible reaction in 1994, when not only did both Houses of Congress switch from Democrat to Republican (for the first time in 40 years), but all across America, Governors, Lieutenant Governors, State Treasurers, and entire State Legislatures themselves, some of whom had been under the control of the Democrats since before the Civil War, were swept away in a whirlwind of Republican electoral triumph? And two years later, Patrick J. Buchanan, the closest thing we had to Ron Paul in the 1990s, nearly took the Republican Presidential nomination away from tired, old, conventional Bob Dole (he came a lot closer than Ron Paul did, I'm afraid). Why do you suppose that happened?

It was the inevitable backlash against any liberal Democratic President. The Republicans lost the Congress in 2006, and if they lose the White House in 2008, they're going to be in disarray, and ready for someone (probably not Ron Paul; I suspect he's too advanced in years at this stage to make another run) to move in and reclaim that party for authentic, patriotic, Constitutional conservatism. Think about it: Bill Clinton was a Southern White Governor with a "moderate" political image during the 1992 Presidential election, and yet he inspired the biggest electoral backlash we've seen since the Great Depression nearly destroy the Republican Party in the elections of 1930 and 1932. Now think about Barack Hussein Obama. Nice fellow, but he's the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate according to various bodies which rate these things (such as Americans for Demcratic Action), he'll be coming into office as a potentially catastrophic economic and currency crisis looms, in the midst of an unpopular war that he either won't be able to end at all, or will end on conditions not seen as favorable to the United States (I tend to agree with the generic pacifists that we should just get out of Iraq ASAP, but where I disagree with the generic pacifist perspective is their cherished belief that all the predictions about Iraq disintegrating into a civil war, and being taken over by a regime hostile to our country is just so much militaristic propaganda; on the contrary, that's EXACTLY what's going to happen - I just happen to be one of the relatively few people willing to acknowledge that reality, and say well, let's do it anyway). So he'll be facing twin disasters on the economic and foreign policy fronts, while at the same time being the most liberal President in American history, plus the added bonus that he's a Black dude with a foreign-sounding name. Now I like to think I'm a little too sophisticated to hold a fellow's name against him, or likewise the fact his daddy was born in Kenya, and you probably are too, but not everyone is quite so open-minded as we are. This is America, remember, not Canada, Sweden, or New Zealand. And people are going to be pissed. And if you think 1994 was a big deal, wait'll you see 2010.

And after 2010, comes 2012. The Democrats are liable to renominate Obama, but the Republican candidate is likely to be cut from a very different cloth as opposed to corporate cyphers like Bush, McInsane, Cheney, Romney, Dole, etc. Whether he'll be more on the libertarian, Ron Paul/Barry Goldwater right, or the populist Patrick Buchanan/Ross Perot right, remains to be seen. My guess is, he'll be something of a fusion of both tendencies, a sort of big tent for the Angry White Male, if you will. He might not even be a Republican at all. He might be an independent, or the leader of some new political party born of the turmoil and troubles we're likely to see irrespective of who wins the next Presidential election. One thing is for damn sure, his arrival will be very welcome indeed to those of us who have already become disgusted with the last twenty years or Bush/Clinton/Bush rule.

Barack Obama said he's going to bring change to America, and he is. Boy, oh, boy, is he ever! He's going bring change BIG-TIME!

Just not quite the change he and his liberal supporters are presently envisioning (although I imagine we'll win a few of them over to our cause in 2012 too).

--Jake Featherston