Jacqueline Marcus: Cheney & Rumsfeld Are Still Running the War, The Wall Street Boys Get Rich

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
by Jacqueline Marcus

Last night, I watched HBO's documentary "By The People: The Election Of Barack Obama" and it reminded me of the millions of hard-working Democrats who devoted their time, work, and effort to Obama's campaign. We all did our share, and we all had our share of crying. I certainly cried when Obama stood up and spoke for us, the ones who were perpetually censored and silenced during the darkest years of this nation's history. It was a catharsis, a revolution, a mass movement of millions of people across the country who were suddenly lifted by a light of unity and great expectations. The film reminds us of how women and men of all ages were willing to wait in long lines that stretched around blocks as far as the eye could see to vote for Obama. To witness all those young people, white, black and brown faces -- all together -- holding hands, it was the most beautiful sight I've seen in the making of history. The campaign, alone, had brought people of all colors and ethnic backgrounds, rich and poor, together.

Make no mistake about it: this HBO film was more about the hard-working, devoted citizens, mostly young, intelligent students, who gave up two years of their lives to work endlessly on Obama's campaign than it was about Obama, the politician. He was and is indeed our last hope for the future generation.

But in a symbolic gesture, the ending of the documentary was all too prophetic. The minute after Obama got the news that he'd won, that he was elected by the People to be their President of the United States, right after the call was made, in walked the "high-heeled boys," the Suits, to Obama's room, and then the door Slammed Shut on the camera:

Meaning: The End of Public Access… as the cheering crowds and the cheering people who gave their hearts, minds and souls to Obama's campaign, who literally got him elected, faded in the distance with the bright balloons and confetti.

A year has passed and everyone is asking the same question: If Obama wanted to stop the corruption, if he promised CHANGE, then why did he select the same hired hands that have been running the war under the Bush Administration and the same hired hands from Wall Street that have both bankrupted the treasury from all sides?

You can judge a President by his advisers.

Once again, the people are locked out, the students, the jobless, the environmentalists, while a revolving door opened to perhaps the worse advisers that Obama could have chosen.

The close ties between Rumsfeld, Cheney, Gates, and Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, says it all. We know where they all stand on the invasion of Afghanistan. General McChrystal is Obama's key adviser on the question of sending more troops to Afghanistan. Regarding the association between McChrystal, Rumsfeld, and Cheney, McChrystal headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees such elite units as the Army's Delta Force and the Navy SEALs.

The New Yorker's investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, recently described the "JSOC as an 'executive assassination wing' controlled for many years by the office of former Vice President Dick Cheney…" Hersh called JSOC "a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. ... They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office…Congress has no oversight of it... It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on."

Consider, for example, Afghanistan's worst civilian casualty incidents:

Troops from the U.S. Marines Corps' Special Operations Command, or MarSOC, were responsible for calling in air strikes in Bala Boluk, in Farah, believed to have killed more than 140 men, women and children - as well as two other incidents in 2007 and 2008. News of MarSOC's involvement in the three incidents comes just days after a Special Forces expert, Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal, was named to take over as the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. His surprise appointment has prompted speculation that commando counterinsurgency missions will increase in the battle to beat the Taliban.

MarSOC was created three years ago on the express orders of Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. defense secretary at the time, despite opposition from within the Marine Corps and the wider Special Forces community. An article in the Marine Corps Times described the MarSOC troops as "cowboys" who brought shame on the corps. ("Rumsfeld's Renegade Unit Blamed for Afghan Deaths"; Jerome Starkey; 5-16-09)

We didn't have General Stanley McChrystal in mind when we voted for Obama, for change. McChrystal is Cheney and Rumsfeld's right arm.

There's an old saying about D.C. politics: it's not the people you see who are running the show, it's the people you DON'T see who are running the show. It's not what they say that counts, it's what they DON'T say.

No one sees Donald Rumsfeld these days, but indubitably, he's actively involved in covert, CIA missions regarding Afghanistan-Iraq, and wherever Rumsfeld goes, so too goes Dick Cheney. They're best friends. They bought homes together on the Potomac. They have no plans of retiring. They're permanent fixtures. From Reagan to Bush to Cheney, these war profiteers have controlled the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Military for nearly a century. According to The Washington Times, Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "has left the Pentagon, but not the Defense Department. On Jan. 4, Mr. Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, a Pentagon official said.

The Pentagon lists Mr. Rumsfeld as a 'nonpaid consultant,' a status he needs in order to review secret and top-secret documents, the official said.

Rumsfeld has brought with him close adviser Stephen Cambone, a fierce advocate of the Iraq war and the chief planner of questionable interrogation tactics at military and CIA detention sites around the world.

Rumsfeld's new office is reportedly raising eyebrows at the Pentagon:

The Pentagon official said former secretaries are entitled to a transition office to sort papers, some of which can be taken with them for a library, for archives or to write a book.

The transition office has raised some eyebrows inside the Pentagon. Some question the size of the staff, which includes two military officers and two enlisted men. They also ask why the sorting could not have been done from the time Mr. Rumsfeld resigned Nov. 8 to when he left the building Dec. 18."

Should we be surprised that there have been no war crime investigations, let alone prosecutions?

When President Obama asks Gates and McChrystal for recommendations, you can be sure that the advice they're giving comes directly from Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Likewise, when President Obama is advised by Summers and Geithner, you can be sure that the proposal is coming directly from the Wall Street banksters that raided our public treasury, a gold-mine of bonuses for Wall St. tycoons.

You can judge a President by his advisers.

As Glenn Greenwald reported in his Salon.com article: "Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's Ownership of Government":

"Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama's top economic advisers, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw over the past year and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations. . . .

Financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch paid Summers for speaking appearances in 2008. Fees ranged from $45,000 for a Nov. 12 Merrill Lynch appearance to $135,000 for an April 16 visit to Goldman Sachs, according to his disclosure form.

That's $135,000 paid by Goldman Sachs to Summers -- for a one-day visit. And the payment was made at a time -- in April 2008 -- when everyone assumed that the next President would either be Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and that Larry Summers would therefore become exactly what he now is: the most influential financial official in the U.S. Government (and the $45,000 Merrill Lynch payment came 8 days after Obama's election)."

Holly Sklar summarized the conflict of interest in her review aptly titled: "Change Wall Street Can Believe In":

"Enabled by the Bush and Obama administrations, the mega-banks are lending less and gambling more -- using taxpayer money to pay bonuses, float a new stock market bubble and make even riskier bets…Outside the TARP, trillions of dollars are flowing to the banksters in the form of near-zero interest loans, bond guarantees and extreme leverage for toxic assets. (You can follow the money at www.nomiprins.com . Nomi Prins, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, is author of "It Takes a Pillage"…) Behind their Main Street rhetoric, Congress and the Obama administration have so far been the change Wall Street can believe in. The administration and Federal Reserve are loaded with revolving door Wall Streeters and their proteges. Campaign donors and lobbyists are working Congress to minimize and distort reform."

It's as if Obama's war and economic advisors took him aside, arms wrapped around his shoulder, and whispered: "You just keep showing that humane face to the public and keep giving those inspirational speeches…We'll take it from here…

And the thing that you're hearing is only the sound
Of the low spark of high-heeled boys…

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

Jacqueline Marcus' book of poems, Close to the Shore, was published by Michigan State University Press. She is a regular guest contributor to BuzzFlash.com. She taught philosophy at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, California, and is the editor of http://www.ForPoetry.com. She is currently promoting green technologies (solar & wind) on the island of Maui. www.GoSolarMaui.com. She is currently working on a new book: Corporate Media and the Erosion of a Civil Society.

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