“A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them, since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind and in fleeing them the cowardice of the heart.”-- Pietro Aretino, 1525
Those of you that read my “Corrections Officer Interview” would know I’m a staunch advocate of abolishing the death penalty. FYI: According to Amnesty International, 135 countries have abolished the death penalty. The US isn’t among them. The US is the only industrialized nation that still uses the death penalty.
While this post takes up yesterday’s Supreme Court’s decision barring the death penalty for the rape of a child, its larger purpose is to outline my politics. While everyone knows how I feel about Bush, it should not be assumed that I’m what some conservatives call a “Kool-Aid Drinker” (someone who blindly follows the Democrat’s ideology without questioning their specific policies). As most of you know I’m far to the left of the kind of liberalism that now passes for the Democratic platform. With this in mind, I want to examine some of what I consider to be Barack Obama’s positions on key political issues.
THE DEATH PENALTY
Regarding the Court’s decision, according to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, there is “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, “ even “devastating” crimes like the rape of a child (Linda Greenhouse NYT, 6/26/08). Given that there were over 5000 reported rapes of children under 12 in 2005 alone, Kennedy concluded that, “we have no confidence that the imposition of the death penalty would not be so arbitrary as to be freakish.” He went on to say, “we cannot sanction this result when the harm to the victim, though grave, cannot be quantified in the same way as death of the victim.”
Recalling Thurgood Marshall’s admonition that “the death penalty is racist, unfair to the poor and mentally retarded, and often ends in the state sanctioned murder of innocents,” here’s some facts: over 113 people on death row have been exonerated since 1973; 68% of the death penalty convictions between 1973-1995 were reversed; and Capital punishment is applied to a higher percentage of minorities than whites.
According to Human Rights Watch, since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, at least 35 people with mental retardation were executed in the US. The exact number is not known; experts believe 200-300. Because of their mental retardation, they do not understand what they did wrong and cannot comprehend the punishment that awaits them. While they have the bodies of adults, their mental function is that of children. 25 states permit capital punishment for offenders with mental retardation. The US Supreme Court has ruled execution of persons with mental retardation is not cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution.
So what’s Obama’s stance on Capital Punishment? “I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime [as we all do, Barack], and if a state makes a decision under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, that the death penalty is at least potentially applicable.” He added that the Supreme Court “basically [imposed] a blanket prohibition, and I disagree with the decision.” Is this, as Ralph Nader suggests, an example of Obama’s “wanting to talk white?”
In my view, a real agent of change, particularly a candidate of color, would unequivocally oppose the death penalty precisely because it is carried out disproportionately, is not cost effective, and does not deter crime. Given his endorsement of the death penalty, it seems logical to think he ignores Marshall’s charge that the application of the death penalty is “racist, and unfair to the poor.”
AMERICAN HEGEMONY
While Obama is for pulling out of Iraq, his overall foreign policy maintains the status quo in terms of our world wide military presence. For Barack, American Imperialism is a matter of exercising greater prudence and efficiency in ruling the globe, rather than posturing us to assume our place in a New World Economic Order about to supplant us in the twilight of American Empire. Writing in The Nation (6/23/08), Alexander Cockburn suggests that a legitimate agent of change “would announce that by the end of his first term America will have withdrawn from at least half the roughly 1,000 overseas bases it occupies, quitting the rest at the end of eight years.”
CUBA & COLOMBIA
Speaking to the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami on May 23, Obama said, There has been injustice and repression in Cuba….I won’t stand for this injustice….I will maintain the embargo.” Fidel Castro’s response? "Presidential candidate Obama’s speech may be formulated as follows: hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable handouts and visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life behind it.” Regarding the thoroughly corrupt Uribe regime in Colombia, and the presumptive Democratic nominee’s unswerving support for another lost cause, the war on drugs, Obama said, “We’ll work with the government to end the reign of right-wing paramilitaries. [These are gangster thugs who are in tight collusion with Uribe’s stooge government.] We will support Colombia’s right to strike terrorists who seek safe haven across its borders.” Here Obama gives his tacit approval to incursions into Ecuador to assassinate key FARC leaders, utterly disregarding the notion of national sovereignty.
IRAN
Bowing to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), America’s pro-Israel lobby, Barack had this to say, “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything.” I guess we “Kool-Aid” drinkers should take comfort in the fact he stopped short of using Clinton’s bellicose rhetoric that we would “obliterate” them.
Cockburn writes, “The assignment of every supposed liberal on the presidential campaign trail is to engage in the task of political redefinition, so that bankers, CEOs of the Fortune 500, Rupert Murdoch, the Sulzbergers, the Grahams, the Joint chiefs of Staff, Abe Foxman and the others all deem that candidate ‘safe.’ Lately Obama has shown an eerie and relentless skill in these tasks of reassurance. Though necessary to a certain extent, it’s an ominous talent.”
A FINAL WORD ON RACE, SOCIAL JUSTICE, AND REAL CHANGE
Nader, a true populist, has questioned Obama’s commitment to the lower classes. In Nader’s view, in his zeal to gain corporate approval, Obama’s neglected the plight of the inner city and rural poor, as well as the sufferings of a diminishing middle class. In an interview with The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Nader said of Obama, “There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white?” For all of Obama’s grand oratory about race, I sometimes think he puts class pandering above a commitment to social justice.
NOTE: The most excellent Obama image courtesy of an anonymous artist friend. If you like her work, see related links on blog.
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