| Obama, McCain the Same on Military, Foreign Policy 
By Ralph Nader
The three so-called presidential debates—really
parallel interviews by reporters chosen by the Obama and McCain campaigns—are
over and they are remarkable for two characteristics—convergence and avoidance. A remarkable similarity between McCain and Obama
on foreign and military policy kept enlarging as Obama seemed to enter into a
clinch with McCain each time McCain questioned his inexperience or softness or
using military force.
If anyone can detect a difference between the two
candidates regarding belligerence toward Iran and Russia, more U.S. soldiers
into the quagmire of Afghanistan (next to Pakistan), kneejerk support of the
Israeli military oppression, brutalization and colonization of the Palestinians
and their shrinking lands, keeping soldiers and bases in Iraq, despite Obama’s
use of the word “withdrawal,” and their desire to enlarge an already bloated,
wasteful military budget which already consumes half of the federal
government’s operating expenses, please illuminate the crevices between them.
This past spring, the foreign affairs reporters,
not columnists, for The New York Times and The Washington Post concluded that
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are advancing foreign and military policies
similar to those adopted by George W. Bush in his second term.
Where then is the “hope” and “change” from the
junior Senator from Illinois?
Moreover, both Obama and McCain want more nuclear
power plants, more coal production, and more offshore oil drilling. Our
national priority should be energy efficient consumer technologies (motor
vehicles, heating, air conditioning and electric systems) and renewable energy
such as wind, solar and geothermal.
Both support the gigantic taxpayer funded Wall
Street bailout, without expressed amendments. Both support the notorious
Patriot Act, the revised FISA act which opened the door to spy on Americans
without judicial approval, and Obama agrees with McCain in vigorously opposing
the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
What about avoidance? Did you see them speak about
a comprehensive enforcement program to prosecute corporate crooks in the midst
of the greatest corporate crime wave in our history? Did you see them allude to
doing anything about consumer protection (credit card gouging, price of
medicines, the awful exploitation and deprivation of the people in the inner
city) and the ripoffs of buyers in ever more obscure and inescapable ways?
Wasn’t it remarkable how they never mentioned the
poor, and only use the middle class when they refer to “regular people?” There
are one hundred million poor people and children in this nation and no one in
Washington, D.C. associates Senator Obama, much less John McCain, with any
worthy program to treat the abundant poverty-related injustices.
What about labor issues? Worker health and safety,
pensions looted and drained, growing permanent unemployment and
underemployment, and outsourcing more and more jobs to fascists and communist
dictatorships are not even on the peripheries of the topics covered in the
debates.
When I was asked my opinion about who won the
debates, I say they were not debates. But I know what won and what lost. The
winners were big business, bailouts for Wall Street, an expansionary NATO, a
boondoggle missile defense program, nuclear power, the military-industrial
complex and its insatiable thirst for trillions of taxpayer dollars, for
starters.
What lost was peace advocacy, international law,
the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement, taxpayers, consumers, Africa
and We the People.
The language of avoidance to address and challenge
corporate power is spoken by both McCain and Obama, though interestingly
enough, McCain occasionally uses words like “corporate greed” to describe his
taking on the giant Boeing tanker contract with the Pentagon.
Funded by beer, tobacco, auto and telecommunications
companies over the years, the corporation known as the Commission on
Presidential Debates features only two corporate-funded candidates, excludes
all others and closes off a major forum for smaller candidates, who are on a
majority of the states, to reach tens of millions of voters.
In the future, this theatre of the absurd can be
replaced with a grand coalition of national and local citizen groups who,
starting in March, 2012 lay out many debates from Boston
to San Diego,
rural, suburban and urban, summon the presidential candidates to public
auditoriums to react to the peoples’ agendas.
Can the Democratic and Republican nominees reject
this combination of labor, neighborhood, farmer, cooperative, veteran’s,
religious, student, consumer and good government with tens of millions of
members? It will be interesting to see what happens if they do or if they do
not.
Ralph Nader is running for president as an independent. Click here to visit his web site.
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