Antiwar “change agent” Obama? Not so much

^{Dodo Bird by Noelle Dass}

Honestly, coming up with how to say this in a politically correct way escapes us. So, here it is — of those among the approximately 50% of Americans who voted for Barack Obama who were of the illusion/delusion that he was The One because of his alleged antiwar-in-Iraq stance — you’ve been suckered. This includes all those CPUSA-led union folks and the Blogger Boyz who led the charge.

Paul Richter at the LA Times reports today (h/t Ed Morrissey at Hot Air):

Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama’s national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.

The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war. [...]

Aside from Clinton and Gates, the roster of possible Cabinet secretaries has included Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who both voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, though Lugar has since said he regretted it. [...]

Activists note that Vice President-elect Joe Biden, also expected to be a leading voice in the new administration’s foreign policy, voted for the 2002 war resolution.

Another possible contender for the diplomatic post, former U.S. diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke, also backed the Iraq invasion.

Oh, never fear, the Kool Aid is still working — for now. Richter reports:

Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War, said that although he finds Sen. Clinton’s views “very troubling,” Obama should be given the benefit of the doubt.

“I take him at his word that he is committed to ending the occupation of Iraq in 16 months and that he’s going to assemble a team that’s committed to that goal,” Andrews said.

Good luck with that Tom. The Obamessiah is weeks away from his coronation and already there are signs the crown is slightly tarnished.

Can you believe that the first RBO article from the Wayback Machine that immediately came to mind was “Barack O’bomb’em”, one we wrote many months ago based on RBO’s favorite radical Carl Davidson, a former president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s?

This is the same Carl Davidson who was a “key organizer” of the October 2, 2002, Chicago antiwar rally at which Obama spoke out against the war in Iraq, saying that he was against “dumb wars”.

You see, in a February 2, 2007, Socialist Worker article, Adam Turl wrote:

Carl Davidson, a former Vietnam War protest leader who helped organize the 2002 rally Obama so famously spoke at, says that after the protest and the 2003 invasion, Obama’s position on the war began to morph.

“After he visited Iraq when the war was on, he turned,” Davidson wrote recently. “Now we had to set aside whether it was right or wrong to invade, now we had to find the ’smart’ path to victory, not Bush’s ‘dumb’ path…[I]n dealing with Iran, we had to leave on the table bombing their nuclear sites. For this, a lot of the local antiwar activists started calling him ‘Barack O’bomb ‘em.’

“He wasn’t listening much to us anymore, but to folks much higher up in the [Democratic Leadership Council] orbit. He had bigger plans.”

A few days later, Dan Curry of Reverse Spin picked up on Davidson’s comments.

While Barack Obama cavorts in Hollywood with the likes of George Clooney and spars with Hillary Clinton, the Marxist community in Chicago sits patiently and waits.

They too, want an audience with Obama. They won’t be giving him money. They want to know if he’s still the same person they endorsed in 1995 when he first ran for state Senate.

Then we posted a fascinating link from January 21, 2007, courtesy of Bill Baar.

It is a discussion board post by Carl Davidson, a longtime fringe leftist who claims to know Obama well. To put Davidson’s philosophy in perspective, read this account of a [September 2006] meeting of the reconstituted radical group SDS where he said his Vietnam era generation was “the last generation that believed in America.” Bernardine Dohrn, the Weather Underground terrorist who now teaches at Northwestern University, sent her regrets (seriously).

Anyway, here’s what Davidson said on the discussion board about Obama. He recalled the good old days, when Barack and the far left Chicago New Party were on the same page:

I’m from Chicago, too, and known Obama from the time he came to the New Party to get our endorsement for his first race ever. I’ve been in his home, and as an IL legislator, he’s helped or community technology movement a number of times. He said all the right things to the ACORN and New Party folks, and we endorsed him, but I noticed too, that he seemed to measure every answer to questions put to him several times before coming out with it.

He spoke at our first antiwar rally. He spent most of his speech detailing all the wars in history he supported, then finally made a distinction between just wars and “dumb” wars, and going into Iraq, which was still six months down the road then, was a “dumb war,” and he flatly opposed it. Good, that put him on our side, and some of us organized a fundraiser for him for his Senate race. But a friend of mine, and also an Obama campaigner, at that first rally, nudged me and asked, “Who was that speech for? Certainly not this crowd.” Now we know.

After he visited Iraq when the war was on, he turned. Now we had to set aside whether it was right or wrong to invade, now we had to find the “smart” path to victory, not Bush’s “dumb” path. Also, in dealing with Iran, we had to leave on the table bombing their nuclear sites. For this, a lot of the local antiwar activists started calling him “Barack O’bomb ‘em”. He wasn’t listening much to us anymore, but to folks much higher up in the DLC orbit. He had bigger plans.

To be fair, I read a recent speech he gave to laid-off workers from a plant closing out in Galesburg, IL, around globalization, corporate responsibility, the safety net, the third wave, and so on. It was very good. Save for not mentioning the war, I probably couldn’t written a better one myself.

Giving the current crisis and developments in Congress, he may move back to our side on the war, and get as far as, say, [Penn. Rep. John] Murtha’s position. But right now he’s not in the “Out Now” camp, not as good as Murtha, and a triangulator par excellence. I’ve watched him do it up close. The press and his publicists put him in our camp, but if you look at his speeches and votes since his trip to Iraq, I think you’ll find he has a way to go. Our peace groups here are sending a bunch of us to visit him soon, and get on his case. Perhaps he’s still a work in progress, as Jesse Jackson says, but he still has a way to go to get back in my good graces, and those of many more of us here also. Carl Davidson, Chicago

“I wonder if the Obama camp will publicize this meeting. It promises to be more interesting than the one in Hollywood.”

We have to say that Davidson, a strong Obama supporter, as are the other radical members of Progressives for Obama, had Obama’s number all along. Unfortunately, along with so many others, his hope that Obama was going to swing back to a true antiwar-in-Iraq position is most likely going to go the way of the dodo bird.