OntheWilderSide

It’s a leap year, so CODEPink/UFPJ‘s* Tom Hayden must be shilling for a warmonger again.  Obama has opposed any Wall Street reform, and his Homeland Security Department coordinated the shutdown of Occupy in the US just as Hayden & MoveOn helped coordinate the shutdown of the peace movement in 2008,  Hayden’s new article gives Obama credit for Bush’s plan to shut down the Iraq war.  Not surprising since Obama has followed the Bush path on so many issues, to the point of being called Bush’s 3rd term. Tom Hayden totally misses the point.  There is no stick to his carrot.  Obama cares about only 2 things:  money and votes.  If you don’t threaten to transfer those to a real peace candidate for president like Jill Stein  then Obama has no reason to “pivot”

In the article A Romney Presidency Would Be a Threat to Peace We Cannot Allow, this is the only part Hayden gets right:

 To do so credibly, Obama will need to recognize that he himself has muddied (and bloodied) his message through his escalation of drone warfare, his secret counterterrorism programs and his embrace of the growing secrecy of state power. He cannot win the peace vote on a message of ending one war while escalating others, nor by promising transparency and then restoring the CIA to its 1950s role of secret wars and coups.

I wonder if Hayden gave similar re-election advice to LBJ or Nixon?  Hayden did get it right in 2010 when he signed a 2010 An Open Letter to the Left Establishment.  Was this just a trick to keep Hayden’s credibility when Obama is not up for re-election, or just a lucid period of a quadrennial amnesia? 

It has advanced repeated assaults on the New Deal safety net (including the previously sacrosanct Social Security trust fund), jettisoned any hope for substantive health care reform, attacked civil rights and environmental protections, and expanded a massive bailout further enriching an already bloated financial services and insurance industry. It has continued the occupation of Iraq and and expanded the war in Afghanistan as well as our government’s covert and overt wars in South Asia and across the globe.

Cindy Sheehan paid the price for speaking the truth during the 2008 campaign and afterwards.  Haydenneeds to re-read her words from Obama, Progressives and the Press

 The ones that upset me the most are the so-called leaders of the “progressive” movement like Tom Hayden, CODEPINK and Michael Moore who very enthusiastically endorsed, worked for, voted for, and raised money for Obama, and NOW are beginning to speak out against his carnage, when in fact, Obama has always been very pro-war. Once the horse is out of the barn, it’s hard to get him back in. The movement should never have given him a “chance.” Things are so much worse in foreign policy almost a year into his regime.

Even more so, by re-reading Glen Ford’s “Progressives For Obama” Change Name To Omit the President, I am reminded that Hayden did more than destroy the peace movement in 2008, he visciously attacked anyone who (rightfully) questioned Obama’s commitment to peace:

The left-wing Obamites were the nastiest of all. They viciously libeled anyone that advanced a Left critique of their hero, calling them enemies of a new “people’s movement,” when in fact it was they who were shutting the movement down in favor of a fan club and cheering section for Obama. Amiri Baraka spit poison at all who failed to pledge allegiance to the Great Obama, calling us infantile ultra-leftists and just plain “rascals.” Bill Fletcher and Tom Hayden stuck with Obama like little sorcerer’s apprentices as the president methodically savaged virtually every item on the progressive agenda. What else could they do? To break with Obama would amount to an admission that they were wrong about the progressive “potential” of their candidate; that he had always been a thoroughly corporate politician who would lurch to the Right as soon as he took office; and that, by failing to criticize Obama early in the campaign, they were guaranteeing that he would disrespect and ignore Blacks and progressives, once in office.

*UFPJ = United for Peace & Justice

Related:

• A Reply to “An Appeal to Third Party Voters, Make the Difference for Obama” by Tom Hayden (2008)
• Tom Hayden quotes (2007)
• Code Pink is still telling Green party members to support the pro-war Democratic Party (2009)
• Are Third Parties the Answer? (2007)

 

Filed under: 3rd party, Action Alert!, activism, afghanistan, Anti-War, Cindy Sheehan, Election 2012, grassroots democracy, Green Party, independent politics, international politics, Iraq, News, Peace, Political Websites, presidential race, progressive politics, third party, US Politics, war Tagged: | black agenda report, Cindy Sheehan, codepink, Glen Ford, tom hayden, UFPJ