What Obama Is Up Against (by Russ Baker)

[Octafish]

The author of "Family of Secrets" puts the President's situation into words we can understand:

What Obama Is Up Against

Monday 02 November 2009
by: Russ Baker, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

The first anniversary of Barack Obama's historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government?

We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next command. Like an orchestra conductor or perhaps a football coach, he can inspire or bludgeon and get what he wants. But that's not how things work at the top, especially where "national security" is concerned. The Pentagon and CIA are powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. They are full of lifers, who see an elected president largely as an annoyance, and have ways of dealing with those who won't come to heel.

Compound that with the Bush-Cheney administration's aggressive seeding of its staunch loyalists throughout the bureaucracy, and you have a pretty tough situation. Obama, then, has to contend not only with the big donors and corporate lobbies. His biggest problem resides right inside his "team."

***

The internal battles between American presidents and their national security establishments are not much reported. But if it is an invisible game; it is also a devious and even deadly one. Our civilian leaders end up mirroring the chronically nervous chiefs of state of the fragile democracies to our south.

Those who do not kowtow to the spies and generals have had a bumpy ride. FDR and Truman both faced insubordination. Dwight Eisenhower, who had served as chief of staff of the US Army, left the White House warning darkly about the "military industrial complex." (He of all presidents had reasons to know.) John Kennedy was repeatedly countermanded and double-crossed by his own supposed subordinates. The Joint Chiefs baited him; Allen Dulles despised him (more so after JFK fired him over the Bay of Pigs fiasco), and Henry Cabot Lodge, his ambassador to South Vietnam, deliberately undermined Kennedy's agenda. Kennedy called the trigger-happy generals "mad" and spoke angrily to aides of "scattering the CIA to the wind." The evidence is growing that he suffered the consequences.

CONTINUED...

http://www.truthout.org/11020910

We the People not only need to support President Obama, We need to watch his back.

[HughMoran]

1. Hah! A vocal minority here wants to shiv him in the back

I don't think we can be trusted to "watch his back".

[Cha]

2. Thank you, Octafish.

And. this is only one aspect of what he's up against.

[voc]

13. +1

[MisterP]

3. for the Nth time, it's not that he's "treading gingerly" not to awake the CIA, it's that his

policies and nominees are often matches for W's

not that W's stay-behinds are slowing down any oh-so-sunshiney policies

not that the establishment is threatening him and making him cautious

that he's saying and doing all the wrong things, not that he's doing the right thing too slowly

[sendero]

4. What a bunch of baloney..

... as soon as he started that "seeded with Bush" bullshit I was done.

If there are people whose loyalties lie elsewhere Obama should GET RID OF THEM.

As for his "getting things done in some areas" bullshit - again NO. He's getting plenty done, it's just not done like he said he would do it.

Bush II is not what I was voting for.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[SemiCharmedQuark]

11. Did you hate Bill Clinton as well?

[JTFrog]

17. Of course not.

That poster had no problems with Clinton covering up for or his relationship with the Bushes. Quite a cozy relationship too if I might say so myself.

[sendero]

19. Not while he was in office..

... (I don't "hate" any Democrat) - but Clinton certainly got the ball rolling on several awful decisions, such as enabling "free trade" with China, which they are now hanging around our necks like a burning tire.

I'm sorry my complete and total disillusionment with Obama is so upsetting to so many. Must be really uncomfortable to have your "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" moment.

[JackRiddler]

9. Do you think it's that easy to uproot an entrenched bureaucratic establishment?

Especially given that large sections of it are off-budget, long-term secret, and worst of all privatized?

While under constant fire from its partisans?

The spook world has shown it has ways to eat up presidents when they don't conform to its needs. A faction of them turned even on Bush in the end.

With the largest "defense" budgets in history equalling the spending of all of the rest of the world during a depression, have you heard so much as a peep from Obama about shifting these resources to some better investment?

Unfortunately I doubt it's a very high priority for Obama, anyway.

[troubledamerican]

12. Nah, you're full of bullshit.

Sy Hersh called the Cheney Sleeper Cells "stay-behinds" and that is a direct reference to Operation Gladio.

Operation Gladio's "stay-behinds" created False Flags such as bombings & kidnappings done in the name of "Leftist Terror Groups" in order to shift the political spectrum toward the far-right-wing in countries such as Italy.

This is conspiracy FACT, not conspiracy theory.

And if you don't believe in conspiracies, then you don't believe in (Watergate, Iran-Contra, BCCI, ENRON, Worldcom, Tyco, etc.) HISTORY.

"Obama should get rid of them" is just fantasy bullshit. Fire the entire State Department? Do you have ANY clue how things work? Should he FIRE the Pentagon?

Fucking delusional.

[HamdenRice]

15. This is an example of how DU is going down the drain intellectually

Screw the civil service system! Screw the military system! Fire them RIGHT NOW!

Yeah right. Why even bother having a rational discussion.

[G_j]

6. without 9/11, the previous administration would never have

been able to do what it did.
It is absolutely true that the President is up against institutions stronger and far more connected than him/her.

I just don't think Obama had that much change in mind to begin with.
I think he wants to sing a similar song,
but in his mind, a lot better.
& I think he is capable of that.
He can make the status quo a bit more fair.
Dispense with the inflammatory, boastful, bullying rhetoric,
promote some better ideals, within the existing framework.
And, he would choose to do "empire" better.

It always bothered me that he took the quote "the fierce urgency of now" from MLK Jr's "Beyond Vietnam" speech.
I wish he would listen to it tonight!

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

[spanone]

7. k&r...

[eridani]

10. That particular establishment has been firmly in charge for 60 years

Unlike health care, this is one area where I DON'T expect immediate success for Obama.

[Karenina]

14. ttt

[HamdenRice]

16. Best article in a long time! K&R --But there's one thing I never understood about Bush II

I disagree that Bush II didn't "take on" the CIA. He blamed it for 9/11 (unfairly) and trashed it with the Plame affair and Rumsfeld tried to disable its operations and move them into the Pentagon.

In fact W savaged the CIA and it barely fought back.

Why? How did he get away with it?

[leveymg]

22. Dubya didn't get away with it. Since 2005, he's been under virtual house arrest. There were no 2nd

term initiatives to speak of from Bush-Cheney. No falling forward into Iran. No Iraqi "Hydrocarbon Law" that would have handed US-based oil companies control over development of the Iraqi oil fields. Weak US-backing for the Israeli offensive into Lebanon and mimimal support for the bombing of Gaza in the final days of Bush and Olmert.

Instead, the FBI moved in on the most clumsy GOP operators: the OSP-AIPAC espionage ring; the Abramoff Saudi slush fund network; the related private intelligence for fun and profit ring being run by the Old Boy Club - Goss, Buzzy, Dusty and the gang at MZM/NGIC -- that specialized in falsifying intel, domestic political spying and dirty tricks, assassinations, the ones who bribed Cunningham and about 15 other GOP Congressmen. Actually, a lot of really dangerous stuff got closed down. It was Army Intelligence that blew the lid on the attrocities at Abu Ghraib. Look at Sibel's list - most of those guys are gone, some of them dead. None of this intervention would have happened if the national security establishment had not become so disgusted with the shere incompetence of the Bush-Cheney team. Bush-Cheney could do nothing right because the professionals were embarrassed by them, and simply stopped helping them.

[Sinti]

24. There is more than one faction, if you will

There are lots of CIA professionals who are good people, normal folks, want to ensure the security of the nation. They should be DIA, IMO - CIA is redundant for this function. Then there's "the company." The company does not work for you, it works for the haves and have mores. "The company" also has men in the military. Sometimes you hear about their actions, Iran-Contra, BCCI, Gladio, Barry Seal and the shit storm that goes into the same pile, Operation Mockingbird, the MK ops, Operation 40... do I need to continue?

Bush II never messed with "the company," he purged the CIA.

It's not really the American Empire - it is the empire of the Resource Acquisition Mafia and their subsidiary International Megacorp - humans can be resources also. The US military and intelligence complex (the company) is just its enforcement arm of this megalith. They also profit by selling death and chaos to the oppressed - then they step in with strong-arm control.

Take a step back, it's easy to see. Careful though, once you go down the rabbit hole it's easy to get lost in the warrens.

[Ichingcarpenter]

18. I said that it would take President Kerry

His first term to clean up the entrenched cells, but they
got another 4 years. The Justice department had even more hires
during the second term of Bush.

Good article.

[blm]

20. Some here also forget that Bush purged all CIA personnel suspected of supporting Kerry in 04,

which would have set up an even higher concentration of Bush loyalists at that agency by 2009.

[Echo In Light]

23. +1

[JamesA1102]

21. Great article K&R nt

[redqueen]

25. K&R

Thanks for posting this.

[PretzelWarrior]

26. yes. Obama knows the perils he faces.

it could be why he has Lawrence Summers, Joe Biden, and that Republican National Security guy on staff.....some of the insiders to help him not get stabbed.

[SammyWinstonJack]

27. How about he watches our backs?

:shrug: If he were not up for the job, perhaps he should not have sought it? :shrug: