Guest Blog by Stephen Fox: September 11, Tom Udall, What Obama Needs to Do to Win

This is a guest blog by Stephen Fox of Santa Fe. This piece is cross-posted at Stephen's MyBarackObama blog, where you can read more of his writing.

U.S. Representative Tom Udall, D-NM, released the following statement today in solemn remembrance of the tragedies of September 11, 2001:

"September 11 is a day that invokes immense sadness in all of us. Today, we remember the pain that we felt seven years ago. But Americans learned something about ourselves on September 11, 2001, and what we learned should make us all proud. We learned that, in America, when we find ourselves face-to-face with tragedy, we know a simple truth: we are our brothers' keepers; we are our sisters' keepers.

We know that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. That if one American dies needlessly, we are all diminished by that loss. As we mark this somber day, let us take comfort in that lesson: whatever our enemies do to us, Americans will stick together. And we will not be defeated."

My own recollection/observation was after 9/11 when the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar al Saud, donated a check for many millions of dollars to the 9/11 victims fund, as I recall $10 million, and accompanying the check was a letter in which he made many points, and among them was the question of the United States' need to figure out what it might have done to cause this ghastly disaster and act of terrorism.

That was too much for Rudy Giuliani, who immediately returned the check to Bandar, objecting very vociferously to Bandar's his commentary.

When I read about this in the New York Times, I immediately recognized this as Giuliani's error, but we all throughout life recognize this uniquely human trait of not being able to accept responsibility (or even a hint of a discussion of responsibility) by someone who is in some kind of serious trouble. It is just too much for them to deal with.....

The Saudi passport of Saeed Alghamdi, said to be discovered in the wreckage of Flight 93.

Steel beams from the WTC were already being removed and recycled on September 20, 2001. [Source: Associated Press]

A chunk of hot metal being removed from the North Tower rubble about eight weeks after 9/11. [Source: Frank Silecchia]

From left to right: Dick Cheney, Prince Bandar, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush, on the Truman Balcony of the White House on September 13, 2001. [Source: White House]

Bandar certainly should have had some keen insights into these matters; from Wikipedia, in italics:

[Prince Bandar has formed close relationships with several American presidents, notably George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, who gave him the affectionate and controversial nickname "Bandar Bush". His friendship with Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne Cheney, extends to the years before Cheney took office as the United States Vice President. Prince Bandar invited the Cheney family to his daughter's wedding in the 1990s, but they did not attend.

The close relationship with the Bush family is also described in Craig Unger's book House of Bush, House of Saud and is highlighted in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11....

Prince Bandar has endured controversy over allegations in the book Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward that President George W. Bush informed him of the decision to invade Iraq ahead of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Also, the book alleged a deal had been worked out to reduce oil prices just ahead of the November 2004 election. Bandar publicly endorsed President Bush.

On June 26, 2005, Prince Bandar reportedly submitted his resignation as ambassador to the United States for "personal reasons".[4][5] Bandar's return to Saudi Arabia was announced weeks prior to the death of King Fahd upon which Bandar's father, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz became the nation's Crown Prince. It has been rumoured that Bandar's return was timed in order to secure a position in the new government.[6] In October 2005 he became the kingdom's national security chief.]

What happened? According to another source; "Saudi princesses are no less benevolent than their husbands, brothers and cousins. Ambassador-Prince Bandar's own wife Princess Haifa, daughter of the late King Feisal, received a letter from an unknown woman telling of problems with medical bills. The Princess-Ambassadress dashed her off a check in six figures -- and the money by some strange route ended up among the resources of the perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities. The revelation so upset Her Royal Highness that various sympathetic Washington ladies rushed their condolences and sympathy to her -- including Mrs. George H.W. Bush and Mrs. Colin Powell. "

I am not a 9/11 conspiracy kind of guy/paranoid, not at all. I concluded long ago that even talking about such was a waste of time, my time at least....

However, having said that, since September 11, 2001, I do believe we have a lot of evidence of how our hostility about Islam now has alienated most of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, about 60 nations; it is obvious that the Chinese have run rings around us in terms of investment and economic policy throughout most of the world, particularly in Africa; it is screamingly obvious that American excursions into Iraq along with most of the US wars since 1945 have been in essence imperialistic in nature, and as such have earned us increasing hostility; one British tourist visiting Santa Fe compared the British in Ireland to the Americans in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

"If you kill their mothers and children and cousins and brothers over several years, pretty soon the entire nation becomes terrorists."

I do believe that the core of this Modern History was all essentially delineated by Marx, Engels, and especially by Hegel, in his discussions of Dialectical Materialism.

All those ISM's and the thesis/antithesis/synthesis processes make perfect sense to me in explaining the History of Economic Systems; it is clear to me that when Big Pharma and Big Junk Food corporations and their hired guns/lobbyists effectively take over the regulatory processes of a nation, like they have done with the FDA, that we are doomed in health, in history, in medical and consumer credibility, and in economic well-being.

I have written a lot of articles on related subjects, particularly consumer protection, aspartame, and Donald Rumsfeld's having forced through the FDA the approval for aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde, so he could make $12-20 million personal profit, the health of hundreds of millions of people be damned....

I won't regale you with this on this solemn occasion, but allow me to recall a lecture in Santa Fe a few years ago by former President of Poland and Nobel Laureate Lech Walesa to the effect that the USA has lost its moral stature in toto as well as most of its political power, squandered its economic power in order to preserve and just barely maintain its military power, which was no replacement for moral, political, or economic power. That was quite brilliant, truly.

Similarly, DNC Chairman and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean III, M.D., was recently in Santa Fe to fire up the troops, and one thing in particular stuck with me, when he said no nation could bring peace in any conflict unless it had the moral authority to sit at the negotiating table.

We don't have that power and that moral authority throughout most of the world right now, thanks to the past 8 years of Bush/Cheney/Neocon/Blackwater/Halliburton/Kellogg Brown, and Root mode of economics and government economic policies.

I really don't believe that in general Economics nor specifically that Macro Economic insights from government economic advisors, for example, qualify as rocket science.

It is more akin to the old irrigation system of colonial New Mexico, in which the farmer who controlled the flow of the irrigation ditch, or ACEQUIA MADRE ("MOTHER DITCH" in Spanish) determined which field the water would flow into. He was called the Majordomo, and in that society, was much more important than any Mayor, or "ALCALDE" in Spanish.

That is what has happened during the past 8 years. The White House and other government masters of the flow of monies have purposefully turned the irrigation ditch waters into such things as military, defense contractors, weapons, hardware, security, etc.

What was in that other field, the one that got neglected and deprived of water?

Just about everything else: education, inner cities, highway maintenance and construction, infrastructure, huge realms of scientific and medical research like stem cell research, etc. You name it: our American economy is in terrible shape, and with the way our international respect has deteriorated, squarely because of Bush and Cheney, it might get a lot worse....the signs are everywhere; they are well known and they are easily recognized: endemic mortage failures, high gas prices, a deflated stock market, high unemployment, failed schools especially in the inner city, store closings, et. alia.

Much of this election hinges on our ability to change all of that, to put America back on a sane and internationally effective tack, and that is at a minimum, just to ensure our survival as a nation.

That is why I want to see Dr. Dean be the Obama Cabinet Secretary for Health or as FDA Commissioner, and that is why I want to see NM Governor Bill Richardson as the next Secretary of State. I think also that Jerry Brown of California would make a great consumer protection-oriented United States Attorney General, one who would also reconstruct all of our civil liberties.

Such speculations are of course something else entirely, but I am certain that Obama should discuss such things seriously and frequently, ignoring the advice of some who say that that would be ridiculed by the right wing as "presumptuous" or as "arrogant," so that the American people can gain some glimmer of an insight into what he really would like to achieve as President, in terms of names, both possible and real and well known names.

Will Obama win?
To get to that victory, I work day and night as a member of 328 Obama groups, coordinating correspondence, and urging people to not just "preach to the choir," as that is how Democrats usually lose elections, but to get out there and go door to door to tell folks how much is really at stake in this election, plus my special focus: Letters to the Editor, Opinion/Editorials, and so on, all over the United States, wherever they could be published.

Surprising how few people comprehend this in only a few states, and in not many of the so-called BATTLEGROUND STATES, for Obama and for US Senate candidates, as described in my blog about a week ago in the letter from Senator Charles Schumer.

I am going to take a break from all of this furious emailing, so you won't hear from me for a while.

I will conclude with a few paragraphs written today, not by me, but an astute observer and friend of mine,who wishes to remain anonymous, about 50 years old, a realtor, former actress, and thinker:

Recently, I was on a flight to Texas and sat next to a very personable and fairly astute guy. We began talking politics and went back and forth about the issues. He was really impressed by my research and said so.

Then he leaned over to me and whispered conspiratorially, "I concede all the points but Obama is a Muslim, you know."

And when I calmly explained that that particular lie fed on our basest fears, he held up Reverend Wright as proof. This scene has been repeated numerous times with different characters but the underlying emotional message is clear and powerful. Their winning on a gut level. They are afraid and the facts don't matter.

Obama is perceived as "the other."

The Republicans have clearly defined him emotionally and he must wrest these irrational pictures away from them and supplant them with powerful and soothing reassurance.

Obama may loose this election if he does not connect on a visceral level soon. He must capture the emotional narrative and stop trying to be only reasonable. People do not reason their way into the voting booth. They move from the gut.

He has much "low-hanging fruit" to choose from. Sarah Palin is a right-wing fundamentalist wack-job. She is an extremist and Americans of all stripes are uncomfortable with extremism. John McCain has abandoned every "maverick" position he's ever held.

It's all on video, from her prayers to the oil pipeline god to the massively naked ambition which has led him to do a 180 on every major political stance of his past. Use Their Own Words To Out This Outrageous Hypocricy. Draw passionate simple pictures once again and reframe this narrative, from the gut. It's the only way. "

Obama has to win!

This is a guest blog by Stephen Fox, Contributing Editor of the New Mexico Sun News and founder of New Millennium Fine Art, a Santa Fe gallery since 1980. Guest blogs provide an opportunity for readers to express themselves on topics of interest to the political discourse here, and may or may not express the views of the DFNM blog. If you'd like to submit a post for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of the page.

Technorati Tags: